I kindly asked that if you had any further baseless accusations to make, you do so through a Private Message to myself or any of my team members. Your inability to grant such a small request is noted. Or, perhaps it suggests that you did not even read what we've written.
Quote:
Originally posted by jburstein
perhaps I am wrong, and if so I apologize, but I believe 810 was the team last year that had a I saw with 4 middle-aged balding guys all by themselves repairing the robot at nationals last year.
|
Maybe we were blessed, but there wasn't a single balding guy on our team last season. What few repairs we needed to do were tended to by the students or, in one instance, myself. Furthermore, to use something as insignificant as that to make such wildly incorrect assumptions about our team and to go so far as to post them in this public forum is ridiculous. You should be ashamed of yourself.
Quote:
|
The huge amount of machining has gone into your robot suggests that adults were heavily involved in building the bot.
|
Pictures can be quite deceiving, then. We are lucky enough to have the support of two very well equipped machine shops, with a combined total of nearly 20 CNC mills. These are businesses and are operated by adults. But, if you're familiar with CNC machining, you'll realize that relatively little 'work' goes into producing a part. The machines are programmed in code generated from drawings our students produced. When the parts were finished, the students assembled them, made necessary changes, and addressed problems as they arose.
Quote:
|
I hear the protest from every team "but we know the robot like the back of our hand!!" That may be so, and I don't know what your team is like, but on my team any student who had a hand in building the robot could fix any mechanical system robot given a reasonable amount of time and appropriate tools. Most of us could fix electrical malfunctions as well.
|
If you're going to draw judgement after looking at only one source, please take me as an example. By my behavior on these forums, you can very safely assume that I do not train my students as Pavlovian Dogs, and they're not conditioned to respond with, "but we know the robot like the back of our hand." While there weren't as many students actively interested in completing our robot this season as I would have liked, each of those students who made a commitment to completing this machine is well versed in its design and function. They can not only repair it, but explain the concepts that drive its design.
Moreso, if your assertion that simply any student with enough time and the right tools could fix the robots, I don't understand what benefit you'd see in their designing anything.
Quote:
|
I suspect that such is not quite the case on your team.
|
Your suspicion is based on nothing but hollow conclusions you've drawn from your own misconceptions.
Quote:
|
And yes we will be at SVR and you're welcome to come by our pit and check out the robot that no one over the age of 19 touched from the day the materials were bought to the day it went into the crate (yes i'm sure it's hyperbole- our janitor probably pushed it aside, and our teacher helped us carry it to practice, but the point is that no adult built/designed anything for us).
|
Likewise, you're welcome to visit us at our pit and see what your students are capable of accomplishing. Just because a team is student run and may not have the aid of professionals does not give them license nor excuse to produce something less than a professional product. My students are very proud of this accomplishment, they consider it their own, and they have lost nothing by having the guiding hand of engineers, machinists, parents, and mentors involved in this process. While your students may have earned the satisfaction of nursing a project from concept to completion in a totally isolated environment, my students have learned what it is like to function in a professional environment. They have worked concurrently with other professionals to complete their project.
How dare you try to degrade their achievement, their effort, and my commitment to inspiring these kids in the best ways I know how by making horribly unfounded, incorrect, and childish accusations about our team, its members, and its processes.
Quote:
|
Sorry if I offend, but each year our student built robot does very well at SVR, only to be taken down in quarter or semi-finals by robots that were built by engineers. Eventually you get kinda frustrated about that, y'know what i mean? [/b]
|
No, frankly, I have no idea. Winning doesn't concern most of my team in the least. Our experience has already been amazing.
Once again, I'll ask that if you feel the compulsion to further pursue this, do so via PM. I've cleaned out my mailbox some, in the event that I could not receive any more messages. Do me a favor, though, and stop publicly defaming our achievement with the hope of overcoming your own insecurity.
See you at SVR. Good luck.