Supporting high school robotics

[trlvn]

I was thinking about offering to help the local high school robotics club. Has anybody had any experience with this or something similar?

Both my kids are past high school now and neither was involved in robotics when they were in school. Nonetheless, I know the local school has an active club. I imagine they need a few custom made pieces to help them assemble largely off-the-shelf components. They send me a drawing (maybe rough?) and I reply whether I can make what they want and how long it is likely to take. I think it is up to the kids to actually design their robot.

Thoughts?

Craig

 

[PeterT]

Buddy of mine was deep into this in Calgary through his daughter's high school team. He is a pretty tech savvy guy & familiar with working under pressure for a living. Put it this way, he was glad when it was done after a couple years. But they were also quite competition driven. I think it could be rewarding because a lot of kids just don't have the vocational training as prior generations so good way to give back & forge new friendships etc. What they lack in 'how to drill a hole & solder a wire' they make up for in coding & CAD design & fearless hardware hacking that makes me feel like a dinosaur. I guess like any club or organization, they can have their 'people', meaning good & not so great. A common thing I heard is they can draw some really cool gadgets in CAD but not have a full appreciation of how that actually gets made or where materials come from & in how much time. So that's part of the 'fun' of you being in the middle, especially with manual machines. I guess the only way is have a look-see, be clear about what you can & cannot do, see how it goes.

BTW there are many levels of robot competitions. Some are very kit orientated which is by design to control costs & somewhat maintain parity. On the other end of spectrum is anything goes & you can see big money behind it, particularly corporate resources through college level teams. I saw some stuff at a show that looked like NASA was in the supply chain. I asked one kid who did the beautiful TIG welding & he just grinned & said 'none of us'. Some of the battle bots are quite cool. I stay away because I need another hobby like a hole in the head LOL

 

[trlvn]

I wondered about deadlines for competitions. Like you say, I'd have to stress to them that I'm not a CNC production shop at their disposal. There is lots of stuff I can't do for various reasons. And I might not have the time to do stuff by their deadlines. But if they can farm out some simple parts to me, maybe that frees up time for someone else to do other things.

Craig

 

[CalgaryPT]

I was thinking about offering to help the local high school robotics club. Has anybody had any experience with this or something similar?

Both my kids are past high school now and neither was involved in robotics when they were in school. Nonetheless, I know the local school has an active club. I imagine they need a few custom made pieces to help them assemble largely off-the-shelf components. They send me a drawing (maybe rough?) and I reply whether I can make what they want and how long it is likely to take. I think it is up to the kids to actually design their robot.

Thoughts?

Craig

You should talk to @Janger . He was/is involved in this.

 

[Janger]

Yah my buddy Max is the local president of first robotics. There are chapters world wide. Google it’s pretty neat. I’ve seen some competitions the kids build some good stuff - high school level. I’ve had the kids over and they’ve done some fabricating & welding in my shop. Usually they are doing everything at the school shops but sometimes they need more time and the school is closed. I’m happy enough to let them tinker - they have pretty good skills and don’t need much guidance.