WHAT IS THE DREAM PROJECT?
DREAM stands for Delivery of Resources and Equal Access Machining. This is a new initiative that team 865 took starting in the 2018 offseason in order to level the playing field and give teams opportunities. We realized that we’re very fortunate and have resources many FRC teams don’t, and wish to level the playing team by supplying other teams parts that higher-ranked teams such as ours have. The DREAM project is currently broken down into two components, our Open Machine Shop, and our Grant Writing Seminar.
OPEN MACHINE SHOP
Machining 1310's intake arms!
WARP7 has access to an abundance of resources from our school’s Engineering-Robotics SHSM (Specialist High-Skills Major). Over the years we've realized that many other teams don’t have access to machinery as we do, and created a program to allow other teams to use our machines or have us machine parts for them. The application form for the use of our machine shop can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/865machining. Our machines include a CNC mill, a CNC router, a CNC lathe, manual mills, and manual lathes. We take requests including (but not limited to) gussets, boxtube, and plates. Team 865 has supported seven teams through our machine shop: 5834, 771, 1310, 5719, 914, 6867, and 6135.
Boxtube engraving!
Machining polycarbonate for team 5834!
GRANT WRITING SEMINAR
Our first Grant Writing Seminar!
FIRST, unfortunately, is accompanied by many expenses, which leads to the shutdown of many rookie teams. Financial stability is crucial for teams, not only for a few seasons, but in the long-term. Often teams don’t know where to start or how to properly fund raise. To make it easier for rookie teams, we partnered with the Grant Review team at Motorola Solutions Foundation to create a Google Hangouts video call in which they spoke about how to properly go about finding, writing, and applying for grants, and worked one-on-one with us to answer any questions we had. They showed us and 5 other teams how the process works from both the point of view of the applicant and recipient. The goal is to grow this initiative and allow FIRST teams to survive more than a few years and be able to purchase all the tools, machinery and equipment they need. Click here for the link to the presentation.