This goes out particularly to teams who competed at the 2010 NYC Regional:
How much workspace do you have? In square feet, as close as you can tell. I’m interested in machine shop area, practice fields if you build em (full or partial), and let’s throw in storage area too. If you wouldn’t mind sharing with me. You can reply in-thread or PM me.
In the near future I’m going to sit down with my principal and update him on all the good things that the robotics team has done as an FRC competitor, an extracurricular for the students, an ambassador of the school to the neighborhood, etc.
One thing I want to stress is our need to expand spatially. We have about 375 sq. ft. and are surrounded and tantalized by about 3 times as much storage space belonging to our athletic department, which seems much more spread out than it needs to be. Our space is so small that we almost need to disassemble old robots, and while we always quest to increase membership, it is hard to manage more than 6 people in the workshop at the same time.
So among other points and besides rationalizing that we need WORK space which may be a little more important than storage of old trophies, varsity letters, shoeboxes etc., I want to back myself up with some data if possible, that may show a correlation between square footage of workspace a team has and their ranking/achievements at our local competition this past weekend. Input will be much appreciated.
2175 is now in our 4th shop in 4 years. This is by far the largest space we have had to work with. We work in the metal shop of another local school along with a rookie team from that school and have storage space for the two teams upstairs. The shop is used for classes during the week so our stuff must go back upstairs to the storage area at the end of each night.
It seems like most schools simply don’t have the space needed for a permanent build space like this, and with the economy the way it is they can’t afford to expand at all. In fact, many school districts around the nation are looking to eliminate costs by merging schools if possible, making space even more critical. Sometimes the best option is to go off school property and rent somewhere else. Our build space is a rented workspace in downtown St. Paul. The school just signed up for a 3 year lease on the place and the owner renovated it to fit our needs perfectly. The past 2 years, we’ve been renting whatever space was open in the building Dec-Apr… and since the owner loved the concept of the team (and the tax benefits, i’m sure), we got it for amazingly cheap. Anyways, on to our permanent space…
In total, it’s about 1700 square feet. There’s a big pillars every 13 feet, breaking it up into 10 13x13 foot segments, giving us a natural division between tasks (electrical, programming, cutting/grinding, storage, etc). In addition, there’s walls up around 3 of the squares, forming an office area where programming and the business teams can work in relative quiet (and where we have a small kitchenette).
The space is perfect for us, with plenty of room to grow into as we slowly check items off our equipment wish list.
This year 1902 has had is 4th and largest build space in 4 years… sadly all our build spaces get torn down after atlanta is over
But this year we have had over 86,000 sq ft to work with with a full Programming room, NEMO room, Children watch room, Meeting Area, Kitchen, Machine Shop, Full Field Area, Pin assembly area, Robot assembly area, and even enough room for fair booth set up crate set up and an ultimate Frisbee field. we used roughly 14000 sq ft and most of the building was blocked off due to auto locking doors and random empty elevator shafts.
The Coleman Family Properties surely did help us out this year
We thank them a hole bunch and certainly wouldn’t have had a build space this year with out them. To bad its being demolished at the end of the season…
you still have your old robots? why would u keep them? theres so much valuable scrap metal and electronics and pneumatics on them. my team keeps each robot “alive” for about a year (until december)
Let’s see…6’x8’ space in a portable classroom crammed with 27 PCs, Lego NXT kits, and regular classes being taught at the same time. “We got by…” See y’all in Big D this week!
It’s not about how much space you have or don’t, it’s about how your team dances with the one they brought to the prom. We just made lemonaide from all those lemons. We need to find some sponsors, we were told that our program “has no budget” for next year. That sucks!
Instead of having a permanent workspace, perhaps having a temporary workspace would work. For example, Team 93 is unable to really keep out most of our tools and random scraps out because 80%-ish of the machines we use are actually property of the Appleton Area School District and also because, during the school week, our work space becomes classrooms. Despite this, we turned up in the semi-finals of the WI Regional. Perhaps a similar arrangement may work for you.
Sometimes the best option is to go off school property and rent somewhere else.
With an increase in sponsorship we might be able to afford that. But does taking the students and doing work off school grounds change the liability (if not insurance) concerns for your team? I could see my administration being concerned in that respect.
you still have your old robots? why would u keep them?
