Don’t worry you did. And while I get your point that most “mentor built” teams are a collaborative effort and that I know that for a fact that’s true, it’s unfortunate that some are indeed designed by mentors or even outsiders. I don’t like it and I don’t like to point fingers but it happens and it is a part of the game. The best we can do is to make sure that every team that wants to has the best basis to have a very student led team and help from everyone on CD who wants to get involved.
Friendly reminder that you cannot tell if a robot is mentor built just by looking at it. Just because a team fields a pretty, well-machined robot does not mean that students did not do the bulk of the machining and design.
610 as well only has 5? mentors, and I believe around 40 students, and consistently makes world class robots.
There is a huge piece missing from these discussions. I know our team gets the mentor-built look sometimes (quickly countered if one looks closely). The reason is that we have a couple very helpful sheet metal sponsors with powder-coating capabilities. The addition of a bunch of powder-coated sheet metal parts really makes the robot look more “professional”. And it means one can more easily build several identical robots. But it does NOT mean it is “mentor-built”. Our students are learning SolidWorks in school (during class), a dozen or more passing certification exams. So all our students may not be shearing/bending/milling/turning/drilling metal (though we also use a mill/lathe for some things) but they are learning to draw parts, to use design practices consistent with our sponsor’s equipment capabilities, to understand the choice and strengths of materials etc.
HTH
If you’ve decided that everyone who’s better at this than your team is effectively morally cheating, and that nothing you can possibly do will make you better, what kind of example are you setting for those kids?
You’re teaching them that the deck is stacked against them, that there’s nothing they can do to succeed other than compromising their principles, and that you might as well just not try. You’re teaching your kids an awful lesson.
I understand the jealousy students can feel when they’ve worked hard and get crushed, but seeing it from a veteran mentor of a team that should know better is just profoundly disappointing. The above attitude has way more to do with why your team has not found competitive success than whether or not you let mentors touch power tools.
In reality, “mentor built robots” for the most part don’t even get off the ground. They just don’t do well year after year. FRC is really, really hard. It’s so hard, that a half dozen adults can’t possibly do everything. Maybe they’ll have more design skills, maybe they won’t have to do as much teaching, but the sheer volume of work to do and energy needed to succeed in an entire competition season essentially makes it impossible to win without inspiring and teaching your students. You cannot be consistently top tier competitive in this league without teaching a couple dozen kids a year how to do stuff. There’s too much work to do. That’s the beauty of this program, really. People who think the top tier are mentor-built are so far removed from what it really takes to be a consistent winner that there’s nothing else I can say to them.
What’s that?
I have always subscribed to the Master, Journeyman,apprentice Model of education. On our team the answer to who builds our robot is we build our robot. Our mentors are hands on in every aspect of our team. As for masters, some of our students have attained that status and lead their projects. At times I defer and work for them. So If anyone asks who builds our robot the answer is we do. We work as a team argue as a team and win as a team. “TEAM, TEAM, TEAM”
Debated about entering the fray, but here goes. If you have an entirely student led organization, then I am not sure they are getting as much out of the program as they could. They might be, but my guess is they aren’t always. They are learning to do things, but not necessarily the correct way to do them.
Do some First mentors go too far? I am sure they do.
I have seen though on well run teams kids learn real trades. Kids out of high school who get internships at great companies who then go on to pay for their college. Why do they hire 18 year olds right out of high school? It is because they learned not just how to build something great, but the why’s and how to do it right.
My guess is that most “Factory built bots” are built just that way. With the kids providing the labor and the mentors providing the know-how. Isn’t that how it is supposed to be? What company is gonna hire a kid who knows how to do something but does it all wrong because they “figured it out on their own”. What company wants a programmer with bad practices?
Andy Baker at the Indiana State Competition this year (sorry Andy, but you had a great speech) said something along the lines of “mentors and students build a robot side by side”. (I apologize to Andy because my memory is horrible and I am sure I am butchering what he said, but that is the general gist I got from it).
