Where does your team work?

[aksimhal]

I was just wondering where do other FIRST teams do their building.

My team (1123) is a home school team that allows any high school student to join. We are very lucky to have a sponsor (who doesn't give us ANY money), but allows use to use his facility (which is a stone warehouse, so it is always very dusty and we have to put almost all our tools, materials, metal, etc on pallets, so the employees can put them up on a high shelf .)

I know that most teams use their school classrooms, and I was wondering, What restriction's does your school have for the use of classrooms, shops,etc. And also do you guys do/handle fundraising? (We have a very, very hard time trying to raise the $6,000)

Thanks

[MattK]

CHAOS does most of its work at @ Sponsor Rockwell Automation as well as in Mr. Dave Kelso's garage (our mentor). Its common to have restrictions on students using heavy machinery at big companies for obvious insurance and safety reasons.

[10scott10]

at community college near our. scholl. we can't get sponsors for other places due to my highschool's policy. this place is more guess and check that percision with CAD. i how i long for autocutters that use CAD.

[Clam]

Our team works in two/three different rooms, the PET lab (physics engineering and technology), the school's autoshop, and the drafting room. Design team uses the drafting room and the autoshop. Manufacture are usually in the autoshop too. While programming, electronics, and the web team use the PET lab, there are lots of computers in there, and it's a nice place to wire and program stuff. Sometimes the PET lab is also used to test the robot, but it has also been taken to the main hallway in our school to be tested too. You can see some of these pictures on our website. The autoshop is pretty shabby and space is very limited as well, but at least we have one. ^.^

As for fundrasing, we are fortunate to have some sponsors who supports us (listed on website). However, our main source is truffles. We sell truffle bars of many flavors for a dollar each, everyone in our school loves them so they're pretty easy to sell. However, the problem is that it gets tiring if you do this everyday for the whole year and it's a heavy weight to carry around all day and people have even stopped me in the hallway too. Despite all of these methods, it has also been hard for us to raise enough to fund our robotics team because it always seems as if we are under funded... anyways, I hope that helped. If you have any questions, just post on our forum or send us an email.

[Arkorobotics]

Our school gave us the old Auto Shop which we (as the engineering class, whom also do FIRST as the "assignment (not really an assignment, just a thing we do)", but there is a club which is the robotics club, which does FIRST) we renovated it and made it into the ROBOTICS ROOM, we have a HUGE place to work in where CAD, Programming, FAB, Assembly, Pneumatics, Electronics, and Test field work. We even have a "War Room" where it is a room 3 sides of the wall are covered in whiteboard. Best of all, our team (students only) renovated and made the place except for the electrical parts that the district had to do.

P.S. - sorry what I just wrote has bad grammar.. i think.. (6 weeks+no sleep= duh.........huh?)

[Michelle Celio]

Originally Posted by aksimhal

I was just wondering where do other FIRST teams do their building.

My team (1123) is a home school team that allows any high school student to join. We are very lucky to have a sponsor (who doesn't give us ANY money), but allows use to use his facility (which is a stone warehouse, so it is always very dusty and we have to put almost all our tools, materials, metal, etc on pallets, so the employees can put them up on a high shelf .)

I know that most teams use their school classrooms, and I was wondering, What restriction's does your school have for the use of classrooms, shops,etc. And also do you guys do/handle fundraising? (We have a very, very hard time trying to raise the $6,000)

Thanks

We have a room on campus (we have a small campus) in which we use for building. It's not that big (from guestamations, we get about 25x40) and then a storage closet which is also pretty small ( more guestamations ...10x18). And then we keep old bots on a different schools campus, but thats only for the old robots which we never see anymore so it doesn't really count.

As for fund raising, we had 4k from a workshop we put together for middle schoolers over the summer, and 1k from selling cookies (350 cookies a day to a campus with only 600 students) and the rest was a loan from the school.

[karinka13]

Right below the nuns, in the convent basement.

