FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC): Getting my feet wet
FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) is the middle school division of the FIRST robotics organization, where students design and build robots within an 18” x 18” x 18” footprint using extruded aluminum beams and a variety of kit components. These robots require a high level of hands-on skill and are ideally designed in CAD prior to fabrication.
Participating in FTC provided me with a strong foundation in essential engineering principles, including effective brainstorming, translating ideas into functional designs through CAD, and delegating tasks within a team to meet project goals. During my two years on Team 11109 Pirate Tekerz, I received one-on-one mentorship and CAD training from a professional engineer and was responsible for the majority of the team’s CAD work. In addition to design, I contributed to fabrication testing and served on the drive team.
The second year on the team was greatly impacted by COVID-19, which required us to adapt and find ways to build the robot remotely. To address this challenge, I designed the robot to be modular and developed a detailed CAD model, accompanied by comprehensive drawings. These were distributed to team members along with the necessary materials. Each subassembly was built individually before being assembled by a designated member. Remarkably, nearly everything fit and functioned as intended from the start, exceeding my expectations. After fine-tuning, the robot was competition-ready, and we advanced to state for the first time in the team’s history.
Overall, this experience helped me build a solid grounding in engineering fundamentals, while strengthening my skills in collaboration, design, and fabrication—skills that have served me well and continue to support my growth throughout my college career.
Below, you’ll find various documents and photos from my time on the team, along with the CAD models and drawings I created.
The 2019-2020 Robot
Picture of the 2019-2020 robot
The 2020-2021 Robot
Picture of the 2020-2021 robot, click to see gallery of build montage
State Match 3
This is some match footage of our 2020-2021 robot competing at "state" however due to COVID it was all remote
CAD from 2019-2020 season
This was literally my first CAD model created in Autodesk Inventor. It was an incomplete model, in picture above you can see the real robot.
Open 3D
Viewer
CAD from 2020-2021 season
This is the second robot I cadded, it was far more detailed and this CAD model was used to drive our remote robot assembly. Special thanks to Mentor David Dammann for teaching me an immense amount about engineering here.
Open 3D
Viewer
Portfolio
This is the portfolio, a document the team put together summarizing the 2020-2021 season and presenting many technical details
Open
Assembly Drawings
During our COVID year we had to assemble the robot remotely, so with the help of Mentor David, I created a set of drawings which the rest of the team used to build the robot. When it was all assembled, everything fit together!
Open full
document