My guess is that if you look at most factory built robots, they will have more industry professionals as mentors and less of mentors like me. (I am a PHP programmer)
Anyway, just my unasked for two cents while I await Detroit divisions. 
I see your challenge, and I’ll raise you an Andy Baker (starts at 2:48) (plus a bonus Rachel!).
There are lots of student-built science programs. They’re great.
FRC isn’t one of them.
It’s an inspiration program.
Choose to complain, or choose to be inspired.
My go to post in these threads is a blog post I wrote 6 years ago when this argument was used against 175.
*2012 marks my 8th year of FRC involvement. I was only an FRC for one year, my senior year in 2005. Back then, I was hesitant to post on Chief Delphi. I viewed it as a forum in which only the most well respected people posted in. I would see Paul Copioli, Andy Baker, JVN and Karthik posting and I would say to myself (and I still fell this way to an extent today) What else is there for me to say? Of my 740 CD posts, 500 of them have been since 2009. My hesitance to post in my early FRC days were mostly due to respect and a little bit of intimidation.
I think we can all agree that the internet has changed and CD hasn’t been immune. I think most people fail to grasp the gravity of what they say on the Internet and how it may change the way people look at them. CD makes that a little bit worse because in many cases you’re not representing yourself as much as your team.
While I think the student built vs mentor built argument will never go away, I can relate to both sides of it. In 2005, we built one of the worst robots our team had ever made. It was discouraging. Then you see a team like 67 in 2005 win; 2 Regionals, 1 Regional Chairman’s Award, 1 Divisional Championship, a World Championship and the Championship Chairman’s Award all in the same year. Part of you asks, 'How much the students do?" I was naive. I was angry that a team could have so much success when we were so bad. But I wasn’t looking at it the right way. It’s not anger, it’s passion. It’s fuel. It’s drive. It’s inspiration. Team 67 was my first experience witnessing a powerhouse team do what they do best. Inspire. I know now that 67 has a ton of student involvement, as much as my own team, and they remain one of the teams I look up to the most.
I honestly believe that there is not a single team in FIRST that is “Mentor Built.” I think that term is a derogatory, blanket term used to put down teams that some people in FRC are too jealous and angry at to see the inspiration those teams provide. I’ve seen the term applied to 67,148, 217, 254, 1114 and most recently 175 . An identical list to one titled ‘Teams I’m most Inspired By.’
I think that though one team (In this case 175) has to be thrown under the bus, overall these attacks are beneficial. It shows us that our job isn’t over. There are still people out there that aren’t getting the message. We need to continue to show them the inspiration these teams provide, the amazing students and mentors that run these teams and how much of a loss it would be if the “mentor built” term ever changed the way these inspirational teams operate.
*
When students learn, and mentors learn to work better with students, people win. Maybe not blue banners, but they win.
A little bit about 1089 – we have shifted to completely student driven design over the last two years. It’s hard as heck. We miss our previous level of competitiveness, but each year we learn more, and our machines will be able to become more complex, especially as we learn from the teams that release their designs (like right now we’re looking at the cad for 148 – Thanks for that). We have a program of student-driven teaching to pass the skills on each year, so our skill set can improve each year. We understand, however, that the mindset of “two steps forward and one step back” will happen. We embrace it. It gives everyone the chance to add to our program, even if it’s adding back something that was subtracted after someone graduated or left.
We always ogle over teams like 148, 118, 254, etc, but it only drives us to want to do more. That’s inspiration, not defeatism.
We have never earned a blue banner ON THE FIELD (only an RCA and a division banner as a backup bot). We fight for it every year, and will do so every year. That is a goal, but we know that it is never THE goal.
We are proud because we change and enhance lives. We have concrete, empirical data to show that our program is successful in doing so. We know that the same can be said about EVERY FIRST team. We ALL do this.
We do it every. single. season.
