15 Random Things I Learned This Build Season, '09

[JesseK]

This is inspired by my newly finished facebook note that my friends were bugging me to complete. Here are my thoughts on what I've learned this build season, now that it's over.

1. Project Engineers make alot of money not only because they have to know everything about the project, they also have to ensure the project's success and find a way to keep everyone busy for the project's duration. This last part is particularly hard.
   
2. I figured out a metric with which to judge labor hours. Each 'function' on an FRC bot takes 10 solid hours for our team to fab, assemble and integrate with simple software. This assumes we already have the materials and are done with design and prototyping. It also precludes setup and cleanup times.
   
3. Add another 10 hours if you or your team have never done that particular function before (such as conveyors), even if you have a previously-successful high-level design.
   
4. Add another 10 hours if what you're doing is actually hard (such as a fancy drive train)
   
5. Quadruple that 10 hours if you're all software engineers trying to create the piece of hardware.
   
6. "Dewtoxification" is a real plague among teenagers.
   
7. Sticking to a plan is very underrated. It was probably the only thing we did right on the first try this season. However, making a complicated plan is overrated.
   
8. Consolidating strategies into a single mechanism is one key to success in FRC. We saved 10 lbs in weight when we realized that our 'secret weapon' was already on our bot due to the way our shooter is designed. Who knew?
   
9. Do not powdercoat anything that deals with the production robot until as late as possible. This will allow you to weld as much as possible, which saves you time and weight in the end. This is more weight you can use for decorations
   
10. Doing the hard and complicated has a good chance of success in FRC, despite popular belief. 1885 has discovered that succeeding with something that's hard and complicated results in a ridiculously fun-to-drive robot.
    
11. If you want to see some motivated students, watch them be tormented by a robot that does all of its cool things while sitting in place because it's stuck on a floor component at a scrimmage.
    
12. You'd rather fail at a scrimmage than fail on Thursday at competition. On the same note... You'd rather your honeycombed aluminum drive train shear at a pivot point during practice on Saturday night before ship day, rather than on Thursday at competition. At least you can pull a couple of all-nighters to fix the problems so long as it's still build season
    
13. The programmers are silently begging to do cool things with software. The only way they can do it before ship day is if you give them some dedicated builders to help them create prototyping platforms for them to run on.
    
14. Do not sacrifice in the quality of those prototypes though, for if the software is near perfect due to good prototypes then theoretically the code will be perfect when it's put on the robot the first time.
    
15. The build students are begging to work hard to create a cool robot, if only they had an idea of what that robot should do.