Bear Metal
Introduction
I was on the FRC team at my high school, Bear Metal, for 3 years. FRC, or First Robotics Competition is a high school program in which schools all over the world compete annually, to design, build and program a 115 lb robot, to compete in a 3 on 3 format. Participating in this was incredibly formative for me. I still will forever be in debt to all of the older students, mentors, and supporters of that team for giving me a life long passion for engineering (Special thanks to Mr. Collins and Dan Beres). In my three years on the team, we won more events than in any other three year stretch in the history of the team. This includes a district championship win and becoming the team with the most wins historically in the entire PNW.
2024 Season - President
As president my main goal was to overhaul the way we did our prototyping, pre-season training, design conceptualization and our team communication.
Team communication
There were countless issues of design changes not being properly communicated to manufacturing, the manufacturing team not knowing what parts needed to be made in what order, the assembly group not knowing the parts were done ect. The team was hovering around 100 people, and when you’re still using lines of communication that you used when you were 30 people, 10 years ago, it doesn’t hold up. Because of this, I implemented a small interdisciplinary group to which I was the head of, the System Engineers. Their job was to over see the team communication, implement fixes to systemic issues, decide technical priorities, and follow different mechanisms and prototypes from start to finish. This group under my lead was able to reduce the total time from design to finished product by a week, in an 8 week deadline.
Pre-Season Training
I had gotten incredibly tired of the amount of members that existed in the club because there parents dragged them in by the ear every year. To fix this, I implemented a frame work to each sub team that formalized every members training, and their progress. That way if they clearly were not applying themselves, and they would fail the test at the end of the training deadline, we could show to them and their parents that they were taught all of the material. This allowed us to cut more members than ever, which I would not wear as a point of pride, however I can personally say that every person that was cut, did not want to be there.
Prototyping
The large reason I implemented group of System Engineers was to clean up our prototyping. What would happen is a group would have a prototype, and then all we would we hear back is anecdotal evidence about how “it performed great” then it was never followed up on. The group of system engineers and I completely changed this. Having a group who’s entire job was to get a wholistic perspective on all of these prototypes allowed us to make much more informed decisions.
Design conceptualization
Historically the team had two design reviews every year, the preliminary, and critical design review for the robot. However, after talking with a professional system engineer (thanks Hans Hoppe), he suggested we did a system design review as well. So with his help, I put together a system design review, which we would hold on day 2 of brainstorming. This meeting would get the team together and decide not on what mechanisms we wanted, but rather what strategy, design philosophies, and robot architecture was important to us. This was a huge help, looking back the 2023 robot was a terrible concept, executed brilliantly. The 2024 robot was a beautiful concept, with beautiful execution, that fell short with a few technical oversights. I’d much rather fall short technically, then fall short due to poor decision making, as I feel one leads to much better learning as an engineer.
Shoot out Stabilizers
It was a goal of mine to not do any design my senior year, so other members have their moment and I could focus on systemic improvements. However, at a certain point timelines were tight and the Lead Designer asked me to step in. The problem was regarding the climb. That year, you had to climb on a horizontal chain, and place a game piece in a small slot. However, out dynamics were such that the rear of our robot was too heavy, and would fall away from the chain. The other challenge was we were already at the legal limit for motors, so we needed a solution that driven or triggered by another mechanism. So in one very late night, two nights before competition, I designed the shootouts. Here is 17 year old me to explain:
2023 Season - Lead Designer
As Lead Designer I learned a lot about technical project management and leadership. I help trainings, hosted design reviews, and delegated all design tasks. I was also a key voice in the overall architecture of the robot.
Side Climb
My personal contribution was the side climb. It was a unique take on the challenge, and we were the only team in the world successfully able to pull off a climb of this technique, in fact, the team that ending up winning the entire world championship, attempted to copy my design, but they were unable to make it work. I attempted to give them assistance, but they declined my help. Here is a demo video:
Here is 16 year old me to explain:
2022 Season - Manufacturing Member
This season I learned how to CAD, CAM and run the CNC mill and CNC lathe. This gave me a huge head start in manufacturing and is what landed me my incredible job at the cougshop.