To me, NOTHING else matters.
As a mentor for 19 seasons, I am concerned that you still have this view of other teams, and am honestly saddened by the fact that you flat out believe you will never qualify past your DCMP on robot performance. I honestly find it even more shocking that this attitude is coming from a team who has and continues to win Chairmans, EI and team Spirit Awards.
You are doing both yourself and your students and massive disservice by perpetuating this narrative. Students consistently step to the challenge when guided properly. Please spend some time talking to students on teams from all levels of performance and find out what they are doing right or wrong to play at a high level.
Winning on the field takes more then just a good robot.
610’s mentors help educate the students but tend not to be directly involved with the build as far as I have heard. They placed 2nd (!) at ONT district champs behind 2056. Last year they fielded one of the fastest gear cyclers in the world, winning 3 events and finishing just short of Einstein.
To OP: Please don’t be afraid to reach out to the community. We are here to help, and I promise if your goal is to win with a student-built robot it will happen with a lot of hard work.
It’s pretty unGP to call out teams who have mentor built robots.
GRT has won regional’s 3 of the last 7 years. The robot is most defiantly a student designed and built robot. We teach in the fall and then let the students mange their engineering project. For many of our students the responsibility inspires them more then the robot. Each team must choose what works for them and not worry if others are different.
If I dig a little deeper into the actual practices of teams, I find that beautiful, elegant and functional robots are commonly built and designed by students who learned from their mentors, and that truly “mentor built” robots commonly look and perform like $@#$@#$@#$@#. Just saying. Every Single Time I’ve witnessed a person saying what OP said about a specific robot in front of the team (under the breath) it was incorrect, and insulting to the kids standing there with their robot.
Adding on to what he said, it always bothers me so much when these threads pop up and pass off these robots as “mentor built”. It is incredibly disrespectful to the members of all the “mentor built” teams you are calling out. You are discrediting all of their achievements and attributing them to the mentors when the students play a far bigger role than you allege them to. I would bet that students on powerhouse teams are far better trained and skilled in design, CAD, fabrication, and programming than the majority of students in FIRST.
Even if that happens, there are two things that I think are probably more important: (1) resources, and (2) mentor skills/quality.
On (1), it doesn’t matter how much work your mentors do – if you can’t afford a CNC router/water-jet cutter/whatever or to take your stuff to a machine shop to be machined, then there’s an entire range of things that are out of reach.
On (2), your mentors can’t teach what they don’t know. That doesn’t mean that only engineers can be mentors. But, it does mean that teams who don’t have engineers among their mentors have an up-hill climb. Mentors can self-train, but it takes time and work. (I’m a lawyer, albeit with a CS degree, and it’s been an effort to get to know enough to point kids in the right direction. Luckily, our team has other, better, mentors.)
Solving those two problems may not get a team to the top-tier of FRC, but will go a long way toward making them strongly competitive, at least on a regional/district level.
As someone who comes from a team that has found lots of success recently in a student-focused program, I can say that your desire to be student-built isn’t what’s holding your robots back. PM me, I’d be happy to share with you (or anyone else) some of the ways 1058 builds competitive machines while still keeping students’ learning experiences as the #1 priority.
Teams are successful because of a strong mentor base that spends the entirety of the offseason teaching students through projects and off-season competitions, such that when the official season comes, students are well-prepared to build beautiful, exceptionally capable machines.
I encourage anyone here who thinks that a team is mentor built to go to that team’s pit. Find a student. Ask them to explain their build process, why they made the decisions they did, or what their favorite robot feature is. You will not be disappointed with their response, I guarantee you.
If you want to be competitive on-field you need time each year to test, debug, and iterate. As a small team (5 technical mentors, 12 students) having an outside fabrication sponsor is huge for us because it frees up resources to practice, test, debug, and iterate. We get great-looking and well-fitting parts while preserving our limited resources to apply them where they really matter to us. It’s a win-win for our students and our team.