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!!

[gabrielau23]

Advantage:
Funding and Team size

Disadvantage:
Machine shop and team size

[Joseph Smith]

Advantage: lots of great engineering mentors and resources

Disadvantage: lack of dedication by young team members (our team is 80% first year members this year)

[Anupam Goli]

Advantage: Our mentors and the resources we have access to.

Disadvantage: Extremely volatile mentor base (4 college student mentors). e.g. the more notorious mentor is relocating for a job and won't be able to mentor starting next season. Also, a lack of actual mechanical engineers as mentors.

[pfreivald]

Advantage: An awesome community of FIRST teams in WNY who will bend over backward to make sure you have everything you need--most especially 340 (our Bausch + Lomb sister team) and 1511.

Disadvantage: We're extremely rural (ever heard of a one-stoplight town? We don't have one of those....) The local hardware store is (a) small and (b) closes at 5 pm--and the nearest Lowe's or Home Depot is an hour away. (The end result is that we pay more than we'd like to in order to get stuff from McMaster, instead of buying locally.) The only major industry in town is a vineyard, and they won't sponsor high school activities for rather obvious reasons.

Still, we get better every year.