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Re: Mentors level of power
The mentors on my team try to keep their hands off as much as possible to let the students build as much of the robot as possible. It has always been something we've done. The mentors lead the design phase to keep everyone on track. Once students have come up with a design then mentors discuss it and its feasability, then one of the mentors puts the robot in CAD. The mentor prints out drawings and then the students machine everything, a couple students dont need any assistance and other newer ones are shown how to make the parts by mentors or the other students. Mentors also make suggestions and discuss ideas with the students when something has to be changed on the robot.
The programming team this year was completely done by the students, each year they have become more and more independent of their mentor (this was his goal). They wrote the entire code by themselfs, though the mentor did write a backup code just in case.
We had a new electrical mentor this year so he sort of worked with the students because he didnt know any more then the students did about the robots wiring, Between them i would say he did half and half the work.
As exploding bacon was talking about above we also have two categories of mentors, adult and college. Me and another alumini were the 2 college mentors, we graduated last year and did a lot of the mechanical work on the robot. Last year students designed and built the drive train, this year I designed it again (as a mentor) and I set up a management plan and had the students build it. When it was built to spec I did build a couple of new things myself because I knew the design and what needed to be added. I also did a lot of work right at the end of build putting in limit switchs and chain gaurd mounts and such that nobody else bothered to do. This is part of the problem when you let students run the build, things get left out and nobody wants to do them, and things that dont operate correctly dont get fixed. I guess that was why I was there.
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