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Originally Posted by _GP_
So our mentor and I drove over to DEKA (a few blocks away from the NH regional) and used their shop.
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I think one of the few things that FIRST needs most is compassion. Though to me this seems like an obvious aspect of graciousness, for some people it isn't.
I think that Madison's answer was correct, that this wasn't allowed according to the rules.
However, looking at it from a compasionate viewpoint, I see a few things:
You're a rookie team, you couldn't compete unless you drilled this hole. This couldn't be done using the resources at the competition, which you tried to use. You used the machining resources from your local sponsor in town to DRILL A HOLE.
Though I wasn't at that competition, I'd be more comfortable playing against you at full capacity, even if you had to do something like that, than having you guys not up and running around because the on-site machining resources were insuffcient to allow you to compete.
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Originally Posted by _GP_
It is massive and has millions of dollars of machinery... its undescribable the feeling seeing this place... But it raises the question was he right to hold this resource away from our team. He was worried that since DEKA has such a connection with FIRST it would be wrong to sponsor a team.
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I think I feel a bit of sympathy for your team again here. It sounds like your sponsor's engineers, which happened to be affiliated with Dean Kamen, felt a little uneasy about using the multi-million dollar machine shop to manufacture parts for your team.
Let me assure you that many teams have absolutely no reserves about using tens of thousands of dollars in machining time from their sponsors, using the most current machining methods in industry. If this was the sole reason why this resource wasn't used - because your sponsoring engineers felt that would give them an unfair advantage, I urge you to inform them they need not feel this way. The best machines in the country typically have high quality manufactured parts.
However, if your engineer felt that you, as students, would not come across the same amount of inspriation by having parts delivered to your doorstep from a machine shop, I would have to agree. Many high school students (myself included when I was in high school) simply assemble the finished products to "make" their robot. After coming on to a team where students manufacture over 95% of their parts on site within our own machine shop, I can say that students have much more to gain by getting their hands a little dirty, being encouraged to stick to tight tollerances, and manufacture parts on their own.
Maybe you ought to ask the engineer a bit more about his reasoning.
In the future, I would ask that DEKA opens its doors to ALL teams in NH that need to do special machining operations like you described. I think that would benifit everyone at the competition and allow everyone to perform to their highest potential.
Good luck for the rest of the year!
Matt