Any One Here ever mentored or willing to help in bits for FIRST ROBOTICS?

Ok, a few weeks back, when I was sitting at my desk thinking life was good, things were slowing down, and I could finally enjoy life as a brand new empty nester, I got the call....We need a teacher to help with the FIRST ROBOTICS team. Life has not been sane since, and I mean in a truly good and exciting way, but I have this "deer in the headlights" look as I sit here tonight, just saw the competition rules and have the 45 day "count down" clock starting tonight.


It is exciting, fun, and scary none the less, a first year FIRST team. I am hoping some people here have mentored a team, or may be willing to post for some help should I become totally stumped on an idea. Most of the machining stuff I have down pat, but some pneumatics, C++ or Java or Labview programming help... I have some mentors coming in, but trust the people on this board as well for some timely feedback.

Loving Life, Living the Dream! Between this(FIRST) Machine shop, Project Lead the Way, ways to get these kids interested in Science. Technology, Engineering and Math...my career has changed in the past two years. Hopefully you do not mind this post and I can get a bit of help now and then.

Thanks,

Scott

Oh to add to the initial post, design ideas, ANYTHING will be helpful!

As a past judge for this one of the regular questions we gave the kids is "Did you do this" and "Who contributed that idea".

Teams get heavily marked down if the ideas are not theirs. Talking to middle school girls about Labview programming is quite eye-opening. They are very quick to learn this stuff.

Don't underestimate your students.

Chris P

Exceptional points, I will let the students know this. Thanks!

One of things that most teams have a problem with is gear ratios and DC motors. If they want to keep the motor alive they need it to run near its maximum speed so, even though some come with a gearbox, you need to make sure there is enough gear reduction.

They need to work as a team - no arguing or squabbling in front of the judges. They have to have good manners at the competition. They have to pull together. The presentations are heavily weighted over the engineering too. When the judges ask questions they need to give answers from different team members.

It's a LOT about teamwork. And it's crazy on the day of competition.

Chris P

Parent/Mentor for team 279 Toledo,Ohio One place that is a big help is Chief Delphi - Powered by vBulletin. Ya I know the deer in headlight feeling. This will be my third year with it. Feel free to pm me if you want to talk
David

Having been involved in the FIRST competition for 6 years (5 as a mentor - Team 975), here are a few suggestions:

- Get in touch with other local teams and/or your state/regional coordinator. There's help to be had, you just have to ask.

- Have the team members read and reread the rules.

- Decide on a strategy and your mechanisms ASAP. Don't overbuild or make too many complicated mechanisms. If nothing else, a robot that can drive well can still compete.

- Always be conscious of your robot weight as you build. There's nothing like finding out at the last minute that the 'bot is 30 pounds overweight.

- Sign up over at Chief Delphi - Portal The forum folks there are very helpful. There are also white papers, gearing spreadsheets and the like over there. Chief Delphi - Powered by vBulletin

I always helped on the basic drivetrain, so I can't help you with the programming or pneumatics. PM me if you like. I'm always willing to chat on the phone. Six weeks is not much time, so you need to move fast.

Edit: It's a crazy competition. Here's a pic of our robot and three others hanging off the bar in 2004. The crowd went wild.

bcstractor said:

The presentations are heavily weighted over the engineering too.
Chris P

Click to expand...

What does that mean?

How come they only have 45 days?

John
The time frame to work with the school year in part, I think.
FIRST It site has been down of and on today.
There are a half doz mentors that hang out here.

John,

The build period is about 6 weeks. Then there are a series of regional competitions in March and April and a championship toward the end of April. Many teams have lesser activities throughout the year, not to mention the time it takes to get sponsorship and raise funds.

Our local team (Greenville, Tx) has been at the top a few times. Some old friends started a company, Innovation First, Inc., to build components for these competitions. They are all wealthy now and I'm still working....

Local team's website...
Robowranglers - Team 148 - Greenville, Texas

I am now getting involved with mentoring the my 2nd First team. Used to be involved with my brother's when I would come home during break from school, and now am volunteering on a team my coworker got me involved with here in Connecticut.

One thing I would say is that if you are not a computer programmer try to find a good mentor who is, most teams seem to have mentors who are good with the mechanical and others who do the programming. 6weeks is a short time to learn to program, and it will be best if you can find a skilled programmer to help.

One major suggestion is reach out to local mechanically oriented businesses any way you can. Large and small they usually love saying they sponsored a FIRST team. I know you have a good feel for what is in the area, but Thomas Net may turn up those you don't know of. I told my brother's team for a whole year before they listened that they had a company who made vacuum manipulators for factory robots right in town. I told them, think up of something they need as an excuse to walk in the door and meet them, even if they only were asking to pick their scrap bin (which was their excuse). Well they finally did do that and the owner was called out to them. The owner than said that they had wanted to sponsor a FIRST team for a while but never really researched it. They were just surprised that they had one in town. The owner said all of his competitors and vendors advertise the team they helped, and their company wanted to do the same!

