Where do you actually build your robot and who does the building???
 

So the two eternal questions await you:
Where do you build the robot???
AND
Does your team's students actually build the robot?

We build our robot at the high school metals shop and YES the students on our team actually build it. (with a little help from the engineers and machinists of course!)

The reason I ask these two simple questions is I want to know where people build thier robots(obviously) AND I want to see how many teams actually have the students build the robot or just have thier robot built by engineers and then have a litteral "crash course on driving" when the robot is finished???

You can definately tell the teams who had the engineers totally build it and give it to the students, just by talking with some of the students . I think this approach is wrong! The robot should be almost totally student built!(with a little help from the engineers and machinists of course!)
:D

Despite what some people assumed about our team last year, our robot is built about half and half between mentors and students. Students do a LOT of the fabrication. The area we work in is a small garage bay in the back of our school, but we also do some machining at NASA. There's another thread around here somewhere about construction rooms, but I'm too lazy to find it. ;)

~Tom Fairchild~

Re: Where do you actually build your robot and who does the building???
 

Re: Re: Where do you actually build your robot and who does the building???
 

You know me, would I ever do that?

Team 111 has a small room at Motorola right next to the model shop where we do all our building & assembly. Take a right, another right, then a left, and a right and you're at our playing field.

The students and engineers sit down and together come up with a strategy, concept, & high level design. The detailed & individual parts design is done by engineers. The precision machining is done by machinists. The 'slop' machining is done by students and engineers. The assembly is done by students. Students can always sit in with the engineers & machinists and observe / ask questions / offer suggestions on parts of the process where they're not the key players.

Elgin, before you make huge assumptions about a team's student involvement, make sure you get the whole story. Many teams are large and some students never touch the robot because they're on Chairmans, yearbook, animation, web, or some other subteam that doesn't build the robot. Be sure you're talking to the right people when forming conclusions. There's a lot more to FIRST than designing parts & turning screws.

And since I always like to get people thinking & talking, I'll stur the pot a little. A general observation I've had that isn't aimed at anyone in particular: some teams with mostly student designed / built bots have an aura of arrogance about it, and that has no place in FIRST.

Mike

Our team finally got a little space in one og the high schools. We still use the equipment we bought our first year *buying some new things every year* and even use the tables we made out of stuff we found dumpster diving. Yup, we were that poor our first year.

For building it, I think it's 60% student, 40% college mentors. There is almost 1:1 ratio of students to mentors on our team, so a lot of what goes on looks like we're building it, but really we're teaching them how to do things. Unfortunately, some of us mentors are more commited then the students.

I wish we had enough people to have a whole group to do the Chairman's Award. All we have on it is me, two students, and two other mentors. Every single one of us are building as well.

We have the loan of part of a small building. It has about 7 rooms one of which is fairly large. We hold meetings in it. It's been very nice as we do not have room at school. We are short space period at school. Building program should break ground in a couple of months.
We are trying to have students do as much of the building as possible. As a rookie team we have a lot of kids learning about this sort of thing for the first time. We hope that kids will be able to do even more next year. Eventually we "adults" would like to just sit around and watch.

There is a complete spectrum here. The most important letter in FIRST is "I" for inspiration. Some teams achieve this by having mentors and engineers do most of the designing and building while students learn on the side. Others have an "only high school students touch the robot" approach. FIRST does not say one is better than the other – nor should they.

Our team consists of about 50 students, 2 HS teachers, 7 college students and one college professor/engineer. (We have an occasional parent in to help on weekends.) Everyone does "administration" type jobs, everyone designs and fabricates. The non-high school people tend to keep as much of a hands off attitude as we can.

We do nearly all of the fabrication at our school's metal shop, but some work is done at the college.

-Mr. Van
Team 599 "Robo-Dox"

Our sponsor Conoco lets us have a building on the complex that is not occupied any longer so that is great. No room in the school system. We only have common shop tools there hand tools and we finally have a stand up drill press. All of our precision maching is done off site at various shops in town, we have the students go with us to talk to the guys when we have work done. We we fab we "try" to let the students do as much as they can. some are better than others but it is not a perfect world. We do stress that it is thier ideas that matter.

