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I dont mean to belittle technicians or machinists - they are part of the engineering design cycle / team, and a good technician or machinist is priceless.
I only wanted to point out that 'building' the robot itself is not actually engineering.
You can be a very successfull (and productive) engineer and never touch anything but pads of paper, a pencil, and your calculator.
Engineers DONT build things - we dont assemble things - we dont fabricate things. We figure out what needs to be built, the best way to build it, what materials and components to build it with, write the SW, Firmware...
To put this into perspective, you will never see a civil engineer design a bridge, then spend the next 6 months on the construction site with a rivit gun in his hand all day, or pouring concrete.
Ive been an electrical engineer for 18 years now - and the only time I ever build a protoype, or fabricate assemblies is when Im building a project of my own, or when there is a 'line down' in the factory [assembly line halted] and a part needs to be altered or fixed immediately to get the production line running again.
There have been several times when I sat at a drill press all day, or solding parts on circuit boards, until the supplier could get the required changes put in. Actually I enjoy those times - its a nice break from what I normally do.
The 6 week design cycle is unusual - maybe thats part of the reason engineers LIKE being on FIRST teams - we dont normally get this much 'hands on' time with equipment and machinery. And part of the reason is, by the time you explain what you need to do to someone else, and they do it, sometimes its faster to just do it yourself. When you only have 6 weeks, then this is true most of the time.
But the whole point is, if you think you can build a robot without any help from the engineers, you are really missing the boat. Your not even on the right pier :c)
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