Build Space

[apalrd]

We have some space donated to us by our major sponsor, Chrysler.

We work at the Chrysler Tech Center in Auburn Hills, which happens to be one of the largest buildings in the world (it has its own freeway exit). We have a tiny bit of space in the south wing (where most of the labs are).

Our primary shop used to to be a little notch out of the road (a road runs through the first floor of the building), which used to hold electric forklifts for charging. Many years ago, they decided they didn't want to hold electric forklifts there anymore, so we had a wall put in and now we have a shop. What is nice is that we have a lot of power for tools, shop air, and can do stuff in the hallway (road) as long as we watch for cars. It isn't very big, but it is ours and we can keep anything we want in there. We also have a large assortment of manual machines, most of which were being discarded by labs, including a large manual mill, lathe, and many bandsaws and drill presses. We can also access many tools in other areas of the building (4' jump shear, more lathes and mills, welding equipment, and CNC machines), if we arrange ahead of time. We call this room "The Botcave".

Our other room, the CAD room, is a room that used to contain a lot of vending machines. It now contains 7 workstations, a server, all of the PR stuff, and a table for making antennae.

We also have access to a basement under the NVH (noise vibration harshness) lab across the hall from the botcave, where we store old robots and build our practice field. We have a full field of carpet, but no border around it.

We can also use a conference room, but it is not ours so we clean it at the end of every day. We begin and end our meetings here, eat here, and use the GIANT floor-ceiling whiteboards here.

[Cyberphil]

I can honestly say team 103 is completely blessed with our build space:

1. An art room that seconds as a computer lab
Our main mentor is an art teacher, and this room is where we eat every night also. Its a good sized room with many tables and a small computer lab station on the far side.

2. An Animation, "back room"
This room was actually designed as a art storage closet for the art room, but we put some computers back there (Along with all of the snacks) and it becomes the animation room. It is about 20' x12', so not big at all, but extremely useful! This size is including all of the space the cabinets lining 2 of the 4 walls in the room.

3. A full computer lab
This lab has about 25 of the most powerful computers in the school, and is a good sized room. It is adjacent to the shop, and where our inventor crew work, and where our mechanical team designs.

4. A full sized shop
The shop is about 25' x 40' which includes 2 mills, 2 lathes, a cnc router table, 4 band saws, and various other tools. Connected to this is a small room with a lot of cabinets for storage.

5. A 40' x 60', "Barn."
In here we create a full-sized field every year. We have huge cabinets along one of the long walls, holding all of our past years and current years equipment along with all of our fundraiser items. On the far wall, we usually have a collage of 18 years of team stuff. It was actually built for us about 6 years ago because we had to use one of the schools gyms (which, coincidentally, the football team "needed"). So the school built our team this barn, and it has served us EXTREMELY WELL!!!!

Any questions pm me.