[dtengineering]

"because we try to stick with the philosophy "student designed, student built", things just take a long time."

When you follow that philosophy it is hard to go wrong. Before getting involved in FIRST, we used to design and build Electrathon Race cars (1hp motor, student driven, battery-limited, 1hr race, typically 40km/hr for high school cars to 80km/hr for "pros"). Some of the most gifted students I have ever taught worked together on a team and didn't have their car ready for tech inspection by race day. I figured I had kind of let them down, after all... I could have stepped in and ensured that their car was finished on time.

It was the first time, I think, they had ever really failed at anything at school. Two years later (they all went in to UBC Engineering together) they were in a robotics competition as part of a class project. They cleaned up... their robot was ready two weeks in advance, and they were troubleshooting their sensors and code before other teams even had figured out what their wheels were going to be like. Talking to them afterwards, they described their failure at designing and building their Electrathon car as the motivation to "never let THAT happen to them again."

While I suspect your team will get their machine ready to roll by ship date, it doesn't hurt to remember that we are teachers, coaches and mentors. Our first duty is not to the robot, but to the kids.

That said, it sounds like you aren't too badly off... looking at pictures from last year we have one dated February 18th, where we are all gathered around holding a sign reading "119" signifying that we had got the robot back together AND finally met the weight limit... with four days to go until shipping. (But still with wiring problems, no armour for the circuitry, etc.) This year is another race against the clock.

Good luck,

Jason