Originally Posted by waialua359 (Post 1590948)

Travis, I had heard that you are the lead on the technical binder. Is this true?
Kudos to the mentors and the students who worked on this.
The most impressive part besides the actual robot with its features, is that you have it really condensed yet very informative on the whole design process, decision making and explanation of each of the systems.

Originally Posted by waialua359 (Post 1590948)

Travis, I had heard that you are the lead on the technical binder. Is this true?
Kudos to the mentors and the students who worked on this.
The most impressive part besides the actual robot with its features, is that you have it really condensed yet very informative on the whole design process, decision making and explanation of each of the systems.
Cory, our former mentor who was with my alma mater Team 4158 cut a lot of gears with a jet sponsor. Our team needs to get on board with ours soon and I need to research more about different nozzle sizes and what they can cut. Skies the limit.

Originally Posted by Torrance (Post 1590974)

The technical binder has always been a student led and written project as the students who compose it use it as practice for their presentation in the pits to Technical Award Judges. I wrote the binder in 2014 and 2015 and Travis did some editing to keep it concise and relevant. In 2016, Technical Director Alex Cherry and Documentation and Submissions Director Matt McDonald wrote it with me (now 1st-year mentor) serving as the editor.

The binder also required a lot of work from our Media Director Peter Feghali to do the renders, layout, and aesthetics.

Originally Posted by waialua359 (Post 1591048)

Thank you to you and Travis for sharing. You mentioned some other mentors who helped who I never heard of or met.
Teams like yours are an inspiration to many, including us. As a follow up, it would be cool to hear about the team structure and the mentors that support both the robot (many who we know) and the non-robot technical support that you folks have.

Originally Posted by waialua359 (Post 1591048)

I hope this is a project you folks continue to do and share post-season annually.

Originally Posted by Michael Hill (Post 1591082)

How do you guys do project management? Do you have design/concept reviews? What tools do you guys use to keep organized?

Also, somewhat off topic, we used a modified version of the 254 part management tool (cheesy parts) this year and it was fantastic. It really helped us especially get orders put together. Instead of writing orders down on a marker board or a piece of paper that can get lost, it was great to have everything organized the way it was.

Originally Posted by Torrance (Post 1591079)

Of the people I mentioned, only Travis (and sorta me) are mentors. Alex, Matt, and Peter are Directors on our student leadership team.

The team leadership structure is divided amongst the mentors and student leadership team which consists of Directors that lead sub-teams of other students and Captains that serve as project managers on particularly large tasks.

The team certainly has a lot of mentors, but this is essential for managing the 100+ students working on multiple projects. Our mentorship is unofficially divided into technical and non-technical mentors.
Going off of our Mentor Page, the following are technical:
Travis Covington, Pat Fairbank, Cory McBridge, Tom Bottigleiri, Leigh Pauls, Kevin Sheridan, Paul Ventimiglia, Dan Judnick (mostly VEX), Kenneth Lloren, Jared Russel, Colin Wilson, Nick Eyre, Trevor Kearse. Also myself and fellow SCU student Mani Gnanasivam.

Nontechnical mentors include: Esteban Parker, David Wilson, Nick Hammes, and faculty Peng Yav and Brad Lindemann.

Not all of the mentors attend every build or every competition.


The student leadership team breakdown (recently updated for 2016-2017) is also on our website. As you can see, 1/2 of the positions are non-technical in nature.

The Directors closely collaborate on a lot of projects. For example, this technical binder was written by the FRC Technical Director with the help of a technical mentor (me or Travis). Then the Documentations and Submissions Director and a nontechnical mentor or 2 helped edit and clean up the bullets before giving it to the Media Director who's sub-team did the renders and formatted it using Word into the final document.




We plan to! Creating the technical binder is a great learning experience for all the students involved, in addition to being a useful resource for judges or other teams.

Originally Posted by waialua359 (Post 1591086)

I vaguely remember seeing this previously. Can you share the link?

Originally Posted by Michael Hill (Post 1591082)

How do you guys do project management? Do you have design/concept reviews? What tools do you guys use to keep organized?

Also, somewhat off topic, we used a modified version of the 254 part management tool (cheesy parts) this year and it was fantastic. It really helped us especially get orders put together. Instead of writing orders down on a marker board or a piece of paper that can get lost, it was great to have everything organized the way it was.

Originally Posted by Jay O'Donnell (Post 1591105)

Andrew (or other 254 members), would you mind giving a general timeline of your season? Such as when certain robot decisions and milestones occurred?

Originally Posted by DinerKid (Post 1591084)

Awesome write up.

I'm very intrigued by the safety wire that you used on the flywheel.
Would you mind elaborating on the reason you use it, process for installing it, and perhaps a picture?

Thanks
~DK