Ok... time for me to throw in my $0.02
Quote:
Originally Posted by bEdhEd
Team 701 has been running for 13 years now without the industry resources such as engineer mentors or large amounts of expensive professional machinery, and by seeing these high performance teams I wish we could do FIRST right.
|
I have to disagree a little bit with you here...
1) 701 has a dedicated software engineer who comes 2-4 times a week to work with the team (Duane Murphy has been doing this for 9 years). Just because he is not contributing to the manufacturing of the robot, his insights and industry experience guide a lot of our team's decisions. Which is the point, right? Students learning first hand from a professional engineer how to solve a unique problem.
2) This year we had Kevin Mueller (engineering analyst for UTAS) come back to the team he help start and guided the students through the design issues with our "arm shooter". It was a great experience and worked amazingly well. (two blue banners next to me...)
3) We have large amounts of expensive machinery... at least compared to 90% of the FRC teams out there. We have 2 CNC mills, 1 CNC router, 1 Mill, 1 Lathe, Metal Chop saw, Band Saw, Sander, and had 2 Miller TIG welders this Build Season. So they aren't found in a sponsors shop, but because they are here at school, the team gets to work with them almost daily. That enable us to fabricate parts within hours instead days.
"Doing FIRST right" as bEdhE describes is not a single recipe that can be prescribed to every team. But every team can strive to achieve FIRST goals, seek out engineering mentorship, work hard, and change our community and culture.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by flargen507
I know for most of you seeing this that you are sick of seeing this name tag come up, but I hope you are a bit happier by the end. First, I would like to apologize to the entire FIRST Community for what I said yesterday. I want you all to know that I am doing this of my own accord, and it has nothing to do with any affiliation with 159. To that end, I will no longer be using my Chief Delphi account in any manner, so you will not have to worry about seeing something like this from me again. I think it is to the point of this post and the original thread topic that during a very long and stressful competition, people can forget what they are doing and say stupid things. I hope you all realize that this stupidity on my part was entirely mine, and had nothing to do with 159. Again I am sorry, but I hope someday we can see past this and the goal of FIRST to bring people together may be fully realized.
|
I'd like to thank flargen507 for his honesty and appreciate his desire to help motivate / uplift his team's spirit. The past weekend at Colorado had a lot of mixed feeling for me personally. We had just come off of winning the SAC regional and winning EI as well. Our first ever Blue Banner. We worked really hard to get to the #1 spot at Colorado, almost going undefeated (see pic below of drive team students planning strategy at our hotel). However, some of this success was tainted by comments I heard from other teams about our presence there and small items (bottle caps and mini frisbees) thrown at us from the stands. I heard a mentor from another team make a comment about what is like to compete against the CheesyPoofs and how unfair it is that they have a NASA engineered robot. A statement that clearly shows a lack of understanding, but what many unfortunately think.
I can't emphasize enough to everyone, talk to these teams that do what you cannot!! Find out how they got there. You will be surprised and inspired more often than not.
In 2002, our team was so amazed by team 60 (Kingman, AZ), we couldn't believe it was built by students. Then in 2003, several of my students hung out with them at the LA regional and were quite surprised by how they designed such amazing robots. Similar thoughts can be made about 254. But after you get to know them, you will find out that they are an amazing team and an amazing organization of really hard working mentors, parents, and students. The size of their organization still boggles my mind and each time I get to spend with them, I learn something new.
Yes, this seems like an inevitable thread each year, but remember, CD users are sometimes newbies. Thanks bEdhE for getting us all fired up!