Food for thought

[KenWittlief]

I have been a mentor for over 6 years now, and I have never met a team yet that sent their robot out to someone else to be designed, fabricated or assembled.

Some things that might be leading to confusion:

1. The engineer mentors ARE part of the team, equals with the students in every aspect, except the adults cannot drive during the competitions.

2. In real life engineers dont fabricate parts, they create drawings that are given to machinst, or sent to machine shops that specialize in part fabrication. Usually those parts come back and are assembled by a technician, then the engineers test and debug the design. Dont confuse sending individual parts out to be fabricated with having someone else build your whole robot for you.

3. Any outside fabrication of work of any kind done on the robot must be accounted for (normal shop rates $$$) in the total cost of the robot. It would be impossible to get someone to build your robot for you and stay within the total allowed budget.

Over the years I have only heard of one team that went to the extreem: It was a rookie team, and the only mentor was a shop teacher who locked himself in his shop for 5 weeks and built the entire robot himself, then gave it to the students to practice driving. Things like this happen sometimes, but its becoming pretty unusual. By the end of the first year, when teams have been to competitions the mentors 'get it' and a good balance is established between student build and mentor built.

(BTW, That team with the mentor locked by himself in the shop for 5 weeks folded at the end of the year. The sponsors were VERY upset and pulled the plug).

[techtiger1]

Ken first of all great thread topic. I think overall most teams build most of the robot by themselves. Some of the posts on here refer to sending some parts out but not having the whole thing machined by someone else. This is sometimes and many times the case with some teams. One thread in particular about a transmission fabrication really stood out. My team did custom gearboxes for the first year this year and as a person who is involved in learning about manufacturing I will like to say a few things. People have no idea sometimes when building a transmission how tight tolerances have to be in order for it work and how to machine things to those type of tolerances, this takes a person with skill and prior knowledge to pull such a feat off. Sometimes many people as in the case of a transmission for a robot. Also what someone posted earlier about how in the real word there are engineers, technicians and fabricators is absolutely correct. My team works with Sonny's a car wash factory and when I go there I get to to see all these things under one roof and it's amazing to see .

I like the thread,
- Drew

[Inverted]

This is our 4th year as a team, and we've always designed and built it ourselves. We've had various parts sent out to be machined for us, but that's only because we lack the equipment to do them ourselves. 2 years ago we sent out our frame schematics so it coul dbe built and welded, and the company did a horrible job on it; one of the side walls was crooked! Not that that's the whole reason we built it ourselves, but where's the fun in having some big company design and build it for you? Beyond that, what's the point in even joining FIRST if you're not going to learn anything because you didn't do any of the work yourself? Seems pointless to me.