Downingtown Area Robotics
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FRC Team 1640
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- About FIRST Lego League
About Downingtown Area Robotics
Downingtown Area Robotics in Downingtown Pennsylvania, is a group of Students, Mentors and Sponsors, that knows it's important to get students interested in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) based careers. We do this through competition robotics. Our robots work in teams of two or three, working together as team on a common goal (not the robots that try to destroy each other.)
Driving the robots in Competitions is a small part of what we do. From the beginning we teach each roboteer valuable life skills like communications, planning, getting a group consensus, cooperation and negotiations. We also bring to life STEM skills in areas of electronics, mechanics, pneumatics, programming by planning, designing, building (and sometimes rebuilding), testing and driving our robots.
Steering Committee
People
Thank you very much to all of our sponsors!
We would like to express our appreciation to all of our Mentors that work with the roboteers on a day to day basis.
Each student that worked on a robot is listed with that robot. Across the years we have graduated some very impressive students, you may be or soon will be working for our Alumni.
And a final thank you to all the parents that help us out.
Engineering
We do a lot of engineering. There are a lot of details and information that go into making a robot right. For example if you are going to drill a hole for an 8-32 screw you use a #16 drill, but if you want to tap the hole (thread it) you use a #29 drill. Most of us can't remember all that, so we've created a series of pages that holds all that information.
Click here for Engineering references and links.
Safety
We are very safety oriented, we have a safety captain to monitor all aspects of our build process.
All of our middle school students are trained on hand tools before they are allowed to use them. They use hacksaws and files while wearing safety glasses. Middle schoolers are supervised by either a mentor or one of our senior FRC students while they cut and form metal parts.
All of our high school students are trained on the power tool before they use it. Safety eyeware is worn at all times in the shop. First year FRC roboteers may only use power tools under the supervision of a mentor or one of our senior FRC students.
We hold regular safety meetings to reinforce our safety policy.
Website Info
As of 1 April 2012 there were over 385 pages of content, 4300 pictures (with captions) and 420 documents that described the robots. It's steady growth from May 2011 when there were over 330 pages of content, 3500 pictures (with captions and 310 documents. Our first annual snap shot was in April 2010 there were over 280 pages of content, 2500 pictures (with captions) and 280 documents. You can see how much the site has grown!
If you have problems finding a specific page, try the search box in the left hand menu. Just type a few words about what you are searching for, it works just like Google.
We often get the question, Why a Wiki? and the answer is collaboration! All of the members of Downingtown Area Robotics can update the site. This allows each individual group (like the mechanical or programming teams) to keep information current. While other websites have sizzle, we think its more important to have lots of relevant content. For example all the details of our award winning Pivot Drive are online, from the first early prototypes to the most current drawings.
Our team members use the pages to describe and track build information, strategy, ToDo items for build sessions, parts orders, etc. Many other teams have internal wiki's they use for the same purpose, ours is on the web so you can see the inner workings of our team.
If you have other questions or comments please contact us at FRC1640@gmail.com.
The Downingtown Area Robotics website is made with valid XHTML and CSS and complies with Section 508 accessibility guidelines. This site is powered by MediaWiki, the same software that powers Wikipedia.
