OCCRA Teams - where do you build?

[Phil 33]

Our school's OCCRA team (Team 33 The Kiler Bees - Notre Dame Prep) is getting ready for the 2004 OCCRA season. This will be our second year competing. Last year we only had a few kids on our OCCRA team, and I was really hoping to attract more people to it. There was one major reason (I think) why there were so few students on our team last year. Allow me to explain the situation....

Our school is officially a "liberal arts" high school. They don't offer any trade classes such as shop, auto repair etc. Thus, we don't have a wood shop, or workroom, or any place to build a robot. We thought we could just build the robot in an art room or science lab. After all, it's mostly just assembly work - plus some simple drilling and hacksawing. Back when Team 33 was a combination of Notre Dame Prep and Avondale High School, the Avondale OCCRA team used to build the robot in an art room - they didn't need a fancy shop or anything. So we figured we could do the same. We were wrong.

Our principal told us that building a robot in a classroom that wasn't designated for such activity was in violation of OSHA regulations. We were not allowed to use a science lab, or an art room to build our robot. We were forced to build our robot in the garage of some elementary school miles away from our high school. This is the problem. Since we were not actively seen in the school, we were not attracting anyone to join robotics. I think that if we were able to work in the school, we would be able to generate a much greater student interest. If people never see what OCCRA is, they will never join. Most people didn't even know the team existed. It's still not recognized as an official school club.

Myself a few other students worked against a lot of bureaucracy and worked against many opposing forces just to get this team started last year. So when we were told we had to build our robot in that garage off campus, we didn't really press the issue, we were just happy to be given approval to have a team. But now, if we ever want our OCCRA team to grow into an officially recognized and sponsored school team, we have to generate more student interest. To do this, I feel we must be allowed to work inside the school where we can get people interested. Despite our BEST efforts last year (announcements, posters, word of mouth advertisement, all attempts at recruitment) we could not generate much student interest, and we could not get anyone to come to the competitions. I'm convinced the ONLY way to get people involved is to let them SEE for themselves what we are doing in OCCRA. And we must put ourselves in a position where we can be seen.

So, here's my questions for you OCCRA teams out there:
1. In what type of facility do you build your OCCRA robot? In a shop, a classroom, a student's house etc.?
2. To the best of your knowledge, would building an OCCRA robot in an art room or science lab be in violation of any city, county, state or federal health or safety regulations?

I'm hoping that if I get enough responses, I can create a report about where other teams build their robots, show it to my school's administrators, and they'll give in and let us use a classroom.

If you have any ideas that might help us out, by all means, post them here or PM me. Thanks.