Our team is available to all Montgomery County High School students who have taken Robotics I, Manufacturing I, or AP Computer Science. If you have taken these and are interested, contact your teacher. Being a part of our team is an invaluable opportunity to learn skills that will carry students into their professional field of choice and can be the deciding factor in a job application.
Our team consists of four subteams, each with a different purpose.
Our fabrication subteam members are responsible for manufacturing every robot part and leverage a wide array of machines in the team shop. Fabrication team members use CNC routers, a high pressure abrasive waterjet, a CNC plasma cutter, multiple 3D printers, and a variety of manual machines including lathes, mills, and bandsaws to quickly and precisely prepare parts for each robot.
Our design subteam uses Onshape, an online CAD (Computer Aided Design) system, to design every part that goes into our robots. Every year we design, review, and revise hundreds of custom parts for every subsystem on our robots. We use Fusion 360 to generate CAM (Computer Aided Manufacturing) files that are used on our CNC machines. The design team also works closely with the fabrication team on prototyping robot mechanisms as we move through the engineering design process.
The controls subteam handles programming and wiring all of our robots. We program in Java and make extensive use of the FRC WPIlib library. We try to emphasize advanced controls topics and work to advance our capabiliites, in 2023 we focused on path planning, AprilTag vision systems, and pose estimation. Aside from programming, controls team members are responsible for a variety of electrical tasks including soldering, updating firmwares, and diagnosing problems to make sure the robot is functional on the field.
The outreach and awards team shows that our team is about more than robotics. We have an extensive outreach program to spread STEM enthusiasm and education throughout our community. This ranges from small, hands-on demonstrations to large-scale fairs and festivals. Our team annually applies for the Impact Award, the most prestigious award in FIRST. We are always looking for outstanding essayists and presenters to carry our team's legacy into the future.
