At Thomas Jefferson High School for Science & Technology, all freshmen are required to take the Design & Technology Class. This was one of the big reasons I wanted to go here. We got to spend the whole year learning cool skills such as programming micro-chips, soldering, using power tools, and 3D-modeling. At the end of the year, as a culmination of all these skills, we held a robot competition.
We used all these skills to 3D model and print parts that we used to build a robot from scratch! Here is the one I built. My robot used a set of 3D printed gears to maximize torque.
My robot was the “strongest” in my class but lost in the finals to a robot that used a “winch assembly” purchased in Japan…The rules committee is still debating! Ha ha!