FRC "Survival Scenario" Exercise

[Racer26]

I'm amazed that so few of you are valuing the mentor with FRC design experience enough to put them in the guaranteed 11.

For my vote, the list looks more like this:

1 Initial registration fee (1 regional OR 2 districts)
2 Registration Fee for additional regional OR district championship
3 A mentor of your choice with expertise in all non-engineering matters
4 A mentor of your choice with mechanical engineering expertise
5 Basic hand tools + Measurement tools + Electrical tools (nothing powered)
6 Basic power tools (Cordless drill + bit set, Dremel, etc.)
7 An active teacher and supportive school of your choice (1)
8 A mentor of your choice with FRC strategic design expertise
9 Full Size Practice Area (Space, Carpet, Driver Stations - No Game Elements)
10 Travel expenses (hotel, transportation, food) for two competition events
11 Drill press & bit set + Band saw
12 $500 voucher for VEX/VEX Pro
13 $500 voucher for AndyMark
14 $500 worth of raw material (aluminum, steel, polycarb)
15 A mentor of your choice with programming expertise
16 A mentor of your choice with electrical engineering expertise
17 Welding capabilities
18 Lathe & tooling
19 Six additional batteries and chargers
20 $500 voucher for Lowe’s or Home Depot
21 $500 Visa Debit Card
22 Laser OR water jet cutter
23 A mentor of your choice with CAD/Inventor expertise
24 Team Uniforms (sufficient quantity for all team members)
25 Mill & tooling
26 $500 voucher for McMaster-Carr
27 Two Laptops with OS + Internet access
28 Belt sander + grinder + arbor press
29 3 Axis CNC & tooling
30 Sheet metal bending capabilities
31 Pit Set Up of your choice + Robot Cart
32 Team Button Give Aways (sufficient quantity for all events)
33 Unique Team Give Away (sufficient quantity for all events)
34 Team Meeting Area (2)

To me, this exercise is mostly interesting in terms of what things are in the guaranteed 11. Multi-regional teams with good mentors and lots of practice are considerably more successful than any other combination of these things. Thus, the resources required for that are more important than anything else on this list. Don't need a team meeting area if you have a fullsize practice area. Meet there.

[Allison K]

Thanks for the replies everybody! It's good for beta testing of sorts. I'll have to make some edits and clarify wording for the final version, and then I'll post it as a whitepaper (if you run across this in a few weeks or more and would like a final version that I still haven't posted, feel free to pester me for it, extra motivation wouldn't be amiss).

On the issue of the water/laser jet cutter I had actually intended to say capabilities but it is what it is at the moment. Part of these types of exercises is to generate discussion so it hasn't turned out so bad the way it is. For those with the idea to sell it, don't forget that finding a buyer for big ticket items can take a significant amount of time and that attempting to rush the sale will result in lower revenue from the sale. I'll probably change it back to "capabilities" for the final but we'll see where this goes. Maybe I'll switch it with welding so that you can have a welding machine outright and capabilities for water/laser jet cutting? Perhaps I'll clarify in the final that if you have the machine outright you have to rely on your mechanical engineering mentor to teach the students to use it effectively (or add a line item for "A mentor with expertise in fabrication and machining") and if you have capabilities an expert will take your CAD drawings and do the work for your team (such as sending it out for fabrication).

On the issue of practice field vs. meeting space, I had generally assumed that the practice field was not an acceptable meeting/storage/work location (perhaps because it's a shared practice field?). Maybe I'll reword that such that the open area is included in "meeting space" and "practice field" adds the carpet, driver stations, and game elements.

I feel like in general there's a point of diminishing returns with these types of activities wherein it becomes overly complicated and takes away from the experience, so I'm attempting to find that balance where the scenario reasonably achieves the goals and hidden freedoms generate discussion without making it ridiculous. Additionally, I'm trying to write it to be fairly broadly applicable to the wide variety of FRC team management styles.

As is, there's inherent "unfairness" in FRC and I do want the scenario to reflect that such that individual teams can frame the exercise as it relates to their particular socio-economic situation. As Andrew Schreiber noted, teams from more affluent areas are more likely to be able to depend on the personal assets of their students. In the same vein some teams may reasonably be able to assume that individual families will be able to cover travel expenses for their children, purchase team uniforms, etc.

Pault - Good suggestion. I'll integrate that into the final version for the sake of simplicity to limit the scope of the discussion.

Allison

[MichaelBick]

1)Initial registration fee (1 regional OR 2 districts)
2)Registration Fee for additional regional OR district championship
3)A mentor of your choice with FRC strategic design expertise
4)Basic hand tools + Measurement tools + Electrical tools (nothing powered)
5)Basic power tools (Cordless drill + bit set, Dremel, etc.)
6)Laser OR water jet cutter
7)$500 Visa Debit Card
8)$500 voucher for McMaster-Carr
9)Lathe & tooling
10)Full Size Practice Area (Space, Carpet, Driver Stations - No Game Elements)
11)$500 worth of raw material (aluminum, steel, polycarb)
12)$500 voucher for AndyMark
13)A mentor of your choice with programming expertise
14)A mentor of your choice with mechanical engineering expertise
15)3 Axis CNC & tooling
16)Team Meeting Area (2)
17)A mentor of your choice with CAD/Inventor expertise
18)$500 voucher for VEX/VEX Pro
19)Six additional batteries and chargers
20)Pit Set Up of your choice + Robot Cart
21)Belt sander + grinder + arbor press
22)Mill & tooling
23)Drill press & bit set + Band saw
24)$500 voucher for Lowe’s or Home Depot
25)Travel expenses (hotel, transportation, food) for two competition events
26)Two Laptops with OS + Internet access
27)Sheet metal bending capabilities
28)Welding capabilities
29)A mentor of your choice with electrical engineering expertise
30)A mentor of your choice with expertise in all non-engineering matters

Reasoning:
Much of the reasoning is based on our students and our value for mentors. Every student on our team is required by our school to have a computer. Our students can CAD, wire, and program a robot by ourselves, though extra mentors are always nice. Also students would be expected to pay for trips to regionals, their uniforms, etc.

I think we need at least one mentor(guranteed). Personally I believe that in any mentor, frc experience is very valuable. I would take a good frc design mentor, because they would have the experience in frc to know how to use resources efficiently to build a simple robot that uses all of our limited resources to the maximum. Furthermore, I would expect them to be able to help out with coordination and CAD.

Waterjet, lathe, and power/hand tools let us build a very effective robot. Without a mill, waterjet parts can be used as templates. I think this is the absolute minimum to build a competitive robot(with these resources a regional winning robot can be built). Practice field gives us space for poractice which is essential, and vouchers give us enough money to buy most of the material we need to build our simple, but effective robot.

After our guaranteed items, extra vouchers give us more money to buy more materials/items we need. Extra mentors help with workload and also help patch up holes in our student body. The mechanical mentor is especially important, because he/she allows enables us to use the cnc machine. The cnc covers most of the other tools, including knee mill and drill press. Other jobs can be done by hand(arbor press is the exception but it by itself doesn't validate the spot). Items 1-15 allows us to build a regional winning robot. 1-20 would make our lives a bit easier doing that.

If monetary values were included, I'd imagine this list would look a bit different. I would imagine the cnc would be a high monetary value, and therefor the manual mill would make a lot more sense.