The one robot we have kept whole is our Aim High bot, and we keep it for its demo appeal. We do at least 2 street fairs and Relay for Life each year in addition to school open houses, etc. and we’d like to have more robots to show off. It’s also better to be able to touch, control, and look underneath the old robots that worked well rather than only have some gallery pics.
We have about 800 square feet. However, the building is sort of half of a quanset hut, so a lot of that space is taken up by the curvature. The general geometry (poor placement of a closet and some random walls) really robs a lot of space. In addition, we have two 6x8 foot sheds we use for storage.
It’s really cramped, and we have to make a lot of effort to keep it clean. I’ve seen a lot of team’s shops, and 973’s is the best I’ve seen in the amount of stuff neatly crammed into the smallest possible space. Two mills, two drill presses, a TIG welder, a couple large workbenches, drill presses, break, press and a bunch of computers all fit.
We have about the amount of space in the average FRC pit to store our stuff. All of our stuff.
We get run of the school’s metal shop, wood shop, and classroom each day, but we spend about an hour and a half unloading and loading everything into the pit area.
Our workspace is about the size of two classrooms put together into one room with a wall that seperates the room in half spanning across almost the entire center of the room. Because this is a wall the school will not allow us to take down we do not have enough room in our work space to make a field and are forced to practice in the hallway.
For ten years now we have been pushing our administration to give us access to the gym or auditorium for a couple of days a year but we still have had no luck.
For all of these reasons we have never been able to put together a full field even though we could easily construct one.
We are begrudgingly granted the ability to use the school’s Small Engine room and Wood Shop. We also have a small 10 x 10 foot storage area that is a five minute walk from the rooms we work in. It takes usually 20 minutes to get all of our stuff from the storage area to the work area. Then we have the same amount of time to move it back, plus the thing that kills us is the cleanup. That can range from 30 minutes to 60 minutes depending on how many people attend and how much we do.
We are looking for an site away from the school for next year.
Team 619 has no problems with space. We meet in a decommissioned nuclear reactor at the University of Virginia. All of the students (and mentors ) think this is absolutely awesome, and it’s a very intriguing building to say the least. Examples:
-There are random holes in the ground throughout the building, which we have covered with plywood. In one of them we have stored about fifteen old CRT monitors.
-The building is full of old, unused electronics such as analog oscilloscopes, robotic arms, data acquisition equipment, an evacuation alarm, and serial network cables. Most of this still works, and some of it we have found useful.
-We use the original reactor pool (there are two) as a storage room, calling it the “magic pool.” Some years ago, a student brought in a Geiger counter and found that, while still far below safe levels, radiation levels inside the pool are, in fact, above normal. It is often rumored that standing in the magic pool will lead to “aha!” moments and out-of-box thinking.
Our construction workspace, as far as where we build the robot and keep our tools, this year is the old photography darkroom, which is about 300 sq ft, I’d say, and our engineering teacher’s entire classroom, which is about 5 or 6 times the size.
As far as workspace, like for designing, Web browsing, fabrication, woodwork, welding… Well, we’re just down the hall from the school’s welding shop and wood shop, where we can get about any kind of wood and many convenient pieces of metal.
i really couldn’t say how much room we have because it is all spread out and odly shaped, we have a full shop, 2 classrooms, a computer lab, and a smallish office to work with.
Shop
3 lathes
4 mills
welding stations
sheet metal station
wide variety of saws and wood tools
3 huge tables, where we assemble our robot
Office
4 Cad/Programing Computers where we cad and research stuff.
Laser engraver
The classrooms are used for driver practice and last minute assembly
the computer lab is for halo and the animators
my team actually gets a good amount of space. lucky for us our head mentor happens to be the AP of the science department, so we get the whole 6th floor to our spirit team (banners, designs, buttons, art, cooking) and management. up until recently (like this year or last year) the mechanical and programing guys used half of the 6th floor with all the shops for there needs, but now we have our own shop on the third floor. its about the size of a large class room and came complete with tables with there own vices. before the school just barely used it for storage, so they gave it to us and now we have an official chop shop. we also pretty much have access to all the shops in my school.
as far as how well the shops are equipped, if its done on an airplane- we have a shop for it, an outdated shop, but a shop none-the-less (we use drill presses from the 1970’s)
i guess its a pretty unique situation though. i don’t think many schools are equipped like aviation though. sorry if it sounds like i’m bragging (i’m not).
Perhaps a similar arrangement may work for you.
) think this is absolutely awesome, and it’s a very intriguing building to say the least. Examples:
