[nickbrickmaster]

Last year was our first year building a replica practice bot, and we plan to again this year. Our team is no more than 10 students right now (don't recall exactly) and about the same last year.

How we did it: Many days, long hours, and Mountain Dew. We kept meeting 4 days a week (M/T/Th/Sa) throughout competition season (dropping Sunday from our week.) On stop build night, we worked until about 10, and while some were tweaking the comp bot, others cut most of the parts for the practice bot (It helped to use the kit chassis.) IIRC the practice bot was finished no later than the end of Week One.

The ideal is to build two of every part, but that's time-prohibitive and things could change. Because we planned the practice bot from the start, we made sure to buy double everything we needed and restock on things we didn't have enough of.