My team is a collection of our district’s 3 high schools. It was 2, but a new high school was just built. The district is giving us some rooms in the new high school, so naturally we decided to take them. After some thinking, we realized that we don’t have a plethora of computers with Autodesk on them, and we also noticed that we have ZERO furniture. We have machines, just no chairs or tables. We are starting the move tomorrow, and we dont have school friday or monday, so it is a good time. We will have plenty of time to move everything and get stuff we need. My question is: What is a need to know while moving locations? Tips? Tricks? Dos-donts?
We have had great success the past few years in competition, made it to worlds twice, was an alliance captain in logomotion. I jokingly speculated with another soccer fanatic that whenever a team moves locations, they don’t do as well in the next few years. All joking aside, it is a stressful time for us, and any advice would help!
note* we already have bus service between the high schools for those students who can’t drive, which is a huge help.
All school furniture/property at individual schools ultimately belongs to the District they are in. Any chance you can get a District official to ok the movement of some of the furniture you need from the old to the new locale?
A lot of times schools will have surplus furniture squirrelled away in closets, maintenance rooms, etc. You could check with the Facilities manager for each school and see if this is the case.
I would have to say the first thing is to create a move plan. I.e Identify what you need to move, identify what you want the workspace to look like. I created a visio layout which I referenced in another thread. But basically it boils down to: Identify your major working areas and how the area may potentially get set up. Essentially visualize how the room would be laid out and how your build system would operate.
At least then you can get an idea of the total number of tables and chairs you are going to need. You also will likely need cabinets and storage shelves and places to store large items. You will also see the areas you may be defiecent in. Such as how are we going to get a crate out of the room. Where on earth are we going to put that toolbox… etc…
Creating a move plan helped us out more than you can imagine. We moved in in late August/September. Its not the end of October and we are still moving in and getting things arranged /set up as we want. So I wouldnt say this is a weekend project.
The idea to get surplus from the school is a good one. We got several tables from them. Plus some workbenches. For those items we didnt get we went to a surplus store and bought some surplus shelves and chairs.
take a nice sheet of 3/4" plywood, buy some saw horses brackets and a few 2x4 was then add a handle full of 2"drywall screws!!! = best table ever and HUGE !!!
Our team moved every year until 2009. We didn’t compete that year, but
during that summer we moved into a old Gym the school system no longer
used. We’ve been there ever since. From the picture you can see work tables
we made ourselves. there are 3 of these. The students and one of the mentors in the picture are at plastic folding tables we use for the computers and meetings. We have about 12 of those. We needed storage cabinet space and after being in the gym a year the high school remodeled a couple of rooms and were getting rid of some cabinets. They needed repairs and we got them and repaired them ourselves and have been using them since. The chairs and stools we have are stuff that was in storage.
When we moved, we basically moved our tools, power tools, old robots, carpet, and a old work bench we have used since our second year. We used the computers at the high school while we were there, but when we moved we got some of our own that were used from a local college near here. Since the gym was never built or intended for robotics we had the school system add some new wiring to accommodate our needs. We have to share the gym with the Wrestling team for a couple months (we use one side and they use the other and if we need the other side for practice we work around their schedule) but the rest of the time we have it to ourselves.
We didn’t do so good in 2010 the first year we were there, but we’ve been in the finals every year since and were one of the winners at VCU this year.
My best tip is to bring EVERYTHING from your old field, even if it is a piece of scrap metal; you never know what you will need. From what I hear, you should have time before the season to get Autodesk loaded to some computers and get some tables/chairs. I wouldn’t be bummed out because of the few things that you are going to loss, because they are retrievable, work hard on getting everything straight before the build season. Good luck!
We moved to a new build site on the school campus over the summer. Sketch a rough layout, prioritize things like electrical outlets for any tools, minimizing safety hazards, maintaining clear organization, etc. Having plenty of room to easily move the robot anywhere around the buildspace is extremely helpful.
Use this opportunity to go through your entire inventory and scrap whatever isn’t necessary. You also have the opportunity to categorize items by group as specifically as you want for maximum clarity.
In our old shop al the partions had walls made from whiteboard. You could write on any wall when you wanted to show a student some point. The students also used it all the time. I miss those walls.
