10/13/23 Off-Season Update:
To conclude the 2023 Season, VorTX celebrated with our annual Banquet. We recognized our successes, notably our Sustainability Award from the Waco FiT District Event, and our graduating Seniors.
Despite an overall good season, the team was unable to qualify for state championships. We’ve identified many actionable improvements which we expect will improve our performance in the coming season. One positive takeaway was that we implemented an important process we expect will play an important role in the team’s future success: Retrospectives. We initially used the format for post-competition, but it has since been used after any major activity the team embarks on. The goal is to identify 3 things and break them down;
- What went well?
- What did not go well?
- What can we do better next time?
The order is important for morale purposes and to encourage discussion, a common management tool for meetings - start on a positive, get to the point, and end on a positive. To quote from the sustainability award requirements, This is how our team celebrates success and documents lessons learned to prevent repeating mistakes. It’s a simple matter of continuous improvement that allows all members of the team to provide feedback and have input on the future direction of the team. What’s important is feeding the lessons learned back into the next event, which we will do with pre-competition meetings to discuss all points and have them covered.
Our first task after the banquet was confirming new leadership for the off-season into the build and competition seasons. This year, the team decided to formalize the leadership selection process, which previously was decided by departing or remaining students. In the new process, we formed a Leadership Committee composed of team members who met the letterman requirements and/or demonstrated leadership capabilities over the previous season. Any decisions made by students on the team will now be made based on the decision of the leadership committee and not any one student. We identified responsibilities of the Leadership Committee which is mostly setting a good example for others. Following the formation of the Leadership Committee, Mentors sought nominations for Team Captain, Robot Lead, and Business Lead positions. Position responsibilities were listed in detail and are to be assessed during the nomination process by the committee members. Nominees for these three positions were then interviewed by Mentors and Coaches who then make a unanimous decision on each position, and confirm the individuals to the Leadership Committee. This process took approximately 1 month from forming the process to the announcement.
With the Team Captain, Robot Lead, and Business Lead known to the team, the next most important task was Recruiting New Members. The team organized and scheduled “Demos” at the district’s high schools, which involved the 2022 Robot, posters, awards, a presentation, and a QR code sign-up link for the team. Through several successful demos, the team had many new members sign up for the team. We then organized Parent & Student Informational Meetings where we introduced the team (and its leads and mentors) , played the FIRST FRC videos, presented what we do, and outlined expectations and cost. After the meeting, we distributed Parent permission and student sign-up forms (if they hadn’t already been completed), and chatted to people. This was an important activity because feedback from our previous year was that some new students and parents did not know who the leads were and what the real expectations were which led to some misunderstandings. We received great feedback from parents from this meeting and everyone is seemingly on the same page, we also have an excellent accounting of everyone on the team and their status. To date, the team has 85 sign-ups, with over half being from new members.
With all the new members joining, we must have a very organized team in terms of not only the shop but also task management. Mentors set up a Trello account and created boards for the off-season and build season. There, they set up lists where the students created cards and managed the work. Trello (available in limited form for free) utilizes a web-based Kanban style of lists and cards to track the progress of tasks and we highly recommend it to teams looking for productivity and transparency improvement. Off-season lists were structured as Backlog (to-do), In-Progress, High Priority, Blocked, Needs Mentor Review, Sent Back, and Done. Build Season lists are set up as Drivetrain, Intake, Sub-Systems, Electrical, Programming, Business, Kickoff, General (to-do), In Progress, Done, and Blocked. There are a lot of lists to organize all the build season tasks, so we’ve yet to see how well this works in practice.
In June of 2023, we once again collaborated with Team 1477 Texas Torque in hosting our annual Robotics Summer Camp. We lead youth through fun and engaging STEM related activities in small groups to learn critical thinking and cooperation skills. The camp was hosted over the course of four days with different challenges to start each day. Following the day’s challenges, the groups worked on their Lego robots, which were completed on the final day of camp. We also collaborated with one of our sponsors during the offseason in order to spread awareness for STEM in the community. We were invited by Campus Kids; a leading sponsor for the team, to give robot demos and introduce our team to elementary school students at 4 different schools. These two important events strengthened our bond with Campus Kids, and furthered our mission to “provide youth with the skills needed for future careers in the fields of STEAM” and to “spread the principles of FIRST everywhere we go.”
2023 Summer Camp Pictures
In September we competed at “The Remix” offseason competition hosted by our local friends, Team 1477 Texas Torque. Our goal at this competition was primarily to get our new members competition experience. We considered making changes to the robot to make it more competitive, but due to lack of meeting time during the summer, we were not able to make significant changes, and by the time school started, we decided to focus more on training instead of changing the robot. Our drive team was all seniors last year so we also wanted to get some of the returning members practice driving. We also tried to get all of the new members in the pit at some point during the competition. One of the goals for next year is to have better defined competition roles. In the past we relied too heavily on a few people to both drive the robot, fix things in the pit, and sometimes play a part in our pick list and other things, so we wanted to help everyone get an idea of what role they think would fit them best. Our team spirit has also improved significantly over the past few competitions, making the stands a more fun place to be, which has unexpectedly improved our scouting quality as well. Overall we accomplished our goals and then some, being the 3rd robot on the 3rd alliance and winning the event with our alliance partners, 624, 8515, and 8879. We write more about our experience in the retrospective above. A big thank you goes out to our winning alliance partners; 624 Cryptonite, 8515 Photon, 8879 REDBird Robotics. The Remix is a fantastic event where our new members were able to run the pit, turn the robot around successfully every match and execute our strategy well.