[Joe J.]

Lightning Robotics has built in several places over the years:
2000 and 2001 (as 465) we built at our then main sponsor CTS - Creative Technology Service's lab.
2002, 03, 04, 05 we built at our current main sponsor Visteon's lab.
2006 we are building in our teacher's classroom in one of the schools at Plymouth - Canton Educational Park.

[Andrew Y.]

We are very fortunate to have a mini machine shop in our school dedicated to robotics only. but mostly used for our VEX and BEST team

we have our basic tools:
Band saw
drill press
mill
mathe
grinder

ect.


Most of our building is done at Georgia Tech in the "Tin Building".
Basically a airplane hanger that was remodeled to use by "clubs" at GT.

We just happen to be vrery lluck and sponsored by the GT robo jackets. Best part about it is, the Robojackets are completely student ran and nowa good bit of them are Wheeler High alumni.

[IraJason]

It's actually a funny story how we have the area where we work. We have a technology lab in our school, but other clubs and classes use the space, so we can't use it for storage or our full time work area in fear of someone outside of our team being injured while we are working or having someone playing around with our equipment.

It just so happens that the tech lab had its own bathroom, lockers, and wash area in a seperate back room. When our team was created, and space had to be found to hold the robot, it was decided that the bathroom had to go. So for the past 6 weeks we have been working in a room that less than a year ago was a bathroom. At least the room's still serving a good purpose...

[Nuttyman54]

We work in a section of the science wing hallway. We've got a drill press, a horizontal bandsaw, a vertical band saw, and a few power tools. All the works goes on in there until the friday before ship, when we move the robot to the programmer's garage for testing and sleepless nights

[Nimmy]

our robotics class has 2 rooms dedicated to it, one of them is our workshop which is about 3x4meters (even less) big, very crowded but the build team manages, it has power tools drills saws, practically anything they need, we even got an electric welder this year (for the aluminum)...the other room, which is our computer room is one of 3 bomb shelters the school has =) so it is supposed to squeeze about 300 people inside of it in-case of emergency...it's got about 10 computers we use and only one of them is a p4 (and a kinda shabby one at that), which animation uses...the rest is for programing and web-site design, since we our work-hours start at 4:30pm we use the schools empty classrooms for our strategy chairmans, even systems team meetings, and until we had permission to sue the cafeteria area we used the classrooms for dinners to, later at night we use the school lobby for our robot testing and we need to carry the ramp high-goal, a floor up and down every time we need to =)...I tell ya, that wood is heavy...

[Josh Murphy]

we build the entire robot here at our school it is very active when we need it but if we want to come on a sunday or when there is no school we have to pay for it so we try to use it when the school is generally open. as far as our fundraising was this year we had to step up a little bit to raise more money for the team we did the following: Candy sales out of a fundraiser box which works well for a couple of weeks. We did Chiefdelphi.com wristbands which sold for 3.00$ a piece. we sold raffle tickets for 1.00 works ok depending on the prize. and we did banner ads which are at the top of the screen for a student fundraiser and as a sponsor at some level. we had to total out at 500.00$ this year it was originally 400.00 but we decided to go to disney world after atlanta so it cost a hundred dollars more in fundrasing but it all worked out well good luck this year

[anna~marie]

HOT 67 builds within the GM Proving Grounds

[Swan217]

Originally Posted by aksimhal

I know that most teams use their school classrooms, and I was wondering, What restriction's does your school have for the use of classrooms, shops,etc. And also do you guys do/handle fundraising? (We have a very, very hard time trying to raise the $6,000)

Team 1744 (Naples Seacrest) works out of a garage behind the principal's house near the school. We have the field set up in the driveway. We also use the Lego League classroom for programming. Only students who are taking the FIRST Robotics class can join, and since 15 students is too many to be on the team at the same time, they're split up into two sections.

Since 1744 is a class and not a team, they don't need to do fundraising. The school covers everything, so they don't need any sponsors .