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Unread 20-04-2007, 08:45
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Bill Moore Bill Moore is offline
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Re: What happened to the FIRST community I call my family?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Bongle View Post
I don't know what it was, but it seemed that everyone was in a worse 'mood' this season. The championship 'could be improved' thread is full of people saying it was not all that great, some saying it was the worst one for years. The drillpress-banning thread was full of people saying it was the last straw or that they are steadily getting more fed up with FIRST.
I don't think you can add the drillpress debacle into this mix. I believe that was an aberration that FIRST realized almost as soon as they released it. FIRST effectively forgot their own history.

The reason these industrial tools came into the team pits is because the facilities at the venues, in years past, were often 1) distant from the facility, 2) unable to accomodate the time constraints put on the teams by the FIRST match schedule, and 3) often undermanned for the number of work requests made by teams. Teams and sponsors both realized that in order to compete properly, they had to take more control of their repair cycles.

In 2001, I made my first trip to the Championship Event, and I thought we had a nice pit cart to work on our robot. That is until I saw the mobile toolshops brought down by Ford and GM that supported all the teams they sponsored. Teams and sponsors that were serious about competing made sure they had the tools necessary, within the time constraints given, to make it onto the field for every match.

As the years passed, more and more tools found their way into the pits. Although FIRST "hoped" that teams would act safely, they hadn't taken much control of that activity until just a few years ago. Even teams realized that the pit area was becoming unsafe, and you would frequently hear comments about it. FIRST began taking more serious control a few years back, and they have been trying to raise Safety Awareness each year by building upon what they previously have done. Now we have a Safety Award, teams get Safety tokens when observed, we have a Safety Video contest, etc.

FIRST also has been banning items from the pits to minimize the potential for injury. There is no grinding in the pits; every little spark that comes off during grinding is a very small pit of metal buring up. Not a good thing to be throwing into your neighbors pit area. There was no serious uproar when such items were banned previously. We, as a community, recognized the inherent lack of safety when grinding in the pits.

Drill presses on the other hand are not designed to remove metal by grinding and throwing it, but to push through an object in a more controlled action. Is it possible to "throw" drill press debris? Yes, of course you can, we have all seen it. But when used appropriately, a good machinist will be able to drill through a part and still control the shavings. This was the first problem with the decision, FIRST in its' ruling effectively insulted the fine engineers and machinists who are part of this organization.

The second part of the problem was that FIRST would allow teams to still use "hand" drills. This goes totally against machine shop safety and logic. It is much safer and more precise to clamp an object onto a stationary press for drilling, than to clamp the object onto a pit table and use a movable hand drill. FIRST's efforts to improve safety in the pits were counterproductive toward their own goals. Hence the very active CD thread.

The reason I view this as an aberration is because many posts in there are from folks who are less inclined to be so vehement in their criticism of FIRST. They are critical, when appropriate, but they post their critiques in a more thoughtful manner than some of the knee-jerk posts that wound up in that thread. These are long-time, well-respected members of the community, who saw a need to change a ruling quickly and acted thusly. FIRST to their credit recognized their own error and did make the change.

I do agree that there has been a change in the community this year, and I have been working on a post to put into the "Championships -- What to Improve" thread for a few days now. I will say that I was glad to see an apology to Team 1732; we all played the same game, and they finished on top. They deserved to be there, and no team should be made to feel as if they somehow "backed into First Place". It's disrespectful to the team, to the Championships as organized, and to the FIRST organization as a whole. Congratulations 1732, you played the game and finished on top -- Enjoy and Celebrate!
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