Oregon Robotics Team Social at World of Speed

 Oregon FIRST Robotics Competition and FIRST Tech Challenge Teams gathered for a team social at the World of Speed Museum earlier this month in Wilsonville, OR. The World of Speed Museum provides an interactive and hands on experience to give their visitors a behind the scenes look into the world of motorsports. The museum encompasses many aspects of motorsports ranging from drag, road, and land racing, to motorcycle racing, NASCAR, and hydroplanes. 

Local teams enjoyed their time together through team building experiences while watching movies, playing games, and climbing on cars (only the allowed ones, of course). The popcorn was tasty and the soda was moist. Laughter and even tears were shed during the movies. Thank you to the World of Speed for graciously hosting our FIRST teams and to ORTOP for putting it together for us!

Check out the World of Speed here! The museum is a 501(c)(3) non-profit and is funded from people like you. Find out more about free admission for active duty military personnel.

Happy Holidays!

Team 2550 Skynet wants to wish you a Happy Holidays!

Thank you to all of those who support us throughout the year. We couldn't do it without you!

-Team 2550 Skynet

The Terminator

Do you recognize this movie?

Beth Lacey, one of our team mentors, created the Terminator head as a project after she wanted to learn more about 3D printing. Lacey said she "love[s] the Terminator movies" and it was a bonus when she knew she could gift it to team 2550, Skynet.

Lacey chose to print the Terminator head for two reasons: "One [,] I wanted to print something that my son would find cool and be able to show some of the 3D capabilities. Second...I realized I would be working with Skynet [and] I knew I had to make one."

The whole process took 18 hours to produce. With the inspiration from Lacey and because of our team name (Skynet), we intend on 3D printing an additional Terminator head for the top of our team flagpole. Were ready to take our team spirit to a new level.

-Team 2550 Skynet

Pre-Season Updates

With less than 50 days until build season, our team is working together to prepare for the future competitions. 

Mechanical and Programming Updates: Our latest side project has been to complete a test bed for our team programmers to utilize for practice code. This will enable both the programmers and mechanics to stay on schedule during the build season as each department now has a test bed (programmers) or the competition robot (mechanics.)

Business Updates: This past year, our marketing team has been working hard to recruit new members. As a team, we now have a total of 33 members and have improved our team diversity by reaching out to the community. We are continuing to work on diversification. One example of this is by providing Spanish promotional materials for our surrounding communities. Not only have we gained a consistent student member base, but we have also gained 5 new mentors. Welcome to all our new members. 

Lastly, with a larger team, we are emphasizing the importance of communication. As a team, we have begun to use the pproject management sofwatre, Trello, in order for students to communicate tasks through a virtual application. This has been a success so far and we continue to complete tasks on time while updating fellow team members.

If you are interested in stopping by, click here to view our team meet schedule. 

-Team 2550 Skynet 

Our New Español Page

Check out the new addition to our website now providing Spanish translations!

One of our biggest team goals this year is to make sure we are reaching a diverse community. We now have brochures and additional outreach materials available in Spanish for our local Spanish-speaking families. Thank you to those who have helped make this possible for our team! It is important that the parents of our local Spanish speaking families are aware of the options available for their students so please be sure to forward this onto any families you know that this might apply to.

-Team 2550 Skynet

2017 FRC Teaser

Have you checked out the FIRST Robotics Competition Teaser?

"Prepare to take flight" as we are only a month away from our 2017 competition.

-Team 2550 Skynet

Thank You Sponsors!

Stronghold, our 2016 competition season theme, was an exciting year and we would like to provide a big thank you to all of our support as we move into our next build season. Thank you to our sponsors, parents, teachers, and our surrounding community for all of your support. We could not have had a fun and exciting robotics season without your help.

Thank you for all your support! We look forward to our 2017 Steamworks competition season with you.

-Team 2550 Skynet

Congratulations to FIRST Scholarship Winner!

Congratulations to Skynet team member Gunnar Krueger to earning a FIRST scholarship!

Through Oregon Institute of Technology and FIRST, Krueger has earned a scholarship of $1500 per year to pursue mechanical engineering. Krueger has participated in FIRST robotics for about four years and has now graduated from Gladstone High School. After being one of our lead team mechanics, Krueger plans to pursue a career in mechanical engineering and is studying at Oregon Tech in Klamath Falls. 

Are you interested in FIRST scholarships? There are over 200 scholarships available this year with over $30 million dollars for scholarships alone! Click here to check out the 2017 FIRST scholarship opportunities to earn a scholarship like our team member, Gunnar Krueger.

-Team 2550 Skynet

Summer Recap

One of our biggest team goals is to spread the word of FIRST and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) while providing an opportunity for students to explore their interests. This past summer, we dedicated most of our time to getting to know some of our new team members and inviting new students to participate in our robotics team. We had around 12 active members attend our four weekly sessions.

 Our organize robotics lab

We also worked on splitting our robotics lab into two sections: a "clean" lab and a fabrication lab. The clean lab has been proposed for design, testing, and assembly needs. The fabrication lab has been designated for cutting, grinding, sawing, etc.. In addition to these work areas, we also continue to use our fully functioning machine shop and our robotics classroom for business and programming. This process has helped us accumulate the additional space we were needing and prove thorough organization for our team with 4 distinct work areas. We continue to work on using LEAN processes to organize our work spaces.

The Maker Faire at OMSI was another successful outreach event for us this summer as we shared our love of robotics and spread the word of FIRST to our younger community members.

-Team 2550 Skynet