The high school robotics teams lent a hand in helping get our 3rd Grade Robotics program up and running with their new LEGO Mindstorm EV3 kits. The parts needed to be sorted, kits needed to be organized, and the bricks needed to be named and have the firmware updated. Thanks to the 80 hours of work (20 students x 4 hours), all of the 3rd graders in McMinnville schools will have their kits ready this week!
For the opening of the MHS new Careers in Technical Education building, our robotics teams eagerly shared the start of their robot chassis and informed the public about how robotics is an exceptional way to put engineering in action.
During the last week of June we volunteered at our 8th annual middle school Girls' STEM camp. A few of the girls from our teams assisted our coach in teaching a class at the camp. For a few years, we have been very lucky to have three vinyl cutters in our district, widening our opportunities for fundraising with the vinyl decals. We got these and both corresponding programs, Rhinoceros 5 and Graphtec Studio, as well as training, from nearby Sherwood School District. We greatly appreciated their help, so now we are working to give back, outreach, and share this fun tool with as many kids as we can.
by K. Kam
NWUAV produces the engines for unmanned vehicles. They are a sister company to NW Rapid and support FIRST robotics teams. They do campus tours to show students about their field of engineering and we were grateful for the chance to learn more about how engineering are designing, testing, and revising in our own community.
by B. Nice
During the local 2017 McMinnville UFO Festival we shared with our community the pleasure of FIRST. In a shared booth, we sold products like glassware, 3-D printed fidget spinners, and vinyl decals to the public and successfully raised funds and outreached, to locals and to the many who travel across the country for the festival. We also had our own float in the parade, with our team numbers on a large banner on the side of a truck. We blew bubbles for the kids to pop, and drove last season's robots in a short trailer for the crowd to see, the physical amazing outcome FTC gives us.
by K. Kam
One of the ways we have connected with our local community is a Robotics Clinic, where we were invited to work with young kids to have fun and experiment with robotics, similar to the engineering design our FTC robotics teams do. We taught them how to use a simple program to control a small robot, made from a LEGO robotics kit, complete with different types of sensors. Our teams sometimes help kids with the programming so that they can understand how it works. The kids are allowed to program the robot to do whatever they want, allowing them to think outside the box and encourage them to get involved in more robotics programs in the future.
by M. Crain
Both MHS teams, 11441 and 11442, sent representatives to present at an all school assembly at Grandhaven Elementary School. We briefly talked about how each of our robots work and we also talked about FIRST. When asked who wanted to participate in robotics, almost the entire gym raised their hands! We wanted to raise awareness for robotics opportunities and ways to get involved.
by L. Denney
Duniway FTC (FIRST Tech Challenge) robotics teams Lord of the Gears and Aftershock hosted a our 3rd Annual Robotics Night. The event was open to the community of McMinnville, and was represented by the six McMinnville Robotics Alliance teams that participated. Also, there was one FRC (FIRST Robotics Challenge) team from McMinnville High School that attended, which was Nerd Herd. All teams spent the evening showing off their robots, sharing their programs, and even helping the younger students get their first glimpse of the opportunities available. The evening also allowed guests to program an NXT robot; similar to what the FLL level of robotics utilizes for their tournaments. As a conclusion to the night, there was a bunch of picture taking, awe inspired children and adults, and teams getting to interact with one another again after competition season. Robotics club member's minds are sure to be brimming with excitement in anticipation of the 2017-18 season!
by R. Joel
Our visit to NW Rapid was an amazing experience. I would recommend anyone to go and visit this company because they had so many unique things that I have never seen before. The way that this company 3-D prints things is so cool to me. They put down a very thin layer of this material and then a laser comes and that is how it is formed. It's called Selective Laser Sintering (SLS). They let us get the finished product and explained that if people wanted to print things that would be fragile, this is the best option. Freestanding 3-D printers are harder to print things that are fragile because there is more of a chance that the object that you print will break. This company is an amazing company that cares about what they do and about bring engineers back to our community to work in cutting edge technical jobs.
by K. Morain