Quote:
Originally Posted by tsaksa
If I could change one thing, it would be to have an assembly area where things could be left out, or at least left in one place during a build. If all the parts, tools, and sub assemblies need to be boxed up and stored in a different area, and the area cleaned up after each build session you can easily loose half of your time transporting and setting up parts and tools at the start and end of each build session. In fact parts can get lost or damaged during this process, and it does not do all the tools any good to get wheeled around through the rain twice a day.
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Our team has had a different experience. We used to build in a large church basement, where we were allowed to leave virtually everything out during build season. It was great for the first couple of days, but soon everything was spread out so much that we couldn't find things. Sometimes things went missing or got broken from being left out.
A couple years ago, we moved to a new build space provided by our sponsor, but were required to clean up every day. That sounds like a pain, but the discipline has really benefited us. We built a storage cabinet for each subteam, 4x4x6' on wheels, hinged to open into two halves with easy access to all the storage totes and shelves inside. The robot itself is allowed to sit on its cart during construction. At the beginning of each build session, the students on each subteam roll their own cabinet to their work area, open it up, and get right to work. Cleanup at the end of each build session takes 15-20 minutes (could be faster if all students chipped in equally). Now we hardly ever lose tools or break assemblies (and the few instances were not related to cleanup).
Even if we got our own dedicated work space at the school, I would enforce the full cleanup at every build session. It has worked very well for our team.