Biggest Advantage/Disadvantage
 

A Twofold question:

What do you consider to be your teams biggest Advantage, and your biggest disadvantage.

Try to avoid generic answers like "enthusiastic students" or "hard work". I think answers like "We have a waterjet", or "One of our mentors is on the GDC".

Re: Biggest Advantage/Disadvantage
 

Advantage: Having a mentor work at Chrysler (or Fiat, I forgot which one :rolleyes: ) who has access to the waterjet

Disadvantage: Having a small team size

Re: Biggest Advantage/Disadvantage
 

Advantage: We have a company that offers its CNC and powdercoating services to our team

Disadvantage: Not enough students are willing be 100% committed.

Re: Biggest Advantage/Disadvantage
 

Advantage: Small team size that requires each member to put in a sizable chunk of work and learn more.

Disadvantage: Small team size limits us to simple robot designs that can easily be assembled by the ~7 people of our 10 person team who are at any given meeting.

Re: Biggest Advantage/Disadvantage
 

Advantage- have another team right by with a full machine shop that helps us
Disadvantage- small team size and low budget.

Re: Biggest Advantage/Disadvantage
 

Advantage: Great shop, some committed, skilled people.
Disadvantage: Not everyone at meetings is actually working.

Re: Biggest Advantage/Disadvantage
 

Advantage: Students that can TIG weld (and a welder)

Disadvantage: Funding

Re: Biggest Advantage/Disadvantage
 

Advantage: Acquiring a sponsor who wants to 3D print our robot out of aluminum

Disadvantage: Getting the sponsor a few days before bag and tag.

Re: Biggest Advantage/Disadvantage
 

Offseason!!!

Re: Biggest Advantage/Disadvantage
 

The team will definitely use it in the offseason, but I'm graduating. :P

Re: Biggest Advantage/Disadvantage
 

Mentor!!

Re: Biggest Advantage/Disadvantage
 

Advantage:
Funding and Team size

Disadvantage:
Machine shop and team size

Re: Biggest Advantage/Disadvantage
 

Advantage: lots of great engineering mentors and resources

Disadvantage: lack of dedication by young team members (our team is 80% first year members this year)

Re: Biggest Advantage/Disadvantage
 

Advantage: Our mentors and the resources we have access to.

Disadvantage: Extremely volatile mentor base (4 college student mentors). e.g. the more notorious mentor is relocating for a job and won't be able to mentor starting next season. Also, a lack of actual mechanical engineers as mentors.

Re: Biggest Advantage/Disadvantage
 

Advantage: An awesome community of FIRST teams in WNY who will bend over backward to make sure you have everything you need--most especially 340 (our Bausch + Lomb sister team) and 1511.

Disadvantage: We're extremely rural (ever heard of a one-stoplight town? We don't have one of those....) The local hardware store is (a) small and (b) closes at 5 pm--and the nearest Lowe's or Home Depot is an hour away. (The end result is that we pay more than we'd like to in order to get stuff from McMaster, instead of buying locally.) The only major industry in town is a vineyard, and they won't sponsor high school activities for rather obvious reasons.

Still, we get better every year. :D

Advantage: Funding. Core group commitment.
Disadvantage: Small team size. 3 mentors who know about as much as the students.

Last year we had 2 mentors. We're improving :D

Re: Biggest Advantage/Disadvantage
 

Advantage - Good core group of dedicated mentors, at least one for each subteam (Mechanical, Software, Business, Electrical), and a core group of dedicated students.

Disadvantage - Small shop with machine contention. We reorganized this shop this past off season and it has helped tremendously. It also helped that we finished making the pickup arm prior to the start of the final shooter so the machine contention was down a lot.

Re: Biggest Advantage/Disadvantage
 

Advantage: experience, lots of build space, dedicated older members, great mentors

disadvantage: large number of new members on team, not so much dedication. Coaches who don't listen to students and make the robot an ego-fueled power game

Re: Biggest Advantage/Disadvantage
 

Advantage: Core group commitment, ~12 years acquired robot parts, technical knowledge, nearby university.

Disadvantage: Far from other teams, weak funding, oddly low mentor count (this year), a few more students than I know what to do with (this year).


Though we're far from a lot of teams, we aren't nearly as rural as pfreivald (we have at least 4 stoplights in town!).

Re: Biggest Advantage/Disadvantage
 

Advantage: Having FIRST as part of our high school's curriculum. Thus, class time to build robot.

Disadvantage: Having a large number of members that don't know how to use tools.

Re: Biggest Advantage/Disadvantage
 

Advantage: Having three big time sponsors that give us unlimited access to their CNC mills, laser jets, water jets, automatic breaks and welders, CAD resources and pretty much any other kind of machining equipment you can think of. All with a two-three day turn-around time.

Disadvantage: We are in a very rural area and have little or no student interest for robotics. We officially have eight students but only two that ever show up and participate.

Re: Biggest Advantage/Disadvantage
 

Advantages: High Resources (Good shop, sponsors, funding, lots of people, plenty of enthusiasm)

Disadvantages: Lots of (inexperienced) people who "just want to build"

Re: Biggest Advantage/Disadvantage
 

Advantages:One of out mentors has a voice and a half which is quite for yelling at everyone to get working. Also, out team has an almost even 50-50 split between boys and girls.
Disadvantages:Few consistent sponsors and regular periods during which the snack supplies deplete significantly until the power that be refill them.

Re: Biggest Advantage/Disadvantage
 

Advantages: highly skilled seniors who know how to spend two weeks doing the same thing to get it right (from wiring to bumpers). Being close to other teams, and sharing a deep pool of part and traditional shop resources. Positive energy from the school community.

Disadvantages: only a handful of juniors to take up the slack next year. Only one teacher (me) who can commit to the program, so it only happens when I can be there. The deep knowledge the swerve drive is beyond our abilities.

Re: Biggest Advantage/Disadvantage
 

Advantage: One mentor builds cnc machines and 3-D printers, we have a giant warehouse for a field, our robot is light enough we're only bagging the frame and leaving the entire shooter off to put on a new frame for practice, our design is totally different from anything I've seen

Disadvantage: Lots of useless freshmen playing video games, our robot design is totally different from anything I've seen

Re: Biggest Advantage/Disadvantage
 

Advantage: Experienced mentors (some have been around since FIRST began). Large dedicated workspace.
Disadvantage: Limited budget which did not allow us to go to a first regional which puts us at a HUGE disadvantage at FLR compared to many of the teams who will be doing their second event.

Re: Biggest Advantage/Disadvantage
 

Our advantages this year are that we have gotten to a decent level of funding and have a fairly dedicated group.

Our disadvantage has been being limited to being able to work only an hour and a half or less every day afterschool because our teachers can't stay long :(

I feel you. Just on Saturday none of our teachers wanted to come in Sunday or Monday... The last very crucial days of the build season. We were unprepared for that so we couldn't take it to somebody's house. If your teachers have things to do, take initiative and take it home to work on it.

Re: Biggest Advantage/Disadvantage
 

Advantage: We are given space in the University of Wisconsin-Platteville Engineering hall to work and have access to the resources there like computer labs, multiple CNC machines, and some great faculty who are willing to help us.

Disadvantage: Most of our mentors are college students, so there is a near complete turnover in mentors every 4 years. We do have a few wonderful engineers from John Deere who help out, but the team is still very dependent on getting new college mentors.

Re: Biggest Advantage/Disadvantage
 

Advantage: A founding member team of the "Forbes Alliance", very powerful.
Disadvantage: Our machining capability consists of a table top bandsaw, tabletop drill press and assorted hand tools. Yet we are quite resourceful.