I originally met David Brinza and David Toyne around 2010 when my son visited Team 980 with his Webelos Scout den. I was impressed at how they took the time to talk to the 10-year-olds, answer their questions, and encourage them to pursue their interests in robotics and STEM. My son was doing FIRST LEGO League, so seeing the high school robotics team was pretty inspiring. And I was pretty impressed with them, myself – JPL! Universal Studios! These guys were heavy hitters! Little did I know then how much they would influence the course of our lives!
Toyne and AndrewFlash forward to January 2013. My son has now aged out of his FLL team and is ready to join “the big team.” To say he was the proverbial “deer in the headlights” would be an understatement. It’s a big step to join a FIRST Robotics Competition team. But Brinza and Toyne had been mentoring Team 980 for a decade by that time, so they knew how to take a motivated rookie and turn him into an engineer. The photo is from my son’s first competition in March 2013 in which he’s working on the robot in the Team 980 pits with David Toyne, listening and watching as Toyne shows him something. It’s such a perfect Mentor/Student image, and one that was repeated so many times over the 2 decades that Brinza and Toyne were Lead and Design Mentors for Team 980. Two skilled, dedicated, caring individuals who inspired so many young engineers to pursue their ambitions. Andrew winning Dean’s List with the mentors that guided him there. 2017
Thanks to David Brinza, I’ve now been a mentor on Team 980 since 2015. FIRST has become a huge part of my life – mentoring, volunteering and advocating. I’m not an engineer, so this isn’t anything that I ever thought I could do, but just as Brinza and Toyne encouraged so many young engineers, they also encouraged me as a mentor. And the skills that I’ve developed as an FRC mentor I use in all aspects of my life.
Which brings us to June 2023. David Brinza has retired from a 35 year career at NASA/JPL and is relocating out of the area. David Toyne is overseeing an amazing green technology project in Africa. While they remain mentors for Team 980, they will no longer be with us in person on a daily basis, and it falls to me and my co-lead mentor, Alex, to continue the tradition of inspiring the future at Team 980.
I can’t fully express my gratitude for all that Brinza and Toyne brought to Team 980, except to compare my “deer in the headlights” son to the confident, capable Team Captain that he became 5 years later. I speak for the whole team when I say, “Thank you.”
-Robin, Co-Lead Mentor of Team 980 From left to right: Fab Mentor Fred, Business and Outreach Mentor Robin, Controls Menotr Alex, Lead Mentor David Brinza, Design Mentor David Toyne
“Aerospace Valley Regional”, Eastside High School, Lancaster, March 29 to April 1, Season, 2023
Take a moment to breathe. In and out. Okay. Let’s get into it.
Frankie before AVRRecollecting ourselves, we put Frankie’s forearm back on, tightened some bolts, and replaced it’s grabber with a simplified version with compliant wheels (for grip, not to spin), we were ready to send Frankie back into battle with a renewed sense of (albeit, wary) confidence.
Lancaster. Bright and early, and I do mean early early. There was freezing wind and snow on the ground. Everybody half asleep as they pile into the venue building, some of the lucky ones with coffee in their hand. Competition starts relatively smoothly, going to practice matches, programming new arm positions, and new autonomous modes. Warming up (both literally and figuratively), the drivers began getting used to Frankie’s… eccentricities… critical to our success.
sheared axle #?Delightfully, no motors were smoked this time… But then, the weight of the arm put too much stress on the solid aluminum shoulder hex shaft, sheering it clean in half. Not one — or two— but three of them clean in half. As the competition wore on, Frankie became more… eccentric… as the drive team became better, canceling one another out.
…the result of a very angry boltFinishing out the competition in 18/36, it’s likely we would have been picked for eliminations if our drivetrain was not being weird the last two matches and we didn’t have to go to lunch with our robot on its side, the drivetrain half off, and our flag sticking out the top.
However, after some time to fix everything up, it ran smoothly in the nick of time. When one member of the final alliances, the 1197 Torbots, needed more time to fix their robot, we were ready to step up for 3512 Spartatronics and 2659 RoboWarriors. Despite getting a cone (or a few) stuck under us, we managed to even out the triple balance and help win the match.
Undead as ever, Frankie survived and made it out of competition in one piece with no further repairs necessary. Greater than the sum of its parts, we are proud to have Frankie in our history as a testament to perseverance through some… eccentri- (Ok you took out “jank” everywhere I used it and put in that super long word that was just a nice way of saying “janky!” Leave at least this last one!) … … …
Jankiness.