Lot's of engineer buiilding
 

I have sort of a unique outlook on this subject, and I still don't have an official position. In 1999 I started an all student team at my high school. This was after three steady years of corporate sponsorship including 3-dimensional services, lear Corporation and General Motors Truck Group. My decision was based on team dynamics and an eagerness to try it on my own. It just so happened that we did extremely well that year, seeding six at nationals and placing 4th overall.......we lost to wildstang and technokats in the semis.
I went to college the next year, and we started a team. Now I was the engineer. I had a whole team of students, and I was still a "kid" myself. There were four college students including myself, all former firsters, and about ten high schoolers. The team has grown since then......we add new firsters every year when they get on campus.
The point here is this. Our robots are almost exclusively engineer designed and built, partly due to restrictions like working in a college machine shop where students aren't allowed, and long nights when students usually have class early. Mostly though this fact is due to lack of high schooler interest.
I grew up with first. It's a huge part of my life, and I feel that it will remain so for years. We've yet to get a steady group of students who share the fever. Many are too busy to dedicate the hours, and most are pulled in a dozen other directions already.......when the eager students arrive and want a hand in things, then they shall have all of the control they want. I try to excite them about it every year, so far with minimal success. The upper peninsula of michigan is far different than any other place in the world(from my perspective).
Until we get some guys and gals who want the first experience as much as we did, we'll build their ideas and hopefully produce a champion along the way!

Anthony Lapp
team 221 ------> now 857

Here's the skinny on how GRT builds it's bots:
We have a very nice facility on our campus, comprised of a lab where we assemble our robot, a shop where we machine it, and a classroom that becomes our playing field.
We fabricate about 95 percent of our parts. there are a few things that we are not able to do, b/c some of the tools are like pre-1960. We do a lot on our own, which means we mess up more often.
good luck with your robot.

TechnoKats
 

The TechnoKats build our bot at our lovely shop that is "donated" to us by a very gracious partner Cinergy PSI (power company), our shop is actually part of a warehouse that isnt being used. At our shop we have enough machines to build almost every part possible that would be needed...and if we need an even more precise part we have students at our schools "career center" make them in their machine shop.

We are in an old auto shop that was gutted a while back when Fairdax county decided to put all the 'vocational' classes at one school. It was made into the drama room, and then band took half for storage. We now have a quarter, band has a quarter, and drama has half of what was a three door auto shop. So we had the floor to stick in the lathe, mill, bandsaw and two drill presses.
Almost all of the fabrication is done by students, with the ocasional enginner helping, or making a part at home (dave, who doesn't count as an engineer). The enginners help with drawing out what we have invisioned, and somethings NOT to do (Whatever you do, don't cross the streams) but the ideas come from the students, who then fabricate it.

we build our robot in the tech wing of our school and the tech ( a local tech school). the students build almost everything. we are a part of every design process and if a mentor builds something there is always a student observing.

I applaud all of the above teams for their candor and think that this was the intention of FIRST, students working WITH engineers/coaches/advisors. The real problem here is- the teams who receive crated robots, manufactured COMPLETELY by some sponsor, will never have the guts to say so in this thread, and if they did, how could they ever justify it. Where's the learning curve for the students.

It can never be regulated (honestly, that is) because students are already supposed to be taking part in design and construction and those teams who aren't allowing it now will continue to have a "best-robot-at-all-costs" mentality in the future.

Our robot (StART team 506) is built almost entirely by students. I'd say 90-95% of it is student built and about 97% student designed with occasional engineer modification suggestions.

We are a bit low on both space and resources. We build our robot in a physics classroom in our school. We have to completely clear it out each night for the next days classes and then take everything out again after school to build and work more. Our most presice tool is probably our countertop drillpress.

I admit I would love to have some of the tools that the teams with machine shops have access to, or at least a room to leave stuff out in, but it is interesting to see how much we can do with what we have. Last year (our rookie year) we placed 3rd out of 13 rookies and 17 out of 33 overall.

I know someone mentioned they don't want this post turning into a "spirit of first" type thing but I do feel that competition and winning aside, doing the work with little help from engineers is more enjoyable and more interesting than having a marvelous robot that was almost totally built by engineers. As far as i'm concerened the true objective is to have fun any way possible so long as it does not prohibit or decrease the fun of others involved.

