FIRST Robotics - A Laser Summer Afternoon

Although the FIRST robotics season runs from early January into spring tournament time really good teams get that way by off season work.

This year we are facing an unusual situation.  About half of our current team just graduated. So we have "job openings".

We'll do some recruiting at the high school level but for our summer project we are  working on developing the "farm system" in the middle school ranks.

We invited kids to attend summer sessions based on participation in assorted middle school robotics and programming activities.  

We had 16 take us up on the offer and for our kick off session I think we had 13 of them on hand.  This is a very good turnout for a lazy summer afternoon.

And there is some talent down on the farm.  We had sessions on materials used in robot building, on ways to fasten metal parts, on simple Lego Robot programming and on CAD design.  All areas went well but the CAD group really surprised me.

The software was new to them all.  But after about 90 minutes they had read a blueprint and generated a CAD model that could be put on the laser cutter and made.

Here it is:

Ah, the one in the foreground.  The other part is still a bit beyond them.

A simple part but this is the sort of skill most students only learn much later.  These are kids just finishing 6th and 7th grade.

We are looking forward to having them make it to the Big Club soon.