Robbie goes to the SkillsUSA Nationals + Pictures!

[RobbieThe1st]

First off, here's a link to all my pictures. You may want to keep a tab with this open while you read my post, to follow along.
Image-manager: http://robbiethe1st.afraid.org/images/SkillsUSA-09/view.php?mode=2
Raw directory(includes videos): http://robbiethe1st.afraid.org/images/SkillsUSA-09/

What is SkillsUSA?
SkillsUSA is a competition-program where students compete in one of over 90 skills-related contests ranging from things like Plumbing and Wiring, to Photography to drafting related stuff.
As a competitor, you first compete in the Regionals, against people in your region(area of your state). If you are in the top few of that contest, you go on to the State level, where you compete with the best of your state. Whoever takes first in this contest goes on to the national level, and competes with the champions from all across the nation.
Do note that if there aren't enough people to have a regional competition in your particular contest, it may be skipped.

My story.
I have been pursuing an Associate of Applied Science degree in Machine Technology at Lake Washington Technical College in Kirkland, Washington for the last four quarters. Earlier this spring, I was told about this SkillsUSA competition, and it was suggested that I should compete in my field. Now, as I learned, there are three competitions: Precision Machining, CNC Milling and CNC Turning. Precision Machining covers a lot of Machining-related topics, but is mostly manual-equipment based(In this case, manual equipment means equipment that, while it has a motor, is hand-controlled, like a power tool).
CNC Milling covers only a subset of the Machining field, that of CNC milling machines. A CNC machine is one which is Computer controlled; Essentially a robotically-controlled machine.
There is also CNC turning, which is the same thing as CNC Milling, but with a CNC Lathe instead of a CNC Mill.

Now, that all being said, I have a knack for CNC milling. I find programming these machines to be fun, and it just -makes sense- to me.

At the time I started competing, I was offered my choice of contests, and planned to go into CNC milling. Of course, due to "human error"(I still think it was deliberate <_<), I got pushed into Precision Machining instead, at least for the Regional level. I learned that I could do both CNC Milling as well as Precision Machining, so I didn't press the subject further - Heck, it might be fun!

My first contest.
So, one Saturday early this spring, I get up way too early in the morning, head down to LWTC, and get in one of the vans with my teacher and several other students.
After arriving at the place where we shall be doing the Precision Machining contest(It had to be a shop that was not sending competitors, so as to keep things fair), we get out and head in.
After learning the rules, along with several other highschools(Note: while I am in college, I am *technically* in highschool, getting both highschool and college credit for my work, as well as free tuition), we get divided up into 5 groups, seperated such that no two people from a school would be working together, and get to work.

The first thing I had to do was a hour-long math test. I worked my way through it, completing it early, and having plenty of time to double-check my answers and correct them.

Next, I was sent out to an Engine Lathe, handed a print and told that I had an hour to complete as many dimensions as possible. I worked hard, and ended up with a nice looking, quarter-done part(You aren't expected to complete the part, mind).

I was then sent over to a Layout station, where I had to put precise lines on the surface of thin piece of aluminum with a protractor and precision height-gague according to a blueprint. I had a half-hour to get as far as possible.

Then came Drilling, where I had to drill and counterbore 5 holes in a chunk of steel, I had half an hour to do this. This I actually finished early, and tried to debur the rough edges of the hole. I did this as best I could, and turned my part in.

At this point, we had a break and got pizza lunch. I stuffed myself.

Next, I was sent to a milling machine, a Brigeport knock-off, given a block of aluminum, a few tools and a print, and told I had an hour.
I started working, realized half-way through that I had misread my print, worked some more, things didn't work right, it seemed my part was sliding around, and then my time was up.

I was then sent over to Inspection, and given a couple parts and told to measure some dimensions and write them down. I completed this early, having half an hour to complete this, and when the time came, was sent to my final station.

Last, Blueprint Reading. I had half an hour to do my best to interpret this blueprint, and fill out a series of questions about it.
This blueprint was something from Motorola from the 1980s, was horribly done, and was about half hand-drawn and written. I worked through it several times, back and forth, finally filling in all the questions as best I could, and I still had a couple minutes before I was done.

We then had to clean up the shop for an hour or so while the judges graded up everything. As I remarked to my teacher, I figured I probably would place no lower than about 10, and no higher than about 5, out of 20.

Announcement time. The top 5 are announced:
#5: One of my fellow students.
#4: Also one of my fellow students.
#3: Someone I didn't know.
-I was now getting really worried. I had hoped for #5, and #3 was a possibility, but no higher-
#2: Someone else.
-That's it, I am screwed. I wonder where I placed-
#1: ... ME!!!!
-I couldn't believe it at first. I had managed to win! I was amazed-
After getting my prize, a thousand-dollar scholarship to the college we were having the contest at, and going home, I still couldn't really believe it.
But, I had done it. I managed to get a look at my detailed scores, and had won... Due to my high score on my math test(Most people didn't seem to have tried!), and Blueprint Reading.


