Biggest Advantage/Disadvantage

[matthewdenny]

A Twofold question:

What do you consider to be your teams biggest Advantage, and your biggest disadvantage.

Try to avoid generic answers like "enthusiastic students" or "hard work". I think answers like "We have a waterjet", or "One of our mentors is on the GDC".

[Chadfrom308]

Advantage: Having a mentor work at Chrysler (or Fiat, I forgot which one ) who has access to the waterjet

Disadvantage: Having a small team size

[geomapguy]

Advantage: We have a company that offers its CNC and powdercoating services to our team

Disadvantage: Not enough students are willing be 100% committed.

[Whippet]

Advantage: Small team size that requires each member to put in a sizable chunk of work and learn more.

Disadvantage: Small team size limits us to simple robot designs that can easily be assembled by the ~7 people of our 10 person team who are at any given meeting.

[Canon reeves]

Advantage- have another team right by with a full machine shop that helps us
Disadvantage- small team size and low budget.

[z_beeblebrox]

Advantage: Great shop, some committed, skilled people.
Disadvantage: Not everyone at meetings is actually working.

[matthewdenny]

Advantage: Students that can TIG weld (and a welder)

Disadvantage: Funding

Advantage: Acquiring a sponsor who wants to 3D print our robot out of aluminum

Disadvantage: Getting the sponsor a few days before bag and tag.

[geomapguy]

Originally Posted by Andrew Lawrence

Advantage: Acquiring a sponsor who wants to 3D print our robot out of aluminum

Disadvantage: Getting the sponsor a few days before bag and tag.

Offseason!!!

Originally Posted by geomapguy

Offseason!!!

The team will definitely use it in the offseason, but I'm graduating.

[fox46]

Originally Posted by Andrew Lawrence

The team will definitely use it in the offseason, but I'm graduating.

Mentor!!

[Ikillee]

Advantage: Funding. Core group commitment.
Disadvantage: Small team size. 3 mentors who know about as much as the students.

Last year we had 2 mentors. We're improving

[notmattlythgoe]

Advantage - Good core group of dedicated mentors, at least one for each subteam (Mechanical, Software, Business, Electrical), and a core group of dedicated students.

Disadvantage - Small shop with machine contention. We reorganized this shop this past off season and it has helped tremendously. It also helped that we finished making the pickup arm prior to the start of the final shooter so the machine contention was down a lot.

[Christopher149]

Advantage: Core group commitment, ~12 years acquired robot parts, technical knowledge, nearby university.

Disadvantage: Far from other teams, weak funding, oddly low mentor count (this year), a few more students than I know what to do with (this year).


Though we're far from a lot of teams, we aren't nearly as rural as pfreivald (we have at least 4 stoplights in town!).

[EOC]

Advantage: Having FIRST as part of our high school's curriculum. Thus, class time to build robot.

Disadvantage: Having a large number of members that don't know how to use tools.