Re: Mechanical Vs Electrical
 

I do a little of every thing but id have to say that Computer/virtual wins, cant build the robot without the design and cant wire without the schematics, jk we all need each other to get the job done so its all good.

Re: Mechanical Vs Electrical
 

This is how it works on team 610:

Mechanical is defined as fabrication, design (excluding cad) and assembly.
Electrical is defined as sensor work, wiring, IFI component placement and integration with mechanical stuff (such as if there is a turret, the electrical people have to work to make sure there is slack in the wires and also that it's not going to get tangled with other robots)

Mechanical basically always has more say than electrical. Generally the electrical system is based around the mechanical system (which is designed with little electrical consideration)

So far it has worked reasonably well; however we always run into the issue near the end of season were the electrical is running behind because the mechanical is running behind. The end result: our programmers suffer.

Re: Mechanical Vs Electrical
 

We have more mechanical people on our team than we do on electrical. I myself is on the mechanical part. There is about four or five on electronics but 10 or more on mechanical.

Re: Mechanical Vs Electrical
 

Our Electrical team is 2 or 3 people.

Our Mechanical team is 10 or so.

Re: Mechanical Vs Electrical
 

Electrical all the way baby!

On our team I guess two thirds of the team is mechanical and one third is electrical. But that could be because we have it set up in that kind of fashion. We have three subgroups and 1 sub-subgroup. The three subgroups would be upper body, base, and controls, and the 1 sub-subgroup was programming which falls under controls. With this past year aside, we have always had more mechanical guys than electrical guys, just because it seems that there is a lot more freedom in mechanical as to how you can design parts and work with the robot.

The exception to this freedom lies this year, as the controls and programming divisions were officially split. This made controls smaller than it usually always is and on top of that this year, we decided to use Pro/E and Inventor to our max, and created a bunch of interesting mounting plates for both our brain and compressor. I am one of the ones on our team that sometimes utilizes a program that makes PCBs so on top of getting some creativity designing mechanical parts and laying out our brain on CAD, I get to design my own boards and stuff which gives me some space and creativity of my own on the electrical side.

I think that controls is near the same every year. Sure you have twists and turns, but the focus is the same every year and you are just improving yourself. With mechanical aspects you are redesigning the way things are done because every years game is different.

Pavan.

Re: Mechanical Vs Electrical
 

The Mechanical Team has to be bigger, because they work for the first 5-1/2 weeks building.
The electrical and programming group only as the robot for a few days, so they can have a much smaller group.

i always assumed that was why the electrical and programming teams just wanted the robot for a few days, right at the end...... ;)

Re: Mechanical Vs Electrical
 

Our team is fairly small with 18 people. Most do multiple jobs, such as Graphics and Mechanic. We have 6 mechanical, 2 electricians (one of which is vice pit chief) 2 of the mechanics are Graphics, and 2 of the mechanics where on the drive team, the other electrician was the human player. So we have 1 pure electrician and 2 pure mechanics, thoes who have no other jobs.

With a new wave of people next year there should be more seperation of sections, but the 3 teams (drive, mechanical, and electrical) should stick very close together.

Re: Mechanical Vs Electrical
 

Yeah really... I'm surprised no-one else has said anything...

Oh well. Guess it was a good topic:D

Jacob

Re: Mechanical Vs Electrical
 

At least you have people which want to do those, we have 3 people on our marketing team, i had to forcefully recruit those 2 (i'm the other)

Re: Mechanical Vs Electrical
 

At least he "searched" before posting! :) He deserves props for that. Isn't that what everybody preaches (myself included)?

Pavan.

Re: Mechanical Vs Electrical
 

Absolutely! I'm not complaining at all. I'm commending what he has done. I'm just saying that I'm surprised that noone else had made any other comments to this effect; The conversation continued as normal.

Jacob

Re: Mechanical Vs Electrical
 

Our electrical team was a small number of students (i want to say 2 or 3, but may have only been one), but in many ways was in the best shape because we had two GM engineers helping with the E board.

Mechanical was a lot larger, but they obviously dealt with a lot of things like electric motors and such.

Re: Mechanical Vs Electrical
 

umm yea i was the only electrical... and pneumatics... and programming... and sometimes the weight hole person.

Re: Mechanical Vs Electrical
 

We had twelve people on the mechanical team this year, though nearly everyone else (myself included) has basic mechanical training and helps out as needed. The electrical team only had four members this year, and two of them are seniors. We hope that when we take on new members this May that some of them will be interested in electronics.

"Mechanical" for us is divided into two categories. We have students who are trained how to use specific machines (mill, welder, lathe, CNC, etc) and those who just know how to use the simpler machines (band saw, drill press, hand drill, grinder, sander, etc). NOBODY uses the table saw without an adult. About half of our mechanical team falls into this "special training" group, and the other half cuts basic parts and assembles the robot.