[TriggsJr]

You'd better be very sure you know these machines were engineer designed and built. Because you could be hurting alot of peoples feelings. So machines that look this good could have been designed by the students and then final designed and engineered by the adults.

You have to watch the term engineer robots.
There are many things that go into a finished product.

1. design of the robots features
2. engineering running numbers for stress, strain, and weight.
3. making the prints for fabrication.
4. making the parts
5. assembly of the robot

If you are a team that does not make prints for fabrication or run calculations and just starts assembly and fabrication your missing the largest part of being an engineer.

Students can do a great job of designing features, making parts, and assembling parts together. But they really need to see the process of making correct ANSI or ISO standard prints. They also need to see the calculations that are run to predict material choice and size. The whole point of taking math classes that extent up to Calculus 5 is to predict and size parts before you make a giant mess. This is a Design Engineer's JOB. You can get a little bit out of making an "as built robot" but not as much as running through all the steps.

These steps are why team 173 Rage can build 2 robots in 6 weeks and include spare parts in the shipping crate. The engineers on rage smooth out the students designs. The students first make an as built machine from old parts to try different ideas". Then the engineers smooth out the design, engineering, and then produce documentation for fabrication. Parts of the machine are fabricated by the students i.e. cnc parts (sprockets, gripper arms,) others are sub'd out to sponsors. In the end students assemble the machine together with the engineers at the high school.