4143, MARS/WARS from Metamora, IL. We're a 3rd year team.
Almost entirely done in the school. The students are blessed wtih a vo-tech area with CNC mills and conventional lathes. The students and one mentor put together a 2 axis plasma cutter too. Weld shop (the students do all the welding, including TIG on AL). No shortage of computers to run Creo on. Great sponsor support. Truly a lucky situation, but some of that luck is self-made. One mentor has a machine shop nearby, which is mostly used for practice field, some specialized machining (tube benders, etc) and is where we do most of the fab for field components (e.g. the pyramid last year). This year we did all the field components in wood.
The difference between this year (where modeling truly led fab) and last year (where we had a little of that) and our rookie year (where we did all we could just to get a reasonable top level assembly done by the regional) is tremendous. Things fit. The students loved building to print. We can make spares...all goodness.
