[KenWittlief]

I have been a mentor for over 6 years now, and I have never met a team yet that sent their robot out to someone else to be designed, fabricated or assembled.

Some things that might be leading to confusion:

1. The engineer mentors ARE part of the team, equals with the students in every aspect, except the adults cannot drive during the competitions.

2. In real life engineers dont fabricate parts, they create drawings that are given to machinst, or sent to machine shops that specialize in part fabrication. Usually those parts come back and are assembled by a technician, then the engineers test and debug the design. Dont confuse sending individual parts out to be fabricated with having someone else build your whole robot for you.

3. Any outside fabrication of work of any kind done on the robot must be accounted for (normal shop rates $$$) in the total cost of the robot. It would be impossible to get someone to build your robot for you and stay within the total allowed budget.

Over the years I have only heard of one team that went to the extreem: It was a rookie team, and the only mentor was a shop teacher who locked himself in his shop for 5 weeks and built the entire robot himself, then gave it to the students to practice driving. Things like this happen sometimes, but its becoming pretty unusual. By the end of the first year, when teams have been to competitions the mentors 'get it' and a good balance is established between student build and mentor built.

(BTW, That team with the mentor locked by himself in the shop for 5 weeks folded at the end of the year. The sponsors were VERY upset and pulled the plug).