We (Team 360) build our robot at Metal Marine Pilot (they make autopilots for boats)

We have access to a large assembly line, so we have electrical components, building components, basically everything. We also have a machine shop and everything. hehe

Students (like myself) build the robot, we also have a $@#$@#$@#$@#$@#$@#$@# advisor (Stoke - Dawg) who works with us =)

The Sea Dawgs build at Lincoln High School, and a student member's house (she has a mill, lathe, etc. in her garage). The students are doing almost all of the building. The only things they aren't building are our wheels. Our sponsor, Applied Materials, made our wheels. The students also do al of the assembly.

we build the robot (we being the college students). the high school students are ninnies: lazy, ritalin underdosed, or unmotivated, or even undependable.

i believe they prefer a "winning robot" than one built by hs students.

furthermore, none of the students are able to actually meet during the late hours, which is when the engineers meet.

if it were up to them, i'd laugh (and also be on the slopes rather than at the shop during my weekends).

-anton

ps. in the end, they do learn from the experience nonetheless.

Team 702 builds there robot at our high school. We stole the autoshop from all of the autoshop students that are too high to notice. They barely noticed that we moved a mill, laith, drill press, chop saw, and a band saw. I think they were to into watching day time tv. The ENTIRE robot is student built, our advisor points out that engineers are not there to do your work only point out your mistakes. And laugh.

If we didn't build it, who would?
 

Team 555 builds its robots, not the engineers, and not the machinists. We had a frame made from a machine shop, and a machinist helped assemble and build our gear box, but all actual assembling of our robot is done by the students, for better or worse, in our robotics "lab," a room in the basement full of broken furniture, tools, and a confused, displaced driver's ed teacher.

It really burns me up to see teams with teams of engineers who don't let the students even touch the robot, let alone carry it to the field or make repairs. There's no FIRST spirit in that.

On team 668, a couple of the parents like to do alot of the designing. There are only 1 or 2 students who help with that. :( Another couple of them like to help us build and machine parts, and there is a core of about 5-8 students who do alot of the building. I've noticed tho, that most of the girls take part in chairmans or animation. Personally, I'd like to see more girls who really get into building, and actually help with the bot, instead of just me and one or two other females. well, more *students*...

our team...
 

Well our team, has no engineers. At times it gets difficult but we can honestly say we the students built it. All the designing and fabrication is done by us. We have 2 adults who help us, one is a physics teacher and the other is a technical director. We consult them if our ideas are within the bounds of this physical universe. The answer is always- everything is possible. We are lucky to have a mill and a lathe in our school, and the surrounding lab is where the robot is forged, so that's where all the work is done. Other teams make use of our equipment. We've helped 3 rookie teams in fabrication and we ourselves are a rookie team. Our team has to be very resourceful, as we are a low budget team with no sponsor. (We were entered by our school board) At the end of the day, we're on a different playing field than a team who has a robot built by engineers. So, why can't we be a little louder?

We have an interesting group dynamic happening at 810. . . it's unusual, and perhaps even a bit inefficient. But, it's everyone's first time in their respective positions, so it's to be expected.

Concept development was done primarily by the students, with a bit of input and guidance from the mentors - since we have the benefit of having experienced several competitions and understand some of the more common - or easier ways of doing things.

I am entirely responsible for the design of the entire machine. I take the rough sketches and ideas that the team has developed and turn them into something that's workable - within our limited budget and manufacturing ability. As such, I'm also in charge of deciding what we order and such. It's actually quite a bit more responsibility than I wanted - but if this is what it takes to make sure the kids have something they can be proud of, that's fine with me.

Fabrication of intricately machined parts is done by a third party (we think...we've yet to actually find this third party). . .

Assembly of the robot is done entirely by the students, though. I hardly lay a finger on the thing. I'm probably a bit of a nuisance to them, incessantly reminding them to be neat and think of everything that's going on before they move forward - but they're learning.

There are some parents who are heavily involved as well, either by talking about design issues with me, or by getting a hand in on the building and showing the kids some tips and tricks.

