I’ve been a mentor on 3481 for a number of years now, and while I focus primarily on programming, I have a hand in mentoring students on the design of the robot as well. If you take a look at any 3481 robots from 2018-2022 I had some form of input in the design, either as a student (2018-2019) or a mentor (2020-2022).
While I have learned a lot about mechanical design as a mentor over the past few years, it is apparent to me every time I talk to a true “mechanical mentor” that I have a lot to learn, and I am excited to learn it! How do you all recommend I best work towards being a better FRC robot design mentor overall, aside from just “designing stuff” (not because that’s not a good answer, just wondering if there’s anything good in addition to it).
Note: I am really only looking for ways to excel in the FRC arena as my career has nothing to do with mechanical design (I work in cybersecurity).
Going through other people’s designs can be great for learning. For example Spectrum’s design overview videos can often make you go “oh thats why they do that” and show you something you didn’t realize before. Having other people review your designs can also help you find where you need to improve.
Specifically, asking questions about “so, what led you to [cool mechanism]?” or “what process did you use?” or “do you have any feedback on my team’s design?”, and listening to the responses can be highly educational.
In addition to the above, try recreating the mechanisms using sketches. Most of the time, you’ll find that the geometry is a bit finicky to the point that you might believe they used black magic to get it to work. This is when you learn the most about the design since your pinpointing the critical dimensions they used to determine the design of the mechanism.
Should be a 15-30 minute exercise roughly.
Not sure if this counted as “design stuff” or not.
Also, I think that the worst thing to do is to not ask people about the flaws in their designs. I find myself learning more this way. One of the things that The Open Alliance and competition season blog allows for is pretty fast post competition debrief about how the robot performs and what went wrong.
For example, imagine thinking 254’s robot is the best thing since sliced bread. You go straight to “copy/adapt” that one mechanism from last year that’ll make or break your season and was talked about in the tech binder.
BUT WAIT, you forgot to ask/read the tech binder thread and you didn’t know that a pretty obscure part breaks frequently until they made an updated design fix. Now your robot breaks on the field frequently. Totally not speaking from experience or anything.
Disclaimer: I generally think that 254 robots are the best things since sliced bread, but you can replace them with any team you want in this scenario.
Everyone wants to give you advice, but just because someone wants to give advice doesn’t mean it’s good advice to take. Fortunately in FRC, most of the people who know what they’re doing are very approachable.
Step 1: Find a group of people who are at the level you aspire to be at. I recommend mentors from highly successful teams (how many wins you got is in fact relevant here). It’s good to get a good handful of these people.
Step 2: Reach out to those people, ask them if they would be willing to provide feedback on things you’ve designed. If they say yes, move on to step 3. If not, repeat step 1.
Step 3: Send them things you’ve made, and patiently wait for them to get back to you with feedback. Take their feedback to heart, redesign, and send your new designs back to them. Rinse and repeat this step until banner.
I agree with a lot of the stuff that’s been said so I’ll just add one thing that hasn’t been mentioned:
Learn how the stuff you design gets made. Understanding manufacturing methods and their advantages and limitations will really help your designs get better.
When you’re doing practice designs, be sure to define the manufacturing resources you’re using before starting the project. Also change it up, don’t always design with the manufacturing capabilities that your team uses.