Team 48 Robotics Lab Sneak Peek

FIRST General Forum
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As we’ve meandered across the landscape of 27 years of Team 48 history, we’ve been challenged by two seemingly inexorable truths - a steadily shrinking build space, and an increasingly uncertain practice field arrangement. A reversal of fortune began in 2021, once Warren City Schools began planning for an ambitious student wellness center expansion attached to Warren G. Harding High School. Team leaders had previously promoted the idea of our own build space to district leadership, but we viewed this as-yet undefined new facility as a prime opportunity to act and finally erase those two long-standing trends.

Following up on some previous work our team did to flesh out concepts for an “ideal” workspace and some prior advocacy by former team leads, we went to school officials and submitted an official request for our team to be included in facility planning. Ultimately, they agreed! After sharing some ambitious initial ideas and engaging in a healthy give-and-take with the architects during the building’s design phase, we settled on a final arrangement agreeable to all.

You may notice that much of our initial facility is open space, with little in the form of new furnishings, cabinetry, and similar. Some of that will be added by the district as time goes on. Fortunately, it turns out a 27-year-old FRC team accumulates LOTS of good “stuff” with which to populate a robotics lab…we just needed the space to arrange it all cohesively.

The Warren G. Harding Student Wellness and Recreation Center formally opened its doors on Monday 11/25, with Ohio governor Mike DeWine in attendance. An article and video are provided below. We are greatly appreciative of those among the Warren City Schools administration and school board who supported giving us our own home within this exciting new facility. We now have the space to house our team’s shop, a full size AndyMark playing field (provided by the district - the ONE furnishing to rule them all), material storage, team trailer, team meeting areas, a small kitchen area, and other affairs. We will also be able to take advantage of conference rooms and other amenities available in the adjacent areas of the SWARC. This is good, because one “feature” of a large open space is that sound travels in somewhat “exuberant” ways within it. It’s on our list of things to iterate on. :slight_smile:

We are very much Looking Forward to completing setup of our space ahead of the 2025 kickoff and expect to invite area teams in to use our practice facility before and during competition season.

Article - $34M Recreation and Wellness Center Opens in Warren

Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgSVJNNFeAw

WKBN-27 - shows additional views of the full building - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPo9devJo_o

Photo (ignore the phantom reflection of the Fitness area above our pit :slight_smile: ) -

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Very exciting to see the funds from Biden’s American Rescue Plan being put to greyt use.

Looking forward to 48 making it ugly!

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Looks phenomenal Travis! Can’t wait to see what you guys are able to do with that space in the future.

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this is amazing, I love the robot showcase on the second floor! Looking forward to seeing more amazing things from your team in the future :slight_smile:

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Jealous … and happy for your community! Good work 48!

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Thanks! We have 2 more up there to lift into place and seven others on display elsewhere in a school trophy case. Add in the 2 downstairs, the one we gave away, the one that was stolen, and the one we didn’t build in 2021, and that makes 27.

Those display racks in the mezzanine are actually ULINE modular storage racks - someone had the good idea to hang moving blankets on the front to hide the contents and provide a clean look.

I have personally enjoyed watching the bumpers be ripped off of all the robots so encumbered, both for the space considerations and giving all of them a taste of what it was like back in the metal on metal glory days. Most look better without them anyway.

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Wait what? Don’t just gloss over this!

Also, this space looks incredible! Do you have any method to prevent robots from just rolling off the display shelf?

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The 7 on the lower ledge are ratchet strapped to the guard rail behind it. The 8 on the upper shelves are placed such that their wheels are locked into the grates of the shelf.

Should hold for as long as we’d be here. Ohio isn’t really known for it’s spontaneous earthquakes, just it’s corn / soy / vast nothingness.

I’ll let Travis tell the story of the stolen robot as I was in diapers when the story began.

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Our 2003 robot was loaned out to a local college branch for educational purposes and was stored in a closet on campus over the summer. When fall semester rolled around it “vanished”.

Our 2005 robot was donated to Cuyahoga Community College for a hydrogen fuel cell project.

2010 was torn down and converted into a t-shirt cannon, it can be seen on the floor near the pit setup.

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Our 2003 robot is still the only one we’ve ever painted or powder coated. CLEARLY this is why it was stolen. :slightly_smiling_face:

That thing also had the eighth-highest EPA in the world. Somehow.

It was also the first of our robots to have a fully welded frame. We full-sent against 60 in the 2002 Curie elims (semis IIRC) at Disney. Those were some fun times for both of us at the center goal but in the end 60 prevailed, and our extruded aluminum t-slot frame paid a far greater price. We were like nope, no more of that. We learned much from Team 60’s robot that year.

I was happy to donate 2005 away to more useful endeavors. But we’ll always have GTR Finals Match 2. Beautifully ugly.

I have nothing nice to say about the 2010 robot. It is, without question, the worst robot we ever built. It even aided and abetted Dean Kamen getting kicked in the face with a soccer ball. The fact that thing won a blue banner at North Carolina is farcical - 100% a testament to the people driving it and the pit crew desperately trying to preserve some bare minimum level of productive capability.
Tearing it down to the studs and disposing of 90% of its existence was exceedingly satisfying. A cathartic drawing of a line in the sand, as 2011 was the start of a much more consistently-competitive era. Plus we got a t-shirt cannon out of it, which is always cool. :slightly_smiling_face:

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I’m super jealous of your new shop. just gotta to ask what the two non blue banners are. I’m in my second year and on the opposite side of the country so I have no clue :slight_smile:

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Congratulations on your new amazing lab space. Money well spent, instead of $200 million high school football stadiums in other parts of the country. :call_me_hand:

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The left most one says “National Championship” and looking at 48’s history, they won championship in 1999 so my guess is that.

The white banner says “2017 WoW” and going back to 48’s history, there was an offseason competition they went to in 2017 called WoW Championship.

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I thought I could make out national but was confused there. Tanks a bunch

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Confirmed correct. The rightmost one is for the Curiosity Open, an offseason event at the Great Lakes Science Center in Cleveland that we won with 1787 and 4601 this past summer.

We’ve moved around so much over the past years that many of our prior banners are “in flux”. If you ever see future pictures of them hanging in the new space, I guess you will know that we found them. :slight_smile:

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The pediatric clinic in the same building is genius. What an awesome investment in the city. Love to see money being put to good use! Will definitely be sharing this with our town.

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Figured I’d share some external views of the overall facility and how it integrates with the school.

The medical clinic will reside in the 2-story building space below the “48” space in the photo below.

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Also if you can stomach some bad drone work, here’s an album of photos and videos of the externals of the facility. It looks really great lit up at night, although I wish they didn’t illuminate the thing 24/7.

[57 new items added to shared album] Community Wellness Center External Photos
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