Find mechanical designers and strategists
 

Congratulations on your sponsorship, and welcome to FIRST.

It sounds like you are in good shape for funds, though as many posters stated, you should probably still do some fundraising for possible future needs and to create a sense of "ownership" within your team.

Now, what you need for a successful rookie years is designers. The FIRST competition encompasses a lot of things, but the bottom line is that the robot design and construction is primarily a mechanical exercise. You need people who can evaluate the game rules and determine what the robot needs to do to play the game. Then you need to do mechanical design, and you need to make and assemble parts. Students, teachers, and anyone else on your team can contribute a lot in the way of design concepts for your robot, but hopefully you will have a person or two with mechanical engineering background to help bring the concepts to reality.

Good luck, and have fun.

I don't think this has been mentioned: be prepared to have no life outside FIRST for 6 weeks. Especially the final week; no matter what everyone says, the robot is rarely finished at the beginning of week 6. It can get hellacious the final week. On the plus side, most schools have the day before shipping off (Presidents Day), and some have winter vacation that week.

Again, thanks to everyone for your advice, I will take it all to heart and definatly put it in practice

As far as fundraising goes, I do really see your point about needing spending cash for the unforseen things. I will bring this up with the team and see how it works out. Perhaps BP can offer us a lump sum for stuff like that. If not we will look elsewhere.

As far as schedualing goes its rather bad here in Ontario. Our mid term exams are right in the middle of the build period, and thanks to our system of government we have no presidents, hence no presidents day.

Our team is rather small (15-20) which might hurt us. But there are about 10 of us that I know for a fact are extremely dedicated.

I have taken it upon myself to learn the basics of the kit. I know about pneumatics, I have the RC and OI + pBASIC down. the Vic188's and spike's are no problem. I do however think I'll be lacking on the motor side. But we'll see.

A team mate of mine has actually come up with a pretty ingenious form of tank steering using only one joystick. (There is one publisized online but its not that, a little different. More predictable)

The way things stand right now our build site is provided for us by a nice company (SED) however its rather small. Not enough room for even a court by itself. We are hoping to get another place. But if that doesnt happen we will just be assembling a section of the court and doing preliminary testing, then later on maybe assembling a court at the school or some other place for training. Does this seem like a good idea considering the circumstances? Or what would you recomend.

As far as no life goes, I have informed my girlfriend that she better take an interest in robotics, or it will be a long 6 weeks without me. :D

And finally, we would like to go to the championships, but if they are only allowing even teams to register we will have to see about placing well in the regionals.

Thanks again for the advice, I appreciate all of it.

Out of curiosity, what regionals are you going to?

Just the Canadian.

Heh heh
 

Just a few sidenotes on what Eddie said...

What do you mean? People have lives outside of FIRST... occasionally we go home to sleep... :D

Yea... We finished last year on the day we had to ship at 5:23 p.m. ... the truck came to pick TOBOR up at 5:30 - hey, we finished before the deadline, right? :) And, unlike most schools, we didn't have the ship date off or the day before (we do this year!!) so we were at school from 7 a.m. on Tuesday to about 6 p.m. on Wednesday. People went home to shower but came back afterwards. We even had some engineers stay that long! So... yea... be prepared!!!!!!

Have fun,
Katie

Hey some of us have to go to school too

Build playing field ASAP
 

I can't believe I've been censored by Dr Joe ;)

I agree with others that you should build the playing field as soon as possible. The year's object / goal / whatever Dean throws at us is the most important piece and must be build early. It helps the team members understand what kind of object you're dealing with. Imagine trying to come up with a strategy last year without knowing how the bridge behaved. It's also critical to have the objects for prototyping.

It's not necessary to build the whole playing field, many teams only build the major objects. That's good enough to practice scoring. The whole field is useful if you want to figure out how long it takes to perform tasks (from start to picking up a big ball; balancing & then getting to endzone) or if you want to practice running through matches.

Bottom line, build the object / goal ASAP, it will help your strategy & design.

Remember that the veteran teams are here to help you.

Mike

Plan on getting a full set of game pieces ASAP too.
 

In addition to building the field ASAP you should try to get a more or less complete set of game pieces as quickly as you can as well.

By the way, I am more and more confident that this year's game piece is tubes -- I am prepared to eat crow on this one, but it seems pretty certain that tubes is it this year -- could be small balls but my money is still on tubes.

Also, while I am at it, if it is balls, the balls will have to be larger than about 9 inches, which is the approximate center distance I predict for the upright 1" PVC conduit that I suppose will make up the outer barrier of the goal.

Joe J.

P.S. Anybody willing to give me odds on tubes being a game piece? A little friendly wager perhaps? How about a case of Vernors (my stake) against 2 cases of Mt. Dew (my winnings)? Any takers? BE BOLD!

Just had a few comments:

Small teams are not as bad as you may think. Our team last year only had 14 students by the time we got to Nationals. It's hard to do some things that require large numbers, but you can do a lot of things that you can't with a big group. Everyone has to do a lot of work and take a lot of responsibility, but I think it's more fun when you are more involved.

We usually do that type of thing. Our auto shop is big enough for a full field, but our teacher usually likes to be able to get cars in, so we usually just build the main pieces of the field, like the ramp/bar from 2000 and the bridge from 2001. It always works fine for us, and doesn't take up much space.

I hope this was of some help to you. Good luck this year. Only 3 days left 'til kickoff!

My words of wisdom
 

Hi,

I totally agree with Ed Sparks on all of his points. A little note about the playing field, we usually don't have one built until the final couple of weeks (crunch time), and we always kick ourselves for not building it earlier. I agree that it is extremly helpful to build an accurate playing field, or even just pieces of the field that pertain to your robot.

Next, just like team 47, my team (team 27) also is required by our sponsor to rake in a certain amount of money each year. I don't know anybody on our team that hates to fundraise. Make your fundraising fun!! If it's fun, great teamwork skills are developed and more of that family atmosphere is created. That is and has been the backbone of our team for many years. When students fundraise together, they get to know each other and often feel more comfortable around them. MAKE IT FUN!!!!

Also, don't take your sponsorship for granted, it's great that they don't require fundraising, but you still miss that experience.


Todd Lawless
Team 27
TEAM RUSH

Also... more advice
 

Here's one other piece of advice:

Focus on your drive base... it is the most important part of your robot.

Get it running soon, within 2 weeks after kickoff.

Also, don't spoil yourself by driving it without loading it down to the maximum weight of 130 lbs (if that's what it will be). Take a box of bolts and duct tape it to your drive base. Then have your students drive it on the carpet (if we are playing on carpet again).

Also... don't be afraid to drive it hard. The earlier you can find where the design is weak, the better.

Andy B.

Thanks for the advice Andy, the drive train will be built asap

Thanks to your teamate posting about extrusions it should be finished faster than we first expected.

We will definatley load it up (thanks, I might have missed that) we have a teamate who happens to be 135 pounds, so it should be fun taking him for a spin.

Nothing sucks like going in circles...
 

You have GOT to have a reliable drivetrain.

A perfect end effector is USELESS if your robot cannot get it into position to use it.

Trust Andy on this one. Spend your engineering resources on your drivetrain -- make sure you have a robust design that can take the beating that a real competition will give to it.

It is better to find out early and have a few days to fix it rather than to find out at a regional and have a few hours scatttered over a period of several days at the regional.

The years I have suffered the most have been the years when our drivetrain needed the most baby sitting.

Get it done early and beat on it hard.

Joe J.

Another thought .......
 

If your going with a chain and sprocket drive, use 3/8" stuff. I've seen many rookie (and experienced) teams go down in flames over a broken chain or a chain that slips off of the sprockets. 3/8" stuff is much harder to break and it's more forgiving to mis-alignment. I never use 1/4" chain for drive components anymore.