I’m assuming a lot of teams have a machinist who does a lot of the machining for random parts on the robot. So I wonder what teams (and team leaders) have done to thank these wonderful amazing folks…
-anton
sammiches
Boy howdy I wish we really had a machinist to do some things. The only custom manufactured parts we’ve ever not made ourselves we paid for.
Our custom work is being done by a company owned by an alumni which is nice. But obviously we will thank him the same way we thank our other sponsors. Logo and link on the team web site. Logo on our t-shirts. The after it’s over party. etc.
Machining is skilled and expensive work. Companies or individuals who do it for a FIRST team are valuable and appreciated sponsors as far as we are concerned.
Same with us. We have different levels of sponsorship and we have our machining donors guote what it would have cost us. We use that as a means to determine what level of sponsor they are. I’ll tell you this, most of our machining sponsors get their name on our t-shirts and one seems to donate enough machining time to get on our robot.
-Paul
Some of our machinists and techs are from Lockheed Martin. The place where they work is responsible for the AEGIS defense system on our Navy destroyers. They are a great bunch of guys.
On our team, the sudents first draw up the file in a 3d modeling software. Next, the drawing is either placed in a folder to be sent out to our technical college or printed off for teh shop.At teh Tech students from our team go out and d/l the file, convert it for use in mastercam, program the part, and then run the part on the machines themselves. The other ones which are able to be done manually are kept in house at our school, where prints are given to the students to machine up. Id say 95% of our machining work is done by students on the team, including CNC work. It also ahs been nice to have a full metal shop, including CNCs, right at our school. I am probably one of the most experianced machinists on my team, with this being my fourth year on the team, and am teaching everything i have learned to my younger teammates, in the hopes they carry on the tradition of building our robot. Not to say it is bad to farm out parts, but i definitely enjoy building the robot, as do many of my teammates. And our machinists get to watch our robot compete, to answer your question.
My team is lucky enough to have welding and milling capabilities in our shop. As well as having a lathe. The students spend pre-build time on learning to weld and use all of our other machines and we fabricate our own parts. Most of the work is done from drawings on paper, we don’t use very much CAD in our designing.
Last year we did all the machining but for one part. We needed a custom gear made.
This year we have a couple of students and engineers doing the all the machining.
Now if we can loose 20 lbs we will be all set 
Wayne Doenges
our school has a great shop we do all of our custom parts there. the students do it all.
As an engineer and a machinist I can tell you one of the best things students can give: a thank you every now and then. Seriously when we are in the lab working really late to make sure parts are done for the next day, a student saying thanks goes a long way. Some people seem to thing a magic machinist cranks out parts in some other time zone but it takes alot of work.
Now what not to get a machinist: Are you done yet, (10 mins later)are you done yet, (5 mins later)are you done yet (That is a no-no), Whats taking so long its only a piece of metal we want held to tight tolerances? And also this weighs too much, you’re going to have to make it lighter without taking any strength out of it. (Just kidding although I do hear that quite a bit)
Just thank the people who are doing the work be it students, engineers, or machinists, it goes a long way.
Tell me if i am wrong but only people over the age of 18 can use Milling machines and lathes right? I tried to get a job learning the lathe and the milling machine at age 17 and they could not accept me because of my age. However now i am one of 2 students that machines and my father is a machinist so i can ask him to do it if i cannot do it (ie gears and sprockets [oops did i give to much info about our robot this year]). Oh well, I hope everyone is still having fun!!!
*Originally posted by Anton Abaya *
**I’m assuming a lot of teams have a machinist who does a lot of the machining for random parts on the robot. So I wonder what teams (and team leaders) have done to thank these wonderful amazing folks…-anton **
They seem to respond best to bloody/raw meat treats after the fabrication of each part.
It brings a wide smile to their face, and seems to keep them regular too. 
(where-as us electrical types are more into grains and fiber…and the coders, well, they seem to fancy tofu)
Bubblegum and Lollipops
*Originally posted by Anton Abaya *
**I’m assuming a lot of teams have a machinist who does a lot of the machining for random parts on the robot. So I wonder what teams (and team leaders) have done to thank these wonderful amazing folks…-anton **
As one of our teams machinists/welder/sheet metal guy/plumbber/electrician- I love to see the faces of totally blown away students and engineers when I zip out a part or assembly in lightning fast time(we “chippers” know how to manipulate the space/time continuum). Two quotes from team members this year really made my day; “Paul is the man,he can build anything”(Seth Henderson) and “I’m jealous! I wish I could just make anything I wanted to on the mill or lathe! I wish I could learn to do that!”(Bob Friebel) I love to work my hands till they bleed for this team because I know they appreciate what I do for them and I enjoy helping the team bring an abstract concept to an amazing reality! Team 27 you rock!
We have a lathe and mill, and the students on our team operate them. If(when) we get behind, Dave may work on parts at his house/have students over to work on his mill and lathe when we can’t be in the school. But we are a mostly student built bot.
Well, Little John runs the lathe most of the time, and the mill is used by more people. Those machines we do limit who is allowed to use.
*Originally posted by kacz100 *
**Tell me if i am wrong but only people over the age of 18 can use Milling machines and lathes right? I tried to get a job learning the lathe and the milling machine at age 17 and they could not accept me because of my age. However now i am one of 2 students that machines and my father is a machinist so i can ask him to do it if i cannot do it (ie gears and sprockets [oops did i give to much info about our robot this year]). Oh well, I hope everyone is still having fun!!! **
There are no age limits on machinery… maybe at a job, but not overall.
Machinists are great. They solve all the little problems like converting non-standard gears to standard gears. The solution (well, my teams solution) is to wire edm a 17:1 (actually 166:9) gear, hard to do without talented machinists.
After the meeting ended today (at 5 after 8 hours) a group of us got pizza and went bowling. At 10 we stoped by Daves house and he as just finnished making replacement shafts for the drill motors!! Huzzah for workshops in garages, and don’t mind random visits by teenagers late at night. We should have given him some food, but that would have taken time away from his work. He can sleep in two and a half weeks.
We love our enginners and Dave. (Dave is wierd and doens’t count as an engineer)
Dave is wierd and doens’t count as an engineer.
I realize that I am opening myself up for all sorts of abuse, but I just have to ask: what do I count as?
-dave
Buckaroo Bonzai was right.
*Originally posted by dlavery *
**
I realize that I am opening myself up for all sorts of abuse, but I just have to ask: what do I count as?-dave
**
Who said you could take a break?