Team Workshops (Mechanical)

[msimon785]

Well, the year has begun and our influx of new team members has finally leveled out. As such, our team decided that this week may be a good time to start department workshops. Being Co-Captain for the mechanical department, it is my job to come up with a schedule for a workshop to occur on Thursday, 22 of September.
Build leadership will have 2 1/2 hours to work with the new students (and, for that matter, veteran members), during which time we would like to cover all of the basics required to work on an FRC bot. The goal is to gauge interest in the new students and find appropriate subsystems for them to work on. After what should be a 15-20 minute safety lecture, we would like to brief them on build season and competition, etc.
After that, it is really somewhat open.
What are some successful activities other teams have implemented? We may set up stations (Electrical, CAD, minibot (tetrix?), etc.), though I do not know how valuable that may be.

[toolgirl]

Maybe some driver time? You may already be demonstrating robot functions throughout, but it could be beneficial to help show that you should keep robot controls in mind throughout the design process... that, and getting the chance to drive the robot is always an attention grabber (for us at least). I feel like getting a good feel of how the robot runs (sensitivity, speed, etc.), from the driving end, can transfer into knowledge that can be brought back to the table during future mechanical design. [I'm mostly saying this because I drove our 2K11 robot for the pretty much the first time at an offseason competition and may have had a few epiphanies... ]


Or maybe you could throw in a few quizzes on tools! (We do some "over the top" ones for pit crew training- usually very fun).

You look like you already have a lot covered though (great job)!

[msimon785]

So we decided upon an idea given by Akash Rastogi, a CD frequenter.
After the safety and FIRST presentations, we will go through a whitepaper by JVN on iterative design (aren't those great!?). The whole lecture session should take around an hour.
After that, we will segue the students into the woodshop, where we have assembled four buckets with an identical kit of tetrix parts. They will then be split into groups of 6-7, with an ideally equal combination of veteran and new team members. Their challenge is to build a tennis-ball shooter, an in doing so they will be putting their newfound knowledge of the iterative design process to use. After a 50-55 minute build period, they will test them out as a group, and then get another 20 minutes to modify their designs based upon what they learned from other groups. They will be required to submit to us basic technical drawings, of course without dimensions, but with enough details to understand the design. At the very end we will have a 15-20 minute debriefing period with which we will determine what was learned, etc.

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by msimon785

So we decided upon an idea given by Akash Rastogi, a CD frequenter.
After the safety and FIRST presentations, we will go through a whitepaper by JVN on iterative design (aren't those great!?). The whole lecture session should take around an hour.
After that, we will segue the students into the woodshop, where we have assembled four buckets with an identical kit of tetrix parts. They will then be split into groups of 6-7, with an ideally equal combination of veteran and new team members. Their challenge is to build a tennis-ball shooter, an in doing so they will be putting their newfound knowledge of the iterative design process to use. After a 50-55 minute build period, they will test them out as a group, and then get another 20 minutes to modify their designs based upon what they learned from other groups. They will be required to submit to us basic technical drawings, of course without dimensions, but with enough details to understand the design. At the very end we will have a 15-20 minute debriefing period with which we will determine what was learned, etc.

Note that I suggested VEX kits

I think activities like this can help students learn how they think when faced with the question "how can I make this better?" and evaluate their own observational skills while they are looking and analyzing designs of their competitors. Its my first time creating an activity like this, so I hope it works out well for you. Let me know how it goes.

Good luck Matt!