My next contest.
I was told I had a choice then. No one else from the state was competing in CNC milling, so if I took that, I would go straight to the nationals in CNC milling. I could also go to the State in Precision Machining, and if I won that, I would go to the Nationals in that.
I chose the CNC milling route.

My teacher, not wanting to have me completely skip state, rounded up several students who were good at CNC and were willing to compete, and in a couple of months(April), we had a competition. The one thing that no one else really realized until the contest was held was that you had to make your program(for controlling the CNC) by hand, and -not- using a CAD-CAM program. This wasn't a problem for me, as I always loved hand-coding for most things, and had done several programs I didn't have to do in the course of school, just because. Anyway, I helped my fellow competitors out a lot during the competition, gave them sample program code from my own past programs, and did everything I could to help em out, being the sporting guy I am. At least both of them managed to make -something-!
It doesn't really need to be said, but I won. I actually managed to make my part complete in the four hours we all had(There were a couple of minor faults, but still...)

I won some tools that my teacher had been given to give to students, and a free copy of mastercam X3 Student-version(!)


Nationals time!
Now that I was first in the state, I got to go to the national-level contest.

After much fussing, getting things ready over the next couple of months, I was finally ready to go.
I got up last Sunday at 2AM. I got my gear all ready, into the car, and was taken down to Sea-Tac airport, where I met the others from LWTC who would also be going to the Nationals, in different competitions.

We arrived in Kansas City around noon, got stuff to our hotel, went and had lunch, got back, slept early.
Monday: We all got to sleep in, though I ended up getitng up around 9AM. Got a nice complementary breakfast, lounged around in the room until 12:30. We then took a tour of the local Harley-Davidson factory, ate a late lunch around 4PM, and went back to the hotel. At 6PM we had to have a conference with everyone from Washington where we would get lots of information about what all we needed to do the rest of the week. I was bored, so I wondered down and helped set out all the materials. Along with lots of literature, we each got a set of 10 Washington-state pins(You trade them with people from other states, and stick em on a map you get from a certain vendor free). At the end of the lecture, we each took a "professional exam" which is a tie-breaker; If you got the same score as someone else, your scores in that would break the tie.

Tuesday(Note: first pictures start here): We all had to be up at 8AM for "orientation", where we would each learn about what we were doing for our contests. After getting up at like 6:30AM, having breakfast, and getting to Kemper Hall(where this was all being held) by 7:30AM, waited till 8:30AM, got to my orientation at the right time, and was told that all the contestants were being broken up into four groups. I had to be back at 1PM to get some practice on the machine I would be using. I wondered around, seeing the sites of the "Techspo" being held there at the same time, I.e. grabbing every freebee I could. The highlight of this downtime was that in one booth I won a tee-shirt by hammering in 5 decent-sized nails in 4.8 seconds, a little less than the random guy I was competing against.
At 1:00PM, I was in the right place, and worked on my machine, getting some experience setting it up like I would be doing during the contest. I had loads of time, made up a simple test-program to test my skills, and reading the manual a bunch.
At 3:00PM I was done, and was taken back to the hotel.
At 6PM, we all had to attend "Opening cermonies", where all the sponsors were named and it was boring and loud. The first set of darker pics/videos are from this.


Wednesday: I had nothing I -had- to do, but I had intended to get to the Techspo by 9AM and get some different free stuff. I ended up sleeping until 11:30AM. Played on my laptop till 4PM(I got some lunch during this time too), I forget what else happened.

Thursday: My contest day. I was up by 6AM, at the contest way before my time of 8AM. I was given a print and a block of aluminum, and told I had four hours to do my best.
I took one look at the print, and nearly gave up hope! This thing was metric, was oddly drawn, didn't have any sort of isometric view to see what its really supposed to look like, and the mess of lines was confusing. It also appeared there were missing dimensions.
I did find one section of the print that made sense, so I wrote up a program, and after some fiddling, made some chips! I did some editing after that, faced the -incorrect- lines I had made earlier off, and started cutting my part into the block. About half-way through, disaster stuck as my cutter just snapped!
I asked, and was given a replacement cutter, and a suggestion to check my speeds and feeds. Ah well, I checked them, changed them to ones -I- had learned in school and not ones they had suggested at the beginning, and managed to complete my part.
I had a little bit of junk bits sticking up where the cutter hadn't cut them, so I brought my mill down with the intention of manually moving it around to remove the junk. Unfortunately, due to a stupid error on my part, I ended up cutting a shallow groove where the junk was. I figured I was screwed at that point.

When time was called, I handed in my part, and was given: Lunch, a copy of Autodesk Inventor 2010(!) and Autodesk Solidworks 2009(!) (Both student versions, mind). I was also given a 2gb flash drive, Autodesk labeled.
Yay! I figured I had completely screwed up, but I had gotten the best prize, just for showing up!

I spent the next couple hours at the Techspo, grabbing as many freebees as I could. Things were closing up by 2PM, and I was just -given- several teeshirts, just because they wanted to get rid of them. I ended up with a pile.
I went and found a bus(SkillsUSA rents a bunch of school buses doing service between Kemper Hall/whatever competitors are supposed to be doing and the various hotels for competitors to use), and went back to my hotel.
At 7PM, the buