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#121
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Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
Contrary to what some people think, having access to CNC capabilities is not all rainbows and unicorns. The teams that have such capabilities either earned the trust and respect of a sponsoring company or they earned the cash to go buy the equipment themselves.
Hearing that "the parts are coming in" is nice but there is always risk that the parts don't come in when expected or they are made wrong. One of our local powerhouse teams received their parts the day before bag & tag. I recall them installing wheels and motors on the Practice Day of their first regional. The same sort of thing happens to my co-workers quite regularly but our total development time is much greater than 6 weeks so a few days late is not usually a disaster. |
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#122
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Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
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#123
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I guess the point that such a duality can exist still stands, and I suppose it's up to the team to consider whether their sponsors are members or not. |
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#124
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Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
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#125
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Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
Every year, 1529 has had access to several machine shops. Plasma cutters, laser cutters, CNC lathes and mills, waterjet, you name it, they can fab it.
Current blue banner count: Zero. It's not about the equipment, it's about the program. edit: I'm not complaining. At all. Nobody is claiming that UK is running roughshod over the NCAA MBB landscape because the rims on its practice court are shinier. They just have fantastic recruiting, a proven system, and effective mentoring strategies. Last edited by Taylor : 13-02-2015 at 08:52. |
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#126
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Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
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So many teams blame their poor performance on not having money, equipment, time, you name the resource. Yet nobody looks at their process as the key to a successful output. Change your process to change your product. |
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#127
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Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
I'm not in TIMS for my team. Guess I'm not really a member. Though I don't recall seeing a strict definition of Team Member in the rule book so I question the validity of your statement.
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#128
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Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
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NASCAR? I seem to recall some dude named Hendrick and how he always seems to have faster equipment....Pretty sure they all use their own engine builders and the teams with the most money have access to the best engineers, drivers, and technicians, so I don't see your point. Besides, to answer your question, our team doesn't have a CNC machine. A couple drill presses, a table-top mini-mill and a assortment of other things. It's called making due with what you have and if you don't have something that you want, start looking for help. ASK the teams in your area that YOU seem to think "have it all". I'm willing to bet, MORE than willing to bet, they would help by either getting you in contact with a sponsor or let you use their equipment. There's a host of great teams in your area you could reach out to. Of course, I'd be wary of how you do so now that you've come on a public forum and insulted many of them. FIRST is about competition but it's also about helping the competition, that's what separates our program from the "Major Sports". You don't see the Red Sox and Yankees swapping coaching secrets. |
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#129
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#130
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Ok, I'll bite. I'd be willing to bet you that I could build a robot that effectively plays this game for under $2000 (+KoP) with a chop saw, a drill press, and hand tools. And that robot should be within the capabilities of every single team in FRC. But first I have to define what I mean by effectively. Would I be an Einstein contender? Nope. But I'd reliably move every match and I'd play in the afternoon at my events. It's not about the tools, it's about the process. I have no doubt that 254 would build a 80th percentile robot using nothing but some 2x4's, a bandsaw, and a KoP chassis. But their machined stuff is more inspiring. |
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#131
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Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
Last night a tough mentor-driven decision made last Fall came full circle, and it's paid dividends for our season.
