Update #16

[Bill Baedke]

I have been a mentor on Team 217, the Thunderchickens, since 1999, as a retired engineer, and a machinist. As Paul Copioli mentioned we bring machine tools to the events and always help other teams. FIRST events used to offer a designated location where it was safe to grind--good idea, but they no longer seem to do this except for a few local exceptions. Toronto, last year, requested that volunteers set up an on-site machine shop. With about 6 or 7 people staffing it we were able to keep up--no one waited more than 5 minutes for their job to be started. It was a great success and I will be doing it again this year.

I have talked to people in charge at various competitions over the past several years about ways to improve the supply of machine shop facilities. They don't seem to be interested (to give them the benefit of the doubt, I don't believe they think there is a problem).

I talked to Dennis Howland, a FIRST Official, last year at the Championship and sent him the following letter in January. The letter was also sent to Bill Miller, who I believe is the head of FIRST, that same month. No one from FIRST has ever contacted me to see if anything I talked about has merit. They don't appear to be interested. I don't think they get the idea that FIRST is for the students (not that we don't have fun too), and that students learn from doing and seeing things being done, not from being told things can't be done.
Bill Baedke, Team 217

Letter to Dennis Howland and Bill Miller (sent Jan 07):
I have been involved with our team 217 since 1999 and I have worked in the on-site workshops at several regionals and championships. When Comau Pico brought their trailers, in the beginning, they brought machinists, then, when they could not afford it, they asked for volunteers to work in their trailers. At the Toronto Regional, I worked in the all volunteer machine shop, so I think I have a range of experiences on the subject.

I believe we can improve the on-site machine shop service at the Championship with the help of more volunteers. As I see it there is a far greater need for machine shop work than is being provided. With hundreds of teams at Atlanta, it is not enough to have 5 or 6 people to help the teams with machine shop service. My observations over the years show that the need for work is very high on Thursday and Friday, then it tapers off on Saturday. Last year I spent time at the machine shop desk on both Thursday and Friday just observing. This is what I saw:
The Problem
People come and want a hole drilled, a piece cut off or some other small thing done, but they don't have the tools. They ask how long it will take and are told it will be an hour or two (or more). They leave very disappointed and go to find an alternate solution. After all, they don't want to wait. This means that the number of jobs done by the shop does not come close to the demand. When we had the Comau Pico trailers there, we had as many as 15 or so workers and we still could not keep up those two days.
I am not saying that the NASA people did not do a good job, just that we need more. As you know, I offered to help the NASA people do work, but was told that I was not allowed.

Possible Solutions
Try to get the Comau Pico people to bring their trailers again and get volunteers to work with them.
Try to find other companies that have portable machine shops to bring their tools/trailers.
Try to get NASA to allow volunteers to work in their trailer. They could use more machinists.
Many teams bring small lathes, drill presses, milling machines etc. and are more than willing to help other teams make/modify parts. The problem is in that large pit area how is a team needing work going to find the team that has a tool they need?
Team Tools (Expansion of Item #4)
How can we utilize the resources already at the Competitions (regionals and championships)?

A. Have a list available at the Machine Shop of all the teams that are willing to help other teams, and what type of machines they have. Not the best solution, in my opinion, but would be an improvement.

B. Ask the teams that are willing to help make parts to bring their machines to the machine shop area so they can become part of the machine shop. This way, jobs can be given to the proper machine/machinist according to size, degree of difficulty etc.
This solution solves another problem. Our team usually can bring more tools than we can fit in our pit area, so we have to limit what we bring. If we had a separate place to put them, then we could have more available to help others. This is what we did in Toronto last year. The leader organized a machine shop area with electricity where all the volunteers brought their tools. With about 6 people working, and allowing some of the customers to do their own work on our machines, we were able to handle about 60 teams quite well, so that most people were serviced immediately--no waiting. Extrapolating that number means we need about 25 people at the Championship.
I hope that you will come up with a solution to the problem of too much demand and not enough supply. It was very sad for me to see the disappointment on the students faces when told it would be 3 hours before their 5 minute job would be started. I felt much better when I worked in Toronto and we could do that 5 minute job in 5 minutes and see the delight on their faces when they knew they would get their robot running soon.

An added plus of having more than enough supply means that we can spend some time helping the students solve a problem, help them with the engineering or suggest a better way to make the part so it is stronger, lighter etc.

Thanks,
Bill Baedke, Team 217
76533 McKay
Romeo, MI 48065

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