— Luci, Captain of Team 980 (with ‘assistance’ from Alex, Controls Mentor of Team 980) Kian 😀 David & David Mr. Pig and Benny Frankie… meant to do that
“Build Season”, Burbank High STEAM Lab, February 4 to March 17, Season, 2023
“Los Angeles Regional”, Da Vinci High School, March 16 to March 19, Season, 2023
Does anyone actually read these things? For those few out there, this is what you have been waiting for: the grand culmination from the buildup throughout this season. However, simply asking how our robot did is not such an easy question this time around — rankings or points scored or pictures do not do this robot justice.
The past month has led us through the rest of our build season all the way to competition. However, we can’t start there, let’s start with the hectically time-warping back and forth that plagued us the last month leading up to Los Angeles Regional (LAR).
Actually, let’s start over. Building a robot is not easy by any means. Trying to do it in six weeks? Even worse. However, our team pulled through and kept rising to each challenge, overcoming them. Every. Single. Time. Smoking out a motor with their arm. Finagling with the plunger grabber (intended for grip, not to… well, “plunge” game pieces). Retightening ever-loosening loctited-bolts. No matter what, the heart of every single one of us endured. We walked into LAR with a complete robot (massive thanks to Sam, Lead Mentor at 1148 Harvard Westlake Robotics).
LAR. 2023. We had been there before with 2022’s Kitty, and this is historically our “home” regional. The team was ready to take on the competition… until our arm smoked another motor.
It’s strange, you never forget the smell of burnt motor. Worse yet, how much it lingers.
We tried to make it work. Motors upon motors smoked. Faced with a difficult choice: do we try to get the three-jointed arm working in the face of its own self destruction or do we choose to amputate, saving the rest of the robot?
We chose to save it. Taking off the forearm joint, we attached the wrist with the grabber onto the elbow joint, switching the shoulder motor to two (massive thanks to Terry from Team 7185 Tartan Robotics at Glendora High School for giving us the materials), and… the gearing on it was so strong it could hold itself completely horizontal with no power at all. As impressive as it was scary, it was certainly the fix necessary to keep us on the field (nothing beats the pride twisted with horror in Controls Mentor Alex’s face, the mad scientist in him was quite excited).
Let’s take a second from the chaos of that arm: it was stressful trying to get it working. For the driver and I, trying to make sure we could control everything on the field was a challenge as well. In the heat of competition — deafening cheers, blasting music, blinding lights — one thing rang clear:
“980!”
In the photos on the right you can see our team in the stands with 980 signs, something I had never experienced before — they were cheering… for us? For us! I remember turning to our driver to find the same glowing smile on his face — he heard them too. I almost cried knowing that the heart of our people — our team — was with us all the way — from Burbank to the field.
Managing to last until the very end, Frankie went out with another surprise for the team when it twisted, yes twisted, a solid aluminum hex shaft in it’s last few rounds. Startled, we quickly adapted to make a bandaid fix, putting Frankie back onto the field for the last two rounds of the regional.
All in all, Frankie endured. The drive team and pit crew endured. Team 980 – we – endured. With all the challenges being thrown at us, we continuously proved our heart – our care for what we had created – could not be swayed. That demonstrates why this creation is not Team 980’s Monster.
— Luci, Captain of Team 980 Impact team (Elan, Maggie, Yogini) Drive team (Kelsey, Alex, Rylan, Sydney, Luci)
“Build Season”, Burbank High STEAM Lab, January 9 – February 4, Season, 2023
In the rush of building a robot, time flies seemingly more than usual. Through the last month, the Thunderbots have begun building their drivetrain with a standard West Coast drive (with a few modifications to their frame to account for getting onto the Charging Station or “seesaw”). Nearing the end of the design for their arm and grabber, they are well on their way to a powerful robot.
On the controls side, they have been refining their electrical skills and training rookies while the programming side has been working with Kitty (2022 robot) to reconfigure its IMU and develop a balancing program and velocity controlled drive.
Let me take a moment to talk about the rookies for a moment. After the initial hesitance (that most all new students have), they flourished. Diving headfirst into designing and prototyping, they have demonstrated incredible ingenuity and creativity approaching the season’s challenge.
Not only have the rookies flourished under the pressure, the student leaders and departmental leads have as well. Taking in a significant amount of people under their department – especially with the pressure of creating an entire robot from scratch? That is no easy feat. Yet, they have navigated it wonderfully; balancing training and the work of their departments, they have laid a strong foundation for the rookies to build themselves upon.
As Captain, I cannot be more proud of every single person on our team for their dedication, ingenuity, and passion; as a student, I cannot be more proud to find myself growing in such fantastic company. From the robot, to leadership, to rookies, Team 980 is showing great promise for this upcoming season!
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