Determining when to sacrifice some space for additional equipment is a very tough call. We did it this year after some grumbling and anxiety, and it's turned out to be a blessing. We lost an entire assembly bench to an in-house CNC, but wow - turning around a precision part in an hour is insane. The CNC was a DIY mentor project (with a waterjet sponsor doing some really nice plates...), sponsored by funds raised by students & mentors alike. The mentor who built the CNC learned a ton about a subject he didn't know, and in the process he himself grew to a new understanding of design process as it relates to precision parts. Let's pause for a second. While it isn't in FIRST's mission statement, IMO any adult who grows in their careers as a result of FIRST is a success for a team as much as an inspired student is. The nation is going through an educational re-structuring in some regions, and there are plenty of adults who need inspiring too. Continuing: Another adult heard of the CNC through that esoteric old-school 'Grape Vine', and he just so happened to know some CAM and how to drive a CNC. Now we have students going through the CAD/CAM/CNC design process on a regular basis (so long as we can find a USB thumb drive...). Without the original mentor to drive it, we would still have the same thought processes as we did last season and we would also lack another mentor with a whole new set of knowledge to bestow upon unsuspecting teenagers. On top of that, I have new late-season CAD students this year! More CAD students than ever ! The kids understand they can't use the shiny new toy without some pre-requisites, and that by itself is inspiring (to me).Other musings... The premium of all FRC luxuries, I think, is a dedicated space for practice that includes enough room for a good portion of the field and high ceilings. Teams with this get to see kinetic objects interact as if it were a real game. Teams who don't have access to enough practice space only shoot themselves in the foot when they blindly go after the trickiest of objectives in a game (1885, 2013-auto, cough cough). This year's game doesn't require so much space. Get a patch of carpet, build the cheapest field piece I've ever seen (the bump) and some totes - voila! (Build a chute door if you're into that kind of thing) Last edited by JesseK : 13-02-2015 at 09:54. |
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#132
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Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
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Team 5400 is a rookie team. We are building our robot out of my garage. We are a community team, and have no direct affiliation with a school. We have about a dozen active students, and three technical mentors, only one of whom is able to be at our shop for about 80% of our meeting time. Our robot budget for the year is about $1000. A quick look at your team's website indicates that you have roughly twice as many sponsors as us. By every metric, we should be a bottom-tier team, building a bottom-tier robot. You should be better at this than us. But our team's culture refuses to accept mediocrity as a way of doing business, and we've done a number of things to change the quality of robot our team is capable of putting out.
Why did we pursue this partnership with a sheet metal sponsor? We recognized that we would not be able to deliver the quality of experience to our students that we desired without one (more on this in a bit). How did we get them? We worked until we did. Precision sheet metal companies are more common than you might think, and machine shops with CNC capabilities are even more common. How do I know this? Because I have on my hard drive a comprehensive spreadsheet of over 200 sheet metal companies and machine shops within a 40 mile radius of our shop, with contact information, capabilities, and various red/green flags we've observed as indicators for a likely company to sponsor a high school robotics team. We spent lots of time collecting this information, and lots of time approaching companies until we found one excited to work with us. It's really not that hard, no harder than any other type of sponsorship, and you certainly don't need to be a NASA house team to do it. A quick search shows that these guys may be a great partner for 1764. Or perhaps this company. This place looks promising as well. That's just a small sampling of what a couple minutes of googling got me. Now, onto some of the things sheet metal does and does not do for us.
So, why do we do it?
And it sounds weird, but we’re not doing the fancy lightening patterns instead of swiss cheese for those three tenths of a pound. We’re doing it because, with a small team that keeps everyone busy, a 2500 watt laser cutter is a more readily available resource to us than a kid, a hole saw, and several hours. We build our robots to our resources, even when writing those resources down seems very, very weird. Sheet metal allows us to give our students a better experience. Not because we will win, but because the process is more valuable for them. And isn’t that what this program is about? Last edited by Joe G. : 13-02-2015 at 11:03. |
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#133
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Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
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Can we stop including that cost if we refer to the machinists as "members of our team" to avoid this headache? That doesn't seem like the intent of the rule, but I get the impression that this is what larger/powerhouse teams do. Please correct me if I'm wrong ![]() |
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#134
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Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
Our team uses close to zero sheet metal parts. We don't have anything water jetted or CNC'd. Almost all of our parts are made from box or flat stock aluminum. Everything we build is made on our machines in the school's engineering room by students including almost all of the welding on the robot. (With the exception of some very difficult welds)
We don't struggle with being competitive with the "elite" teams. You don't need all of the fancy equipment to do well. Yes, of course it helps but you can get by without it. All you need is a solid plan going into the build season and to build within your constraints. Using a little out of the box thinking doesn't hurt either. http://www.thebluealliance.com/team/2137/2014 |
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#135
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Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
There are teams with more machining resources in their shops and out of their shops) who do better than us.
There are teams with more machining resources (in their shops and out of their shops) who do worse than us. There are teams with less machining resources (in their shops and out of their shops) who do better than us. There are teams with less machining resources (in their shops and out of their shops) who do worse than us. You can easily exchange the word "machining" in any of the above statements for: students, mentors, engineers, money, time, etc. and it still remains true. Its not about what you have its about what you do with it. For every team that someone points a finger saying "They have more money" "They have a sheetmetal sponsor" "They have a company CNC everything for them" "They......" I can show you more who have those resources but don't know how to use them effectively. |
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