[KenWittlief]

wow this thread is holding together surprizingly well.

Build a man a fire and he will be warm for a day
but set a man on fire and he will be warm for the rest of his life (sorry, couldnt resist :^)

Some things to think about. Ive been an electrical engineer for 21 years now. Ive designed many digital systems, and I have never had to

1. layout a printed circuit board
2. fabricate (etch) a circuit board
3. assemble a circuit board (solder the parts on)
4. assemble a prototype
5. build a test fixture

I should point out, I have worked for several different corporations in my career.

Generally speaking, engineers dont build or fabricate anything. We design things. We get the fun part, coming up with new stuff, detailing how it works, creating the drawings and schematics, then we hand those off to people who specialize in the fabrication, assembly, building.... and they give the prototypes to us for testing

If you have a small team and you build a fairly simple robot, and fabricate and assemble the parts yourself, thats awesome

and if you have access to a state of the art automated machine shop, and you create drawings and put a block of aluminum in a CNC machine, and finished parts are in your 'in basket' the next morning, that is awesome too.

FIRST is not intended to be a crash course in engineering. Its intended to be a peek at the light that beams from the end of the tunnel.

In the end engineering is what happens between your ears, not what you build with your hands, not what a machine spits out.

Somebody has to put the robot together, and you learn alot about physics and mechanics and electronics by doing that, but dont confuse that with engineering. In the real world very few engineers spend any significant time on a lathe, drill press, welder, grinder, PCB pick and place machine, CNC machine, soldering...

in fact, if I spent a lot of time on the factory floor, soldering or machining parts, my manager would be upset "thats not what we pay engineers to do" - hand that off to a machinist or assembly person, and get back to design and development.

something else, it takes 4 or 5 years of college to become an entry level engineer. We cannot teach HS students to be engineers in 6 weeks, even if we do have pre-kickoff meetings. There are so many things that students would never be able to do, if we had to teach them first and then let them do it on their own.

Engineers have a lot of tricks up their sleeves. If your sponsor is a major engineering house, it would be a crime if they were not allowed to work their magic for your team, and let you see some of the high end stuff that is possible.