Quote:
Originally Posted by Astrokid248
What lead to the decision to build the same robot? (I have an opinion on this, but I will reserve it until I feel more informed, and of course my opinion may change.)
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A lot of it had to do with our main sponsor, BMS, decreasing the amount of support we got. At one point, we had 5-6 technical mentors from there and access to their machine shop. As the years went on, many of those mentors retired or were unable to devote as much time to the team. With the economic situation being what it is, BMS itself also had to scale back much of its support for the team. We were able to snag some of the smaller machines and tools from their shop but our school simply does not have the space for us to have everything we need. We were able to get by almost entirely with their support for over 10 years and we found ourselves in a difficult situation. (It is worth mentioning that one of the BMS guys is still involved with the team, especially the design process).
We've worked closely with 103 for years and have used their facility before. They have a much larger machine shop/work area with plenty of space and a few other classrooms to use. This is in addition to their "barn" that was built for the team that houses a full field. They also have a great sponsor in
Day Tool who provides them with the machining capabilities and they graciously extended their support to us when the situation at BMS changed.
There had always been talk of building twins or ramping up our collaboration, especially as we started spending more time out at their school (about a 45 minute drive from ours). Our mentors have always remained in close contact throughout the build season and, as I said, the less support we received from BMS, the more time we spent working with 103.
There's just always been a really good relationship between the teams from the mentors down to the students and as we shared our resources more and more, it really just made sense.