The owner said to them next time you find your self having to order anything call me first, if I don't have it or can't get it through a supplier I will order it and pay for it myself. In addition to this the company also contributed a new mentor their applications engineer who started volunteering, plus their machinist volunteered 4weekends teaching the kids how to make their parts in the company shop with the CNC machine tools.

Plus from this company came more sponsors. One day they needed that X shaped aluminum extrusion stuff (I can't recall the name) they called the owner, and he called his vendor. Called back the team and said you have two choices 1. he is willing to ship at no cost, 2. drive down there (1hr away) and meet the owner which he suggested was in their interest. Not only did the team walk out with free material but also a nice check and a new sponsor!

The other non advertised thing I must say about FIRST teams for those considering being mentors is they are incredible career networking opportunities. By their very nature they attract a lot of interesting skilled individuals in manufacturing and engineering to mentor on them. New friends who may be very helpful in finding a future job.

Adam

John Welden said:

What does that mean?

How come they only have 45 days?

Click to expand...

You can progress to the next round without your machine working. There are several categories of award because not only do you have to have a machine that works you have to have a presentation as well. You get reviewed after you machine has performed and the team gets interviewed as to participation and understanding.

It isn't just about having a CNC machined and TIG welded automaton - it's a lot more than that.

Chris P

Thank you everyone, keep it coming if you feel fit to do so, but great words of advice that I will share with the team.

It is the student effort, this I will remember, and I will be seeking great mentors.

USMCPOP said:

Having been involved in the FIRST competition for 6 years (5 as a mentor - Team 975), here are a few suggestions:

- Get in touch with other local teams and/or your state/regional coordinator. There's help to be had, you just have to ask.

- Have the team members read and reread the rules.

- Decide on a strategy and your mechanisms ASAP. Don't overbuild or make too many complicated mechanisms. If nothing else, a robot that can drive well can still compete.

- Always be conscious of your robot weight as you build. There's nothing like finding out at the last minute that the 'bot is 30 pounds overweight.

- Sign up over at Chief Delphi - Portal The forum folks there are very helpful. There are also white papers, gearing spreadsheets and the like over there. Chief Delphi - Powered by vBulletin

I always helped on the basic drivetrain, so I can't help you with the programming or pneumatics. PM me if you like. I'm always willing to chat on the phone. Six weeks is not much time, so you need to move fast.

Edit: It's a crazy competition. Here's a pic of our robot and three others hanging off the bar in 2004. The crowd went wild.

Click to expand...

This is good advice. I was on a first year team in '99 and we pretty much did the exact oposite of all your points. Our "mentor" was an ME prof. at UIowa and a couple of his postdocs. They were terrible. We ended up with a machine that was tremendously overweight (we started ripping stuff off and drilling holes everywhere) and ended up not moving, but smoking the rubber belts during our first run down in Orlando (there was no regional for us). They had to use a fire extiguisher and didn't allow us to compete again. We drowned our sorrows by the pool the rest of the trip...

So which part worries you more- Hanging pool floats on hooks eight feet off the floor, or building a robot that can climb a steel pipe faster than anybody else's? Welcome to the fray. When you figure out how to do it, please clue the rest of us in.

So which part worries you more- Hanging pool floats on hooks eight feet off the floor, or building a robot that can climb a steel pipe faster than anybody else's? Welcome to the fray. When you figure out how to do it, please clue the rest of us in.

Click to expand...

The funny thing was watching a group of highschool students come back from googling "pole climber" to get ideas on how to build a robot. Said they found a lot of nice pictures of women doing it but so far very few robots!

Adam

Adam,
Although hopefully, they also came away with an appreciation of center of mass vs. suspension points, using off-axis weight to improve stiction between the pole and the mating surfaces, managing moment arms, etc. Hopefully.

The group I loaned some tools to had more basic problems: Poor tooling, poor training on the tools they had (if a drill bit is not generating chips, all you're doing is generating heat...), abysmal safety precautions on the part of mentors, etc. (As in, trying to drill through 1/4" aluminum with a 3/4" wood spade bit, after a 3/8 hole was already drilled, all using a cheapie WalMart benchtop drill press. Hand-held/no clamps, of course.) Fortunately, last year they started with tool safety and use...)

Chip

I've been involved in FIRST for 11 years now, my 7th as a mentor.

The best advice I can give is to keep it simple. There's no better way to fail than trying to do everything. There is always a place on an alliance for a simple robot that does one thing extremely well. For example in this year's game if I were working with a team with limited resources/design experience I would suggest they avoid scoring on the top row and focus only on the middle/bottom row, due to the 60" cylinder making it very difficult to use a simple arm to score high (for example, see something like 330's 2007 robot. That could be a very easily duplicated middle/bottom scorer).

Second best piece of advice would be to make sure your drivetrain is rock solid. If it can't move reliably it can't do anything else.