I mentor for a team that works out of the physics room (which used to be Chemestry a while ago). The Physics teacher has a key to the industrial area, allowing us to use drill presses and bandsaws.
It’s a far cry from my old team that met in the school’s metal shop (mill, lathe, welder) that was located between the wood shop and the computer lab.
It’s a running joke that we “mill” parts with files.
Oh, and I work at a waterjet manufacturer, so add waterjet to the list. :] (87,000 psi cuts anything quickly compared to files.)
We built our 2008 robot in my garage. We have MUCH better tools in there and we can work as long as we want, when we want.
It was however, somewhat frustrating to NEVER be able to escape robotics :mad:.
We built our 2007 robot in two places: an abandoned and very creepy old garage, and the Tech Shop. We found many interesting things in this abandoned garage… Some which will not be discussed… Among other things we discovered a TIME magazine in which JFK was the man of the year :ahh: . That’s literally how long this garage had been abandoned. There were MASSIVE stacks of rusting tools. There was literally so much stuff only three people could fit inside.
We are a Rookie team this year. We have a small classroom for programming, business and education team. We are using my classroom as our shop. I moved all of my classes into the previously mentioned small classroom. We moved all the file cabinets, chairs and desks out but kept the lab tables (physics classroom). We have a drill press, chopsaw and various hand power tools. It has worked for us this year.
I’ve seen your work area and definitely feel for you. For the first 3 years we had just this 10’ x 20’ room to do everything in, or my classroom across campus.
Having your robot stuff in multiple areas gets to be annoying, so last year we found some space behind our wood shop / auto shop and put up a 20’ x 30’ building (with 12’ ceilings) with the help of our shop teacher…
My response is not brag, but more to say that don’t ever settle for what one person in charge at your school may say where you should be. Find a solution that benefits your team. For some it is too build in a mentor’s personal garage (like 100) or others is to build in a sponsors facility, and for some being in a classroom may work out just fine. Always be on the look out for a solution that may require thinking out of the box, always a FIRST attitude
We did all of our work in three rooms. We used the woodshop and our Robotics room (yea, a room JUST for robotics ^_^) The machines in there are pretty old, but it is better than nothing.
