[ToddF]

Originally Posted by notmattlythgoe

What are some ways teams can use to lower mentor burn out with the way the season is currently set up? What are some techniques that teams have used to reduce work loads early in the season?

Matt and I are mentors on the same team, so our focus regarding this issue is similar. The general topic of this thread has been on changing the length of the season to reduce mentor burnout. What if we make the likely assumption that the rules are not going to change, and discuss ways teams can "work smarter, not harder" to reduce mentor burnout? Triple Helix is trying our utmost to get better without killing our mentors or going broke. I'll share some of the things we've done, or are working on doing.

- First, like a lot of teams, we don't meet every day. We meet three evenings during the week and all day Saturday. This allows both students and mentors time to breathe and handle non-robotics related life issues.

- A well run sports team would never show up to their first game without practicing first. In FRC, "game season" starts on kickoff day. We use the time between when school starts and kickoff day for robot building practice. The electronics team practices wiring. The software team writes the code to control a robot, from scratch. The mechanical team trains on the tools and machines in our shop, and works on pit and robot building projects. During the off season we meet one evening a week, and everyone can work on projects outside of meeting times. On kickoff day, the team is used to working together as a team, and has the skills necessary to build a robot.

- Be smart and pre-order as many COTS supplies as possible before the season even starts. If you neglect to do this, you are dooming yourself to parts shortages and high stress during the build season. During our summer development activities, we realized that hex bearings were critical to our drive train, and hard to come by. Also, the tolerances on the hexes vary enough that a good portion of an order don't fit the hex shafting. So we pre-ordered enough hex bearings for two robots and pre-sorted them into good and bad batches. The good ones fit unmodified shafting. The bad ones have to have the hex shafts hand worked to fit. We used the good batch on the competition drive train and set the others aside for the practice bot. When other teams started posting about shortages of hex bearings during the build season, we got to say, "Whew, that was close." rather than being stressed.

- Build your practice bot drive train as a training exercise in the fall. No, it probably won't be exactly what is perfect for the game. But if you design and build it smartly, it will be easy to modify. Even if you guess completely wrong, your team will have practiced their robot building skills, and you will have a working drivetrain which can be used for scoring device prototyping. Even better, find an area rookie team and help them get on their feet by letting them work with you while you build it. One caveat, be sure to be scrupulous to segregate any parts you might fabricate or COTS parts you modify, as these may not end up in a competition robot.

- Invest in a 3D printer. This is going to be one of the biggest time savers for us next year. We bought one right at the beginning of the build season, and it helped enough that we wouldn't want to go without it. Right now we are redesigning and rebuilding our pickup arm. Many of the secondary components and brackets are all designed in CAD and printed on the printer. This moves "fabrication" time outside of meeting time. Parts can be printing overnight, and during school/work hours, to be ready at meeting time.

- Recruit mentors! For the past three years we have had two primary mechanical mentors. It looks like this year we will have at least four. This will be a huge help in reducing our "burnout factor". Again, a caveat: be sure the people you bring on are compatible with the team. Bringing in an incompatible mentor creates stress rather than reducing it. Another again, working on projects during the off season is when you want to try out new mentors, not in the heat of build season.

Does anyone else have something to share about how your team does things, working within the existing rules, to reduce "mentor burnout"?