Starting a new FTC team and building a robot in less than a month
A Little Backstory
I am now a Senior in high school and am a 3 year alumni of FTC Team 15031 BoltBusterZ. 15031 was.. for lack of a better word, bad. I don’t want to entirely disparage my time spent 15031, but I can’t say that I miss it. We were a school team that was very limited by our situation and our administration, so I can not say that it was an amazing time. We ended practically last in the league three years in a row and it kinda sucked. I resolved to do my absolute best this year, but last minute, the day before registration ended for the season, my school told me we would not be able to get a coach for the team.
A Scramble for a Spot
When I found out about our school, I emailed Jonathan Wieland, the Illinois State PDP trying to get a slot. UNfortunately, at the time, he told me that there were no remaining slots inside the Illinois Central child league. In fact, there were only slots left in Rockford and Western leagues. That was… not going to work, given I live nearly 2.5 hours away from either league. I emailed back begging him to get me another slot, also getting many other teams in the state, as well as outside of the state, to email him and ask him to extend central’s slots to include me. Funnily enough, the next day I recieved an email that I found very funny. it read:
“Upon further analysis, we appear to have room for another team in Central”
I choose to believe that this really meant that he was tired of the emails.
So, yay, I have a slot. Now what?
1: Rizzing up my school administration
To save me a good sum of money, I did have to convince my school to let me borrow things from them that they were not using, given there was not a school team this year. It took some convincing. However, my annoying wonderful AD finally let me take it. I got hubs, batteries, gb Mecanum Wheels, motors, and the field tiles and walls. That was a huge start.
2: Crowdfunding my registration costs
Thanks to my parents being friends with so many people, they posted on their facebook accounts requesting donations for the new team. Everyone was wonderful and donated more than enough to cover my registration costs. I also recieved large personal donations from Thea, as well as Bruce and Karen, who I can not thank enough for how much their donations mean to me. They helped make my team possible and made my senior year so much better, so agian, thank you all <3.
3: Sponsors!
Due to the tiny notice between when we registered and our first competetion on November 9th, we rushed to find sponsors for our season. Thanks to the Hack Foundation, I was able to get us a team financial system that allowed us to Solicit donataions as a nonprofit. We went to many local buisnesses and were able to get some sponsors, as well as reaching out online to other companies.
Polymaker
We were able to apply in Polymakers program for sponsoring FIRST teams and we got a large amount of filament for free (200$ worth as of now!). Since then, my 3d Printer has logged over 50 hours printing just that filament.
Colmac Coil Midwest
One of the first buisnesses I had recived word back from locally was Colmac Coil. They offered to laser cut any part that i needed as well as financially sponsoring us. Now, nearly every single metal part on my robot is a part that they laser cut in house for me. I confess i do feel bad for how much I have asked them to cut. I really appreciate everything, the custom plates make my robot look awesome.
Hudsons Drug shop
Andy Hudson, who owns Hudson’s Drug shop, also was a large doner for us, I appreciate it immensely.
4: Discounts!
It is always best to see if you can get a discount for something as a robotics team. With much work, i was able to get Misumi USA’s university discount, which i used to buy 10 SAR240 slides that I use on my robot. I also got the GoBILDA FTC discount and made sure to use my REV discount code on the rare ocassions that I needed to buy things from REV
5: Caffine
I did not sleep much. That i think is self explanatory
6: Find an amazing local team
FTC12971 CTRL-Y has been fantastic this year. They have offered me access to their shop whenever I needed to go, and we have practiced lots together. I hope that we have a chance to competet together more this season :)