[KenWittlief]

Gdeaver - I agree with you on one level. There is a real Zen thing in engineering when its just you and a piece of metal with a vice and a file in hand, or a couple wrenches and a box of gears and hardware, or a bunch of wires and connectors and a soldering iron

I love that aspect of engineering when I need to do those things. But in my experience over the years I spend 99% of my time doing drawings, schematics, specifications, writing and conducting tests

and its extreemly rare that I actually have to fabricate or assemble anything myself. I hand a drawing or send a file to someone else, and I get the fabricated part in a box a few days later. Most of the time, that is what engineers do.

In my experience as a mentor I always make sure the students have some hands-on time with some aspect of the robot build and parts fabrication, esp at the events, in the pits. I also make sure they get a realistic experience of what its like to be an engineer, where the real value of what we do happens between our ears, not fabricating and assembling things with our hands.

A good example is the capabilities of Gleason Works, the sponsor of team 578. They design and build the machines that make the gears used in most cars and trucks all over the world. They can literally hack a 1/2" slab off a one foot diameter steel 'log', put it in one of their machines, and fabricate a 12" diameter complex gear in less than 5 minutes.

It would be a crime if the team was not able to use that capability for their robot. Its great to be able to work with a student to create a drawing or cad file, and hand it off to the guys who operate those machines, then have this beautiful shiney metal gear that rings like a bell an hour later.

There are only a handfull of companies in the US that buy Gleasons $1M machines. Does that mean team 578 should not be able to utilize theirs?