pic: How MARS cuts!

[AdamHeard]

No problems there, it seems like this yours turned out a lot better than ours anyway.

Shops help, but it's the team that matters...

We are planning on doing a lot better next year though

[RyanN]

We work in the school's wood shop, so nothing out of the ordinary in this picture. As you may guess, we do most of our prototyping with wood as well.

[Cooley744]

We work in a class room that we made into a shop. Unfortunatley, half of the room is used for tutoring elementary kids, so it's pretty small and crowded. It's better than nothing, so we are pretty thankful.

[wendymom]

1902 Has a chopsaw

[Billfred]

Originally Posted by wendymom

1902 Has a chopsaw

Chopsaw?

[Herodotus]

Originally Posted by Billfred

Chopsaw?

I assume he means a cutoff saw, same thing as a chop saw. But yeah, we understand the feeling of trying to cut parts with a hacksaw, or trying to use a tiny little tabletop drill press. Or the best so far, using a hand drill as a lathe. I can't count the number of times we've said "You know, if we had a Bridgeport/Lathe..."

But I consider us lucky. We have a room and a sort of storage room in our school to use as our own. The main room is for fabrication, and storage area contains our shop. We currently have a grinder, two drill presses(one broken), two bandsaws (one needs some work), a cutoff saw, and some tools that are currently configured for woodworking such as belt grinders with sanding belts on them right now.

But overall I suppose we have it better then many teams, especially because we are able to work right at school and so have easy access to the room at most times.

[Pavan Dave]

20 dollars says the vice is not mounted to the table and he fell back after about 10 seconds of elbow grease! No pic no proof!!!

[1902_Battery_SGT]

Originally Posted by wendymom

1902 Has a chopsaw

Originally Posted by Billfred

Chopsaw?

Chopsaw

[robostangs548]

Wow, that is almost exactally how the Robostangs cut!

[Qbranch]

Thats how the Kil-A-Bytes cut when somebody breaks the bandsaw... (often)...

-q

[s_forbes]

I'm still trying to convince the N.E.R.D.S. that a hacksaw is one of the most usefull tools ever created. It's my prefered weapon when working on robot parts.

[Kyle A]

Man you guys are lucky. When I started on my team, all we had to cut with was this.
My team had a metal shop the next room over from where we worked, but when i was a Freshman, the Seniors had us cutting parts with hacksaws all of the time, I believe it was because they wanted to give us busy work, or they didn't trust us on the machines.

[Protronie]

Originally Posted by RyanN

As you may guess, we do most of our prototyping with wood as well.

Nice thing about working with wood... if you make a mistake... its not something lighter fluid and a match can't fix

[robostangs548]

Originally Posted by Protronie

Nice thing about working with wood... if you make a mistake... its not something lighter fluid and a match can't fix

That sounds like a pain, lighter fluid and a match..... You should just do what we do.... Playdo!! Everyone knows that is the most accurate thing to mold your robot parts out of! All you need is a butter knife... Who needs a cnc, or a waterjet? Thats it, next year i am gona make our robot out of Playdo!

[Pat Arnold]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

No problems there, it seems like this yours turned out a lot better than ours anyway.

Shops help, but it's the team that matters...

We are planning on doing a lot better next year though

Thanks for the kind words. Your bot looked great too. One advantage last year was a new decal maker... not an impressive shop tool, but lots of fun and a huge appearance helper.

Pointing out the importance of the team over tools is good to stress. Resourcefulness and being open to all members' suggestions really helps the build process. Somehow the cuts get done!