How do you use your summer?
 

Hi everyone!

With a lot of schools ending, or nearing the end of their terms, a lot of us are about to enter summer vacation.

What does your team do during summer vacation?

Our team's not going to be very organized this summer, though I'd like to get a head start on supplementing and developing our current members' skills (primarily design/CAD.) Anyone have any resources or ideas they could recommend? The 610 design tutorials, as well as the resources on 1114's site are what I've found to be extremely useful; I was wondering if there were others like them.

Thanks!

Re: How do you use your summer?
 

Just keep doing. Everything. Keep designing, keep building, keep learning, keep fundraising. Build more robots, try more ideas, compete more and more and more. Make more friends, have more fun, go to more events and become more of a team. You have the time - all that's left now is to do.

Re: How do you use your summer?
 

I agree with this. Summer is a really good time to try new things, since there isn't as much of a time crunch.

Our team will be doing a couple of demos, some planning for next year, and some cleaning/organization stuff. We may also do some fixes and/or touch-ups to our robot. We're also doing a robotics "boot camp" for incoming/current students who are interested in robotics.

Re: How do you use your summer?
 

Trying to get a ShopBot CNC router up and running, like I wanted to do but ran out of time for last summer. Bolting down sheetmetal equipment to some workbenches, like I wanted to do but ran out of time for two years ago.

Re: How do you use your summer?
 

Building a new quadcopter... and nursing injuries from racing an mini elec 4000watt gokart.

Re: How do you use your summer?
 

In the past it's been mostly cleaning and organizing. It's a nice time for us to rearrange things in the room until we get things exactly how we like them. This year we plan to do some prototyping with drive trains, and build a couple of fun bots, like a t-shirt cannon. Also, never stop fundraising. We usually split our group into two parts. All of the new members coming in, and those we usually don't do outreach or public speaking focus on things like car washes, while the more experienced business people hit the large corporate sponsors. Every donation counts!

Re: How do you use your summer?
 

For us, it's hard to get organized since a lot of our members are away or taking classes or camps for the summer. Thus, we mostly end up designing solo and implement when school starts.

Re: How do you use your summer?
 

This summer I am working on our teams swerve drive. Bartering time on a 5 axsis cnc machine. We have a few fll camps we are teaching.
We lost are couch the day before build season, along with that we are losing our adviser that ties us to the school. Hard to get those but we will try tell we get one.

Re: How do you use your summer?
 

359 just finished the 2013-14 SY on Friday, followed by a end of year banquet, awards ceremony, and team photo.

We unveiled our summer schedule which is anywhere from 2-5 days depending on your role in our program for the entire summer.
Our summer work ends when our team travels for 2 weeks at the end of July to participate in off season FRC events. This year its IRI and OZARK.

I start my day job work one day after we get back from the off-season trip, for the 2014-15 SY in late July.

Re: How do you use your summer?
 

We will be attending the Rockford off season event in July, demo the robot at various events like Taste of Chicago and tech conventions, get started on FTC and VEX designs. If all goes well we will be spending some time moving into a new build space and getting it ready for August class start.

Re: How do you use your summer?
 

Over the summer:
1. Midknight Mayhem + IRI
2. Going to DC to talk with congressmen
3. 2015 Leadership Summer Meetings
4. Starting the Chairman's Award Submission
5. Outreach and STEM Community Events
6. Team Documentary Premiere
7. End of Season BBQ
8. Summer Sessions for Prospective Design and Programming Students
9. Planning fall training sessions
10. Lots of driver practice
11. Meeting with local sponsors
12. 2015 Student Leader Application Process

Re: How do you use your summer?
 

This summer my team is really going to go through a lot of organization and trying to restart after some methods of doing things that didn't prove to help us in the best of ways. The first thing being that we stressed the roles of what our captains should be. Our voting was more focused on what our captains would bring, and how they would benefit the team.

For our team, we're really set on making sure people know the SolidWorks that we use so we can have people ready and set to know it enough to help mock up the more serious designs at the beginning of build season, as well as doing very similar with electrical (since they're putting out a new alternate for the cRIO). We're planning on finishing projects that we've had for years like our penny smasher and our t-shirt canon robot mark two (named Mr. Ballista, also a remodel off the chassis of our Breakaway robot). We'll be testing different drive trains and also modeling them in CAD as practice and seeing if we can obtain a CNC Router somehow.

We'll be starting fundraisers including FIRST's light bulb program, and trying to find others we can do to help fund extra stuff. I will be working on our new website whenever I can since our old one is very out of date.

For other than our team, we're currently in the middle of teaching an Android App Camp through KC Power Source that's offered to middle school and high schoolers. It's teaching basic apps on Android devices that they can download or expand on to introduce them into the idea of the programming mindset. We're going to visit sponsors and a Cub Scout day camp with this year's robot as well as a Girl Scout day camp with last year's since he's been based off of Tow Mater from Cars and their theme is Disney so it fit better. We're also going to be showcasing at Kansas City's Maker Faire.

I definitely doubt that's all, but ti's enough to keep us busy!

Re: How do you use your summer?
 

Make a CAD of your favorite robot design. It's a good way to practice and is practical in the sense that its just like CADing a competition robot.

Re: How do you use your summer?
 

-Finishing project that we didn't finish last year.
-finish a soccer ball kick robot so that disabled children can enjoy soccer.
-create an offseason prototype drive

Re: How do you use your summer?
 

Not just the summer, but our offseason in general

Currently doing/has been done so far:
1) CAD workshop for students and mentors
2) Offseason event (Monty Madness)
3) Group workout sessions twice a week. Gotta keep Healthy!
4) Presentations to sponsors and incoming freshmen
5) Outreach (Jr.FLL demonstration, Liberty Science Center, etc.)
6) Fundraising

To be done in summer/fall:
1) Design/CAD for new cart and Driver station
2) Team BBQ
3) FLL event
4) Offseason/new member training
5) more fundraising
6) Leadership retreat