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Great! My sons and I have been involved in FIRST since 2001. I'm a mentor and the one responsible for the drivetrain. I didn't do as much this year as in years past. Last year, we received a Motorola Quality Award at the regional competition in Richmond. I see you got a Woodie Flowers Award for mentoring!
 
USMCPOP,
I could use one of those but I definitely wouldn't be letting them hit the floor like that. Need another one to catch it and open it for me. :D
 
USMCPOP,

Congrats on the Quality award, getting an award for reliability and quality at a FIRST Cometition iss a big deal.
Yeah, my Woodie Flowers award is probibly the most meaniful award I've ever recived.

Smallshop, and VMC_Jeff

Thanks, I'll pass on you good wishes, and compliments.


All, if you have time next January, check out www.USFIRST.ORG and volunteer to help a team. your chance to train an engineer before the university screws them up.
 
Hawkeye2- congrats on a successful build and a good looking robot! My team (293) just completed the New Jersey regional- we brought home our 3rd Xerox creativity award for using carbon-fiber composite panels on our ramps. But we didn't make it through the quarter finals in the competition.
Our robot is 100% built by students on our Monarch 10ee and BP with DRO- most parts take about 3 tries. After doing FIRST for 8 years, I'm concerned that the quality of the robots is getting worse- too few teams appear to get good engineering/machining guidance, and school shops with even basic tools are getting scarce. Lots of hacksawed, hand-drilled HomeDepot hardware. Let's hear from other FIRST mentors on the forum- what do you see out there?
 
How about some links to the FIRST robots?

What requirements are there for FIRST?

A good engineered/machined robot takes time, equipment and talent.

TMT
 
Robotics Mentor,

Congrats on your 3rd Xerox creativity award!!!!

Our robot is about 99% student built.

I'll admit I cut a notch in a shaft collar (to activate a limit switch), I wanted to use my new rotary table.

and I also made a bracket to hold the flag.

but thats about all I did on this years bot.
 
FIRST is a great experience. I was involved as a student in 99 and 00, and as a college mentor in 01. My high school had nothing else like this. All of the shop classes were long-since gone. I learned a ton and it made me become a mechanical engineer for robotic systems. If you can seriously devote the time and get along with students, consider helping out your local team. It's incredible what students, who have often never seen a drill press or built anything, can design and build in 6 weeks of nights and weekends.
 
Our team has always had the problem of lack of engineering assistance, at least in the mechanical area. I'm not an engineer, but I am somewhat of a mechanic and know how to make a reliable, though simple, drivetrain. We have access to a wood shop, so things are pretty much hacked up. Some of the other mentors don't have a clue about torque, gear ratios, fitting bearings, etc. We did finally find some machining assistance at the local community collegs when necessary, but nothing fancy.

These kids definitely need help and need to learn some basic mechanical/shop skills. I would urge anyone who can spare the time to volunteer or assist these teams. One of our team members received a full scholarship to VCU and graduated Magna Cum Laude in mechanical engineering last year. If it had not been for the FIRST experience, she might have ended up as a lawyer or something - EEK.
 
JacobS: I, too, chose the path of Mechanical Engineering after my experience in FIRST. It really is a great experience because kids get to learn about all aspects of engineering a complete product and get exposed to a lot that they normally wouldn't.

Thanks to people like Roboticsmentor, USMCPOP, and Hawkeye2, for making it a great experience!

Good luck in Phoenix!
 
FIRST has taught me more than I've taught the kids, or at least that's how it seems. Just watching a couple of old-school machinists ply their craft has been great. The kids are a constant source of new ideas, many of them wacky but enough gems to keep me consistently dazzled. If you think you understand something, try explaining it to a clever 15-year old. You'll soon find out whether you really understand it or not. And it is pure magic when an idea from one of those 15-year olds gets built to perfection by one of the old-timers, or better yet by the kid herself, and it turns out to be just what the robot needs.
 
After the first year of mentoring our team, I was invited by the seniors to be a chaperone on their high school class trip to Busch Gardens. They didn't want anyone else! We had a ball riding the coasters and just hanging out. They literally dragged me around with them. We also had a great time at Epcot when we attended a final FIRST competition. It's amazing how close you can get with these kids from sharing such an experience.

My younger son came up with a concept for our robot one year when he was in 8th grade. He built a little LEGO model to show, and the final robot design was nearly a spitting image. That same year, he helped rebuild broken planetary gearboxes at the regional competition. The people at the service desk just sat there, let him go at it, and grinned. He also solved one or two control system reset problems for teams that had run wiring too close and there were crosstalk problems. Too much!
 
Results,

we Didn't do as well as I hoped on the field, we were ranked 19th out of 34 teams at the end of the seeding matches. we did not make it to the finals.

we did win two other awards though, and we all had a great time.

we won the:
Website Award
Recognizes excellence in student-designed, built, and managed FIRST team websites.
and
Johnson & Johnson Sportsmanship Award
Celebrates outstanding sportsmanship and gracious professionalism in the heat of competition, both on and off the playing field.

Rick
 
Although you may not have done as well as you hoped.
The awards you did win are something you and your team should be very proud of.
It's great to know that sportsmanship is being taught these days. Too many of our "PRO" seem to have forgotten that trait.
Congrats to you all.
 
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