Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris Mounts
Overall I truly believe this is a requirement to compete at the highest levels of play...I suspect not a single robot on Einstein will not have a twin (or 2) floating around in a trailer or at the shop.
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While lots of people seem to believe a practice bot is essential, we won our state championship (Michigan), and our division at champs last year (Carson), and we have never built an in-season practice bot.
We quite frankly don't have the budget for this, it's pushing our budget just to build one robot. We reuse and reduce when it comes to parts, and sometimes that causes us to end up with some sub-par bits and pieces, but we make it work.
Champs isn't just for the teams who have the money to build a practice bot, or who have large sponsors willing to offer up major time, money and facilities. All of our sponsors are local companies--a lot of local machine shops, and the businesses of parents from our team. We live in a small town, we don't have access to a major machining or working facility.
But, we do take pride in what we have. We have great partnerships with local people and companies, who helped chip in when we short of the money needed to go to champs last year. We have a good relationship with our community, we host a district competition here, and work to expose kids in our community to robotics and STEM. We are lucky to have access to a great local machine shop that lets us use their laser cutter and welder so that we can gain experience with custom fabrication.
So we're a team that took mecanums to Einstein...and we're practice-bot-less.
I think we're doing just fine.
If you're a team that can't build a practice bot for financial or other reasons, don't let it get you down. Anyone can make it to the top
