Team Handbook

Start here if you are new to Team 9668. The handbook is the shared baseline for working safely, learning the robot, documenting decisions, and becoming useful without waiting for someone to explain everything from scratch.

Start here

Your first goal is not to know everything. It is to work safely, ask clear questions, finish a small task, and leave enough evidence that another person can understand what you did.

1. Learn the shop rules, emergency procedures, required PPE, and who can authorize tool use.
2. Get access to the team’s approved communication, files, code, and documentation spaces.
3. Choose a discipline to start, then learn how it connects to the full robot.
4. Shadow a task, complete a supervised task, and document it.
5. Ask for review before a change affects safety, cost, schedule, interfaces, or the competition robot.

Safety and shop readiness

Stop work whenever the task, tool, energy state, or expected result is unclear. Speed never outranks safety. Follow school, team, manufacturer, and event rules; use required PPE; secure loose clothing and hair; keep guards in place; and get trained authorization before operating equipment.

• Know where emergency stops, exits, first-aid supplies, fire equipment, and adult supervisors are.
• Inspect the tool and work area before starting.
• De-energize and verify before working on electrical, pneumatic, or moving systems.
• Use a spotter or second person when the procedure requires one.
• Report every injury, near miss, damaged tool, and unsafe condition immediately.

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Design, CAD, and prototyping

Good design begins with a requirement, not a favorite mechanism. Define the job, constraints, interfaces, success test, and failure modes before polishing geometry.

• Write measurable requirements and identify assumptions.
• Prototype the highest-risk unknowns first.
• Record dimensions, materials, setup, video, measurements, and conclusions.
• Design for assembly, service, wiring, inspection, manufacturing capability, and weight.
• Name files consistently and use the team’s approved version-control or release process.
• Review interfaces before manufacturing: mounting, motion envelope, fasteners, power, signals, controls, and access.

Manufacturing and assembly

Make parts from released information, not memory. Confirm material, revision, dimensions, tolerances, workholding, toolpath, and inspection method before cutting.

• Use the correct drawing or CAM release and verify stock.
• Plan the operation, workholding, tool selection, speeds, feeds, and safe clearance.
• Deburr, clean, inspect, label, and record nonconforming parts.
• Use consistent fasteners and assembly practices where possible.
• Mark completed work and update the build record when the part changes.

Electrical systems

Build electrical systems that are safe, labeled, strain-relieved, serviceable, protected from motion, and easy to diagnose under competition pressure.

• Follow the current FIRST rules and official documentation for legal components and wiring.
• Use appropriate wire, connectors, protection, routing, and termination methods.
• Label devices and both ends of important conductors.
• Keep power, signals, pneumatics, and moving mechanisms organized and protected.
• Maintain a device map and note firmware, IDs, ports, and configuration.
• Inspect mechanically and electrically before applying power.

Programming and controls

Software should make robot behavior understandable, testable, recoverable, and safe. Small reviewed changes beat mysterious last-minute rewrites.

• Use the team repository, branches, meaningful commits, and review process.
• Keep hardware configuration and operator controls documented.
• Separate mechanism behavior, commands, autonomous logic, and diagnostics clearly.
• Test on the safest available surface before moving to the full robot.
• Log faults and key state so failures can be reproduced.
• Tag or record the exact software version used for competition.

Testing and competition readiness

A test needs a question, setup, owner, safety boundary, expected result, observation, and decision. “We drove it around” is practice; a recorded cycle-time or failure test is evidence.

• Use inspection checklists and pre-power checks.
• Test individual functions before integrated sequences.
• Measure cycle time, accuracy, repeatability, temperature, current, wear, and recovery where useful.
• Practice realistic field cycles and common failure recovery.
• Record pit changes, match observations, and post-event lessons.

Documentation standard

Every meaningful record should answer: What were we trying to do? What changed? What evidence did we collect? What did we decide? What should the next person do?