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Originally Posted by Cory
This is right on. I can't agree more with Karthik. Last season we decided we were going to build the T-kats 2003 transmission. We did all the drawings in inventor, spent a lot of money on parts, and tons of time machining. I can't even count how many hours myself, a professional machinist, a parent from our school, and another student spent making the thing, and we still didnt finish it on time for a number of reasons.
I can't even tell you how happy I would've been if these were available for sale last year. We could've paid essentially the same monetary price, maybe slightly more, and had to do next to no work on it ourselves. A drivetrain is the integral part of any robot.
Just think of how much less pressure you would be under throughout build if you could say to yourself "Hey, I bought that transmission from that Andy Baker guy, and man does it work great. And the best part is, we didnt have to spend any time to design it or build it, instead we got to focus all our effort into making a killer arm/whatever"
It's a fact that many teams lack the engineering resources to make anything approaching the level of sophistication of a Technokats gearbox. This is something that could truly level the playing field, and allow students to feel MORE inspired when they create a killer function for their robot because they didnt have to work out drive problems for six straight week.s
$0.02 Cory
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So suppose that a middle ground was struck.
Instead of getting a plop-it-in-and-go TechnoKats gearbox, you received the gearbox with some assembly required. You've still got to learn how to put it together--you just don't have to worry about puzzle pieces not fitting.
Teaching how to assemble off-the-shelf parts can be fun, I swear.
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This past year, I was in Teacher Cadets at my school. And we had to teach a minimum of one lesson...of course, I had to teach this to about twenty fourth-graders in front of the teacher I was paired with
and the TC teacher who determines my grade. So during my full day at the school (oddly enough, the day before Palmetto), I taught how to design, build, and test a communication device: radio-controlled cars. I explained the components, how the drivetrain works, the radio...the whole schimaymay. And then I turned the kids loose on their own kit of parts--a mostly-disassembled car.
It didn't matter to them that the trucks were all off-the-shelf components. It didn't matter to them that they didn't get to do any high-end machining. It didn't even matter to them that none of the groups managed to finish by the end of the school day (mostly due to bad planning on my part). These kids were inspired anyway...and I hope when they hit high school in about five years, they'll join 1293.
</storymode>
Moral of the story? You can inspire kids with a lot of things--including twelve-buck R/C cars.