My hat is off to you team 907. We learned first hand lastyear about the difficulties of designing and building a working robot with absolutely no outside help.

Our school is lucky enough to have a machine shop we can build our robot in. Every part on our robot is designed, cut, bolted, welded, and programmed by students. We have a CAD teacher, electronics teacher, and machine shop teacher (who doesnt even work at the school anymore) working with us after school. Their function is mainly to answer questions we have. I dont see the point in participating in FIRST if your mentors are the ones doing the work.

We build the robot at our sponsor (Ethicon) and we have almost a full size field. As to who builds it. it is about 50/50 even when the students do not build the parts of the robot they learn how to and gain knowledge by watching an experienced engineer or machinist cut something or make something....

Brian Team 56

We do
 

We build our robot and are proud of it. We have engineers over see but not realy manuacture.

Our team (639) was sponsored by Borgwarner and Cornell, but we did all the work.

WE did have help on a few things like Cnc machining, but we did all the design and production.

This year was kind of hard for my team because during the summer our main sponsor Cordis decided to stopped funding us and find a new school. We had to run around and pull enough money together to enter regionals, nationals, and build a robot.

We also got lucky and found the Knottsco www.knottsco.com (You can see a picture of our robot here with our second place trophy :-) which was willing to give us all the 80/20 and pneumatics we could use and Thermoplastic Processes which loaned us the use of their machine shop.

Another effect of that was the total lack of engineers - machinists. We had one physics teacher, one electronics teacher, and one machinist who assisted us. I'm proud to say however that our robot was designed and built 95% by students on manual machines. You will not see an engineer working on the robot in the pits because there are none. I do not get annoyed when I see robots that are clearly built by professionals because it gives me all the more satisfaction when i go up against those bots and i show that I can do just as well if not better.

We start with a meeting to get everyones ideas and after the students construct the playing field. This takes place in a Hammond school building built in the 30s in an old band room. This location will almost hold a playing field and has several rooms we can store parts and tools and a room we use with the grinder and sander and saws that are loud. We hold all of our meetings in this room except for those working in a PC computer lab in another part of this same building. (The Hammond Area Career Center) This room has a very high ceiling so it works well for handling balls and other flying objects. Its located on the second floor and everything has to be carried up and down two flights of stairs. (goals, parts, tools, robot etc.)
Most all of the building takes place in this old band room with Bill Beatty and his engineers, several parents, and most all of our students in attendance 5 nights per week and all day Saturday and Sunday for the entire build phase. After the initial meeting everyones ideas are compiled and a basic design takes shape. This is more defined by Mr. Beatty. The engineers and our students and parents start putting together the new robot. The students do really build a portion of the robot but the engineers have the final say. The construction takes place on one end of this room on the playing field. Any machining required is done at Beatty Machine and Bemcor or several other generous machine shops in town (Brian Beatty's buddies) but prmarilly the Beatty shop. The Hammond Schools location does not have machine shop facilities. Students and Mr. Noble (a Beatty engineer) will construct all the electrical systems
All testing and driving practice are performed in this same room. (after all the metal shavings and the White Castle boxes are cleaned up) We have human player practice in our parking lot and also in this room too.

Re: Where do you actually build your robot and who does the building???
 

we use a chemistry lab at our school, and is entirely designed and built by students

there's only 1 real mentor for our team, and he just makes sure we don't kill ourselves in the lab

Re: Where do you actually build your robot and who does the building???
 

Team 1516 is entirely done by students, we have one Mentor and he has no say in any aspect of the Robot, nor does he work on the robot at all. We have no engineers, no machinest. Al fabrication is done by students all designing is done by students and all decisions are made by students, we take great pride in these facts.

Re: Where do you actually build your robot and who does the building???
 

Wow.
This is an old thread.

Re: Where do you actually build your robot and who does the building???
 

i just noticed the same thing

our team builds in our high school shop. it has some band saws, drill presses, and a lathe. we have 2 mentors, one for the robot and another to help with programming. our menor doesnt nessecarily design the robot but he stears us to the right desin. most of the fabrication is done by students and only done by mentors when under a big time cruch or something to complicated for a student to do.

Re: Where do you actually build your robot and who does the building???
 

We make our robot in our school shop. I machine the pieces on our tools, and I'm currently teaching a female member as well as another male member of our team how to properly machine parts, and how to safely use the tools. Our mentor helps out with them machining work load and guides us in the appropriate direction, after all he is an engineer.

Re: Where do you actually build your robot and who does the building???
 

(I spent like 10 minutes making an ASCII for our workroom, then the forum messes up the spacing so oh well.)

Anyway, we have a room about 12' X 25' w/ 3' lab counter lining the two long walls and one short wall. We have a drill press, band saw, scroll saw, and grinder on the counter.

Robots designed and built completely by students.

Re: Where do you actually build your robot and who does the building???
 

1023 works in the Auto Shop of our school, with the wood shop and machine shop across the hall. The students design/fabricate/manufacture all aspects of the robot with guidence from parents and our sponsor, Midwest Fluid Power and an engineer from MTS. MFP's mentor knows the 8020 product well and helps us use it to its highest potential. The mentor from MTS helps us do design work so we can get what we want on paper. The rest of our mentors, excpet our coach - a math teach, are all parents of students on the team who help us out when we run into major issues (things just don't work like we thought, we can't diagnose the problem, etc)

Re: Where do you actually build your robot and who does the building???
 

We have a GM Powertrain central building right down the street from our school and we go there during FIRST season to build.

And yes, our students design, build, and manufacture the robot. We have the adults do the bulk of the work in the machine shop but we are able to do some of it.

Re: Where do you actually build your robot and who does the building???
 

We build our bot in our coach's room. It's a trailer out behind the school, the tech drawing room. And YES, we most deffinatley build our own bot, we're awesome! =)

Re: Where do you actually build your robot and who does the building???
 

Re: Where do you actually build your robot and who does the building???
 

Where do you build the robot???

Team 1519 builds and designs our robot in one of our coach's basements. He has a couple large rooms, not enough storage space, and a small machine shop.


Does your team's students actually build the robot?

Yes, the students on our team are the driving force behind the design and fabrication of our robot. Coaches are very involved as well, with coaches and upperclassmen instructing the younger students and rookies.

Re: Where do you actually build your robot and who does the building???
 

For FVC, our team (1070) builds it in a small classroom...or each other's houses.. at that point.. with very little parts.. it's pretty easy. and our students build our FVC bot. so i'm proud of us :D.

For FRC, since we are definitely talking about a lot of BIG machines and bigger parts.. then we work at a lab at CSUN, cuz our high school doesn't have one for us. and our students build the robot, with a little help from our mentors for ideas and tips on if we're doing something wrong. But YES we build our ROBOt!

Re: Where do you actually build your robot and who does the building???
 

This year we will be working in a classroom. Kinda a bummer as studnets use it so we will have to clean up after each meeting. Also its a biology lab so its not like theres any machining equitment in it.

Re: Where do you actually build your robot and who does the building???
 

Last year we built our robot in a team member's garage :rolleyes: . This year we've been in touch with the district in hopes of getting our own workshop and we'll know the verdict sometime this week.

As for who builds the robot - its a combined effort. We have the students and the mentors working together.

Re: Where do you actually build your robot and who does the building???
 

It was interesting going back through this thread and seeing some people I hadn't heard from in a long time...

Anyways, here with the Rat Pack, we build our robot out of the high school metal shop. The school shop teacher and our group of college mentors lead the build process, but the high school students do most of the work. We don't have much engineering assistance at the moment, so we basically do the whole thing ourselves. We can't do as many fancy things, but it's great experience for the kids.

Re: Where do you actually build your robot and who does the building???
 

holy rusted thread revival batman

umm 1923 more or less built a good portion of their robot in team 25's lab, because the school is umm weird, but we think we have fixed that

Re: Where do you actually build your robot and who does the building???
 

Wow, this is an ancient thread! I didn't realize quite how old until seeing the talk of team 811 being in their rookie year...

In any case, Team 1519 builds their robot in the basement of the home of one of our coaches. Our high-tech power tools consist of a drill press, a grinder, and a table saw. We have no choice but to employ the KISS Principle in all of our design!