Business
The Business guild is responsible for running our team as a business. They are in charge of safety training, photography and motion media, marketing, time and records management, and managing our website. The team identifies and maintains sponsorships while also providing monthly updates of our progress and activities. In order to win some specific awards at competitions, our business team must write submissions and talk with judges at competitions. During competitions they answer questions about our team, robot, and program. They have designed a scouting app that analyzes other robots and statistics.
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Mentor(s): Jason Thorpe, Sandi LeBlanc, Shawn Ward, Laura Baker, Sandy Wojciechowski, Jamie Hammond
CAD
The Computer Aided Design (CAD) guild uses SolidWorks (CAD software) to create 2D and 3D models of our team’s robot design. Students on this team verify that the robot will properly fit together and meet our weight limitation requirement of 125 pounds. The team produces detailed part and assembly drawings for other guilds to use to manufacture the robot. Competition season is short, and the CAD team must complete the initial robot design quickly. In the past few years this has led them to time-crunch and work uninterrupted for several hours during the start of the season.
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Mentor(s): Dal Brandon
Machining
The members of the Machining guild takes designs created by the CAD guild to create custom-made parts for our robot. They use a variety of powerful machinery such as band saws, belt sanders, and drill presses to complete parts. Build members must be trained and pass exams to be allowed to use each piece of equipment. Their tasks are difficult because the team has to create many parts within a short timeframe.
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Mentor(s): Paul DeVries, Randy Ollmann, Francie Clabaugh, Jim Dekker, Bernie Piehl, and Bob Jasper
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CNC
The Computer Numerical Control (CNC) guild manufactures parts as needed for the robot or other team requirements. They are able to make accurate parts efficiently using CAM software. They can make simple or complex parts as designed. The models are first designed in CAD and then sent to the CNC machine to be manufactured.
Having our own CNC machine has increased our productivity, and enabled us to manufacture parts ourselves and not purchase them.
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Mentor(s): Dal Brandon
Build
The Build guild utilizes parts created by the machining and CNC guilds,
assembling them to create a base for the robot. They use a combination of standardized parts such as nuts, bolts, and hex shafts along with custom-made parts. Assembling the base of metal components, the team carefully uses power equipment to attach bolts and nuts to the metal or wooden pieces created by the other guilds.
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A subsection of build is the Electronics team. Electronics members are responsible for wiring our robot. In order to wire the robot, they need to be able to solder and mend wires. They connect the wires on the robot and set up the motors, sensors, hydraulics, pulleys, battery connectors, and more.
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Mentor(s): Paul DeVries, Randy Ollmann, Francie Clabaugh, Jim Dekker, Bernie Piehl, and Bob Jasper
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Programming
Our Programming guild works on coding our robot. While many other guilds work on the physical robot, the programming team primarily focuses on making the robot move to accomplish missions. They code the robot from scratch each season to perform the tasks necessary to compete games. They use VS Code as the editor in Java to program the buttons for controlling the robot. The programming team in past years has needed to make the robot move and turn the robot, raise and lower its arms, and shoot balls into targets for points.
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Mentor(s): Dal Brandon, Josh Camarena, Tiebing Zhang