Remix Off-Season Competition Pictures
One of the most important tasks this off-season was generating a thorough and quality Training Plan. ~50% of this training is created and presented by mentors and ~50% by student leads. There are 16 sections or modules that we expect students to attend by MS Teams or in-person meetings depending on the training. We will update this table with links once the presentations are polished up.
| 0) Introduction to VorTX
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1) General Shop Safety and Hazard Awareness
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2) VorTX Sub-System Overview
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3) Hand and Power Tool Training
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4) Designing Robots for FRC
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| 5) OnShape CAD Training
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6) Prototyping in FRC
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7) Robot Sub-Systems in FRC
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8) Mechanical Components in FRC
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9) Gear Reduction, Motor Selection and Pneumatics Design
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| 10) Control Systems and Programming in FRC
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11) Manufacturing in FRC
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12) Electrical in FRC
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13) Design Reviews in FRC
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14) Work Breakdown Structure
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| 15) Kickoff Preparation
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16) Competition Preparation
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We’ve also introduced a new style of training, where students are free to choose what subteams they would like to be trained in. This year, we held 3 block training sessions with options for Tool, Electrical, Programming, CAD, and Business training, allowing members to learn what they want to learn instead of being forced into learning what they don’t.
Shop Organization has become an important priority to the team this offseason, as we’ve accumulated so many parts over 13 seasons and it’s getting difficult to manage. Nuts and bolts, planetary gearboxes, gears, sprockets, and chains - you name it, it was everywhere (in the wrong place) and was the most inefficient part of our build process last year. We have to fix bad habits of not cleaning up small parts, chips, and tools. A new concept introduced this year was a mandated 15-minute cleaning period at the end of every meeting, in hopes to combat this issue. We are still in this process but are making good progress although it is still making tool training difficult. One step we took was to re-organize the layout of the shop. We now have all power tooling along one side of the shop, allowing for a safer and open space to assemble the robot. New workbenches have been designed and are in the process of being built. We went for a simple construction design allowing us to link workbenches together for a larger workspace if needed.
Shop Reorganization Picture
New Tooling and Equipment purchases were made this off-season. We made an off-season buy list and assessed the quality and purpose of our tools. We considered a new pricey horizontal bandsaw but opted for a lower-cost chop saw from Evolution for tubing. In the past we had used a miter saw with a metal cutting blade, but this did not have good clamping abilities and presented safety concerns with the high blade speed. We then started using a Harbor Freight horizontal bandsaw which lasted a few seasons but proved to be losing its way in the prior season. We hope the chop saw yields good results. We also have kept our small vertically mounted bandsaw from prior seasons for smaller cuts, as it’s still in good condition, but we’ll be replacing the stand, since it’s pretty beat up from years of use and travel to competition and back… Next up is the CNC router, we purchased a decent-sized machine years ago and it still works well, but it often has leveling issues and is tricky to manipulate. This year, with the passing of the school bond, Klein ISD invested in a larger 4ftx4ft CNC router for the team that has a nice control system for easier setup. We are looking forward to setting it up in the newly organized shop space. Also received earlier from the bond was the Markforged 3D printer, which makes amazing parts quickly. Lastly, we replaced a lot of hand tools, drill bits, new annular cutter, belt sander, hex keys, digital calipers, electric rivet gun (game changer), tool chest (absolute beast), and many other things. Let’s just say we have Christmas about every month. We are very fortunate to have great sponsors, the support of Klein ISD, and our grant awards.
One of the projects some team members are working on is a new Robot Cart. It’s difficult to tell when the current cart entered service, probably around 2016 or 2017 with many modifications over the years, but it’s time for an upgrade. The team began by deciding on a list of requirements to guide the re-design. This is ongoing work, and we look forward to sharing the design for feedback before we start the build. A Battery Cart is also in the works and will be shared later.
To wrap up this update, we expect to continue the training plan through November and finish shop organization. We have plans to decommission the 2022 robot into a practice swerve drive base and document the technical issues with the robot to feedback points to the design review checklist. We will confirm the remaining leads before kickoff (sub-systems, awards, outreach, finance). We will finish the design of the Robot and Battery Carts ready for fabrication. Lastly, our final job is closing out the many smaller tasks in Trello, and getting our pre-season buy list purchased so we are ready for kickoff and build season.
Posted By: Lewis Longbottom - Mechanical Engineer & FRC 3735 Lead Mentor
2014-2015 Alumni
Alumni Mentor 2016-2019
Industry Mentor 2020-Present
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VorTX would like to thank all of our Veterans for serving our country and may we honor your service each and every day. 
