What's Your Ideal Robot Workspace

[avanboekel]

Our team is getting a new home as well. Currently, we are in an unoccupied jr high school. We have a couple rooms:
-a class room for CAD, programming and business
-a shop with many (7 I think) work tables, band saw, 2 drill presses, chop saw, vertical band saw, lathe, and a counter for tools (power drills, saws zall, dremel, etc.)
-store room for vex, spirit stuff, etc.
-lrc with a high ceiling, and a full practice field.

This, in my mind is ideal. We could deal with a lot less. Not too sure what we are going to do next year when the school opens.

[pyroslev]

Originally Posted by avanboekel

We have a couple rooms:
-a class room for CAD, programming and business
-a shop with many (7 I think) work tables, band saw, 2 drill presses, chop saw, vertical band saw, lathe, and a counter for tools (power drills, saws zall, dremel, etc.)
-store room for vex, spirit stuff, etc.
-lrc with a high ceiling, and a full practice field.
.

You summed up most of what I'd want. I'll add to that:
Dining/loungish area. (Someplace quiet away from the work)
A small CNC-esque machine for those small precision parts
Papers solidifying the space as yours (no one able to boot you out)
Security system maybe
And for fun, some of those PC controlled nerf projectile turrets mounted on the ceiling to shock laxing people back to work

[FRC BOTMOM]

Need to have a Dormitory and a mess hall so student can work in shifts. This would be mainly used on the weekends but it would allow for around the clock building.

[Borobo]

you guys are amazingly lucky. Our school sponsors us by allowing us use of the metal shop, but our total storage space amounts to a single 6x9 closet with 16 foot ceiling, which we stack to the very top

[tsaksa]

Our team currently has very little dedicated space. We can use the metals shop, and part of a fabrication area during build season, but those areas need to be cleaned up each day, and any robot parts or tool cannot be stored there. All of our tools, components, the robot itself, batteries, etc. need to get stored in a less than classroom size area each time we leave. Also, we are required to keep a pathway through the area clear for access to two other areas that need to be gotten to through our area. As you can imagine this makes the logistics of building a robot difficult.

If I could change one thing, it would be to have an assembly area where things could be left out, or at least left in one place during a build. If all the parts, tools, and sub assemblies need to be boxed up and stored in a different area, and the area cleaned up after each build session you can easily loose half of your time transporting and setting up parts and tools at the start and end of each build session. In fact parts can get lost or damaged during this process, and it does not do all the tools any good to get wheeled around through the rain twice a day.

If there is any way to have a secured build area where you can keep some partially assembled components out while working on them, that can be a great advantage. Also having the ability to store your tools relatively close to the assembly area can also save a huge amount of time and effort.

[THE DYNAMO]

Oh my, if only.
our team(2984) workscompletely out of the closet of our schol's ceramics room(which ironically, is designed to be a giant machine shop with a 25' ceiling, grounded work tbles, and mounting holes in the ground for a mill). it is 20' by 20' at the most, with an 8' drop ceiling. there is a stack of tables and a cabinet full of ceramic pots that we cant touch. also, the Cermaics dust gets Everywhere, including my beatiful new electronics layout !
(we are attempting to convince incoming 9th graders that Cermaics is not fun at all and the teacher is mean

[Andrew Remmers]

Abandon Aerospace/Chemical plant

lots of fun memories there.

[DonRotolo]

We have half of the old auto shop. It is a lockable room about 30 feet square, with 10 foot ceilings and two small rooms (8 x 8) off the side we can use for storage. We also have access to several classrooms for 'clean' quiet work, plus the tech-ed classroom which has a small lathe, 2 band saws, a sander and a drill press, plus a dozen or so computer workstations.

The post by One4robots covers a lot of what I also feel is ideal.

In an ideal room, there would be spaces for heavy work, light work and clean work. There's not a lot of heavy work, so that space could be a little small, with machinery and some tooling storage. The light work is most of what we do, so plenty of heavy-duty horizontal work table, and a space that is easily cleaned. Tool storage, material storage, and work-in-progress storage, all lockable. The quiet area would be typical classroom setup, with tables instead of desks, plenty of computer connections, and a printer.

Actual square footage will depend on the anticipated size of the team, and whether the quiet areas can actually be other rooms not dedicated to the team - for example, if there was a robotics technology curriculum it could also be taught in there, with access to the other areas as needed by the teacher.

In the heavy area, at least one lathe and one CNC mill would be excellent. Add in a metal-cutting band saw, a drill press and a sander - all with dust extraction - and that would be wonderful.

Good luck!

[richwong]

Originally Posted by Joyride_67_1902

Abandon Aerospace/Chemical plant

lots of fun memories there.

The cake is a lie.

[Cal578]

Originally Posted by tsaksa

If I could change one thing, it would be to have an assembly area where things could be left out, or at least left in one place during a build. If all the parts, tools, and sub assemblies need to be boxed up and stored in a different area, and the area cleaned up after each build session you can easily loose half of your time transporting and setting up parts and tools at the start and end of each build session. In fact parts can get lost or damaged during this process, and it does not do all the tools any good to get wheeled around through the rain twice a day.

Our team has had a different experience. We used to build in a large church basement, where we were allowed to leave virtually everything out during build season. It was great for the first couple of days, but soon everything was spread out so much that we couldn't find things. Sometimes things went missing or got broken from being left out.

A couple years ago, we moved to a new build space provided by our sponsor, but were required to clean up every day. That sounds like a pain, but the discipline has really benefited us. We built a storage cabinet for each subteam, 4x4x6' on wheels, hinged to open into two halves with easy access to all the storage totes and shelves inside. The robot itself is allowed to sit on its cart during construction. At the beginning of each build session, the students on each subteam roll their own cabinet to their work area, open it up, and get right to work. Cleanup at the end of each build session takes 15-20 minutes (could be faster if all students chipped in equally). Now we hardly ever lose tools or break assemblies (and the few instances were not related to cleanup).

Even if we got our own dedicated work space at the school, I would enforce the full cleanup at every build session. It has worked very well for our team.

[waialua359]

This:
http://waialuarobotics.com/2011-2012...acilities.html

except add taller ceilings (because of this year's game), and a full size field space (our largest open area is about 3/4 of the official game field).

[richwong]

Originally Posted by waialua359

This:
http://waialuarobotics.com/2011-2012...acilities.html

except add taller ceilings (because of this year's game), and a full size field space (our largest open area is about 3/4 of the official game field).

Wow... that's a lot of different rooms.

[lauraleeane]

Does anyone have any tips to getting space for robotics? I have tried multiple times to get us more space but currently we have an old office with a drill press. Tips?

[moonlight]

Originally Posted by FRC BOTMOM

Need to have a Dormitory and a mess hall so student can work in shifts. This would be mainly used on the weekends but it would allow for around the clock building.

I totally agree!! your body can get kinda tired after working from 9am-7am the day before shipping day x) lol

Our robotics team has recently been allowed to use a gym from an elementary school that has shut down as a robotics center. This was only supposed to be temporary, but after several school board meetings and some compromising with the senior center our team has been allowed to stay in the gym permanently.

Our "robotics center" has two bathrooms and a small storage room along with the gym. We were recently given a full-size playing field (27 by 54 feet) and that takes up roughly half of the gym (I don't know the exact size of the gym, but the short side of the carpet takes up about half the gym and the long side takes up about 3 quarters, so I'm very roughly estimating 80 feet by 40 feet of gym space. Our storage room is about 10 feet by 20 feet).

Basically, we have six areas in the gym of our robotics center. One corner is administration (about 10 feet by 10 feet) (right as you walk in). The corner next to the administration area (bathrooms and the storage area is located between these corners) is a smaller administration area and safety area (also about 10 feet by 10 feet). The corner opposite to that is the programming/drivers station corner(about 10 feet by 15 feet) (the field is between these two corners, against the wall longways). The build area (about 15 by 15 feet) is in the corner between the administration corner and programming corner. A collection of desks and chairs is between the build corner and administration corner close to the field (used for lunches, full team meetings, lobby area, etc.)

We still go to our high school to machine parts and draw on CAD, but most of the work during the season was done at the gym. Most of the gym is used for driving, building, and programming. We have plenty of storage space as of right now, but it all depends on how much stuff you have (old robots, scrap metal, toolboxes, carts, etc.) and if you want to have a full field. Only robotics kids are allowed at the center as of right now (the senior center has been allowed to use the rest of the school so I hope they will be allowed to come see our part of the building). Overall, it's a good deal considering we sometimes didn't get building permits for the high school for the right days (very important during build season).

If you have any questions about our center you can ask my coach, Debbie May. We have a Facebook page (BX 1023) and a website (bedfordexpress.org) if you have any questions. I'm so pleased to hear that there are more teams that are getting seperate robotics places! Good luck to your team!