Well, the team and I are back from IRI. Since our kicker broke at the competition we decided to go ahead and remake the part that broke and also make some modifications to the kicker to prevent it from breaking again.
Our mentor gave us a lesson on metal and the difference between hardness/toughness. Hard being resistant to bending or reshaping and toughness being resistance to breaking or snapping while under stress or shock.
One of the things we did to the kicker was removing more metal from the kicker’s foot piece. I got a chance to use the CNC mill for the first time along with some of the other guys. The first step we took was to plan out the pattern that we wanted to mill out. We drew the design on graph paper and made sure it all worked out before we started milling the part. After that we just went to town. I must say that I was very impressed with the ability to make accurate measurements and cuts that the machine provided.