Thread: Build Timeline
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Unread 02-01-2008, 01:31
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Teaching Teachers to Teach Tech
AKA: Jason Brett
no team (British Columbia FRC teams)
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Re: Build Timeline

A typical team 1346 build schedule:

Week 0: (Pre-Kickoff) Carefully plan build schedule so that the programmers and drivers get two weeks to practice. Promise to "keep it simpler this year" and "spend more time on design, less time in the shop".

Week 1: Discover what the game is. Ask "how the heck are we supposed to do THAT?" Throw promise to keep it simple out the window.

Week 2: Start building. "If we spend more time in the shop now, we might have a week for the programmers and drivers to practice."

Week 3: Start re-building. Usually something is moving around at this point that bears some resemblence to the final drive train. Non robotics students are amazed to discover that the shop suddenly has a carpeted floor. Positive karma and good feelings balanced by impending sense of doom when we realize that we're halfway through and have only done "the easy part".

Week 4: Finish first draft of design. CAD team learns what "as-built" drawings are, build team learns that sometimes at 9:30 at night when something just isn't working right, that teachers have a slightly larger vocabulary than they hear during class time.

Week 5: It is all together but doesn't work right. Promise self to never do this @$##@ robot project again. Embrace panic in order to banish despair and frustration. Discover the part that doesn't fit, but has to, that local suppliers are all out of much needed parts, and that we have exceeded the build budget by 20%. Realize that Valentine's day passed without notice. Ooops.

Week 6: Weigh robot. Take it all apart again for speed holing. Put it all back together again. Repeat as needed. Programmers come through with a miracle yet again. Apparently they haven't been sitting on their duff doing nothing for the past month, despite build team's previously expressed opinions to the contrary. Drivers demonstrate that the robot can, indeed, dent lockers and move large tables. The more tools and instruments on the table, the more likely it is to move.

Ship Day: Last minute panic to get everything into the crate and out the door. Much skipping of classes is involved. Remember important shipping documents and customs forms, but still manage to screw something up. Contemplate rest, but realize that Portland is a Week 1 regional and there are still details that need to be attended to.

Promise to do it "differently" next year.

Repeat as needed.

Jason

P.S. That was our "old" build schedule. We're going to keep it simple and be more organized this year so that the programmers and drivers can have two weeks to test and practice.
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