FTC Centerstage Kickoff! The Season Officially begins

The FIRST Tech Challenge Centerstage season officially begins today! Our team 21346 BASIS: Some Assembly Required attended the Kickoff Event at Wagner High School. Hundreds of people were attending the event, and many other familiar faces that we had seen before from the previous meetings and conferences. The Centerstage season was announced with what looked like 200 people in the auditorium, and everyone seemed very interested because the game looked and sounded fun compared to the Power Play season.

But before that, we had many teams presenting their findings and each of their tips and tricks for the upcoming season. We had teams: SST: Wolves, Mechanical Mustangs Justify, Mechanical Mustangs No Boys Allowed, TechnoWizards, Spicy Ketchup, Basis Batteries Not Included, etc... Each one of their presentations was very intriguing and entertaining to listen to and learn from. Many teams talked about their failure in outreach and what they did to improve from the previous years to this one. A major that stood out to many of us was the Technowizard's presentation on their methods, such as Odometry and Finite State Machine. Many of the things they talked about are something that our team has never tried before but will love and try to implement in this season of CenterStage.

Frank L.'s Presentation on FDM 3D Printing

Our team member, Frank L., presented today, along with many others. The topic that he chose was the fundamentals and the basics of 3D printing, and attention to detail matters a lot in the printing process. He went in-depth on the different infills and the many daily problems people have with the 3D printing process. The one significant detail he showed during his presentation was using drawings and examples that others needed help to do on their PowerPoints. Even though putting samples on the presentation isn't required, those examples helped many people understand why it went wrong and the magnitude of things that needed to be considered when 3D printing. (Presentation is on the bottom of the blog )

Having to experience this event with our team and many other friends was an inspiring and excellent learning experience. We hope to be able to do this in the future years, and we hope to collaborate with many other teams. For now, we will start brainstorming ideas on the robot and our future plans for this season.

Presentation - Frank L.

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