FIRST Robotics 2019 - Lookin' Good in the Pits

Our merry little band of roboteers is a small town team.  And while we have had steady growth in the four years of our existence we have never had the resources of most of the teams we go up against.  Some have five times our membership and ten times our budget.  Actually that is almost certainly an under estimate.  At our upcoming tournament there are two teams coming from China and one from Turkey!

5826 has always managed to get the absolute most out of available resources but inevitably there are trade offs.  It was pretty obvious at our first event four years ago that we had not put much effort into our pit area.  We had a table, a work bench, and a couple of toolboxes.   It was so minimalist that teams gave us stuff.  Somebody made us a sign.  We had a team flag that was made the night before.  Here's our pit in year one, mostly what you see is the banner from our neighbors.  Otherwise it is us, plywood walls and an unexpectedly successful robot.

Years go by.  Each campaign we throw our energies into building a competitive robot and when it comes time to work on anything extra the kids are usually worn out.  Improvements to our pit area have been minimal.

One of our hometown companies is Spectrum Industries.  They are a leading manufacturer of furniture especially for the education, technology and government markets.  We are talking charging carts for laptops, podiums, desks, utility carts for Maker's Spaces, that sort of thing.  For a number of years we have had an informal relationship with them, among other things our practice field elements have generally been constructed with surplus materials from Spectrum and they have been generous contributors of other surplus stuff for our annual on line auction.

Last fall there was an opportunity to present information on our team and FIRST generally to their employees.  All of them, as it was at their annual meeting.  This lead to a fascinating conversation with their President and an off season project that we hope will raise the profile of the team while showcasing what Spectrum does. 

We decided that we'd build Ultimate Pit Equipment.

I've had four or five moments this past season where I had to pause and look again at something I had seen to make sure my eyes had not deceived me.  Our preliminary meeting with the Spectrum design and production staff was one of those moments when one of our student team members reached in his pocket and pulled out a thumb drive.  He had already studied the Spectrum product line and drawn up CAD designs of pit equipment based on these.  

Along the way of course there were some setbacks.  Different software programs do not always play well together, teen aged brains can miss things, the plan to create both pit carts and a matching robot transport cart with a power lift was just a little too ambitious.  But perhaps 90% of the initial design made it through to a final product that we were very happy to receive six days before our tournament.

From first concept meeting:

To fully realized product:

Robot, pit equipment and about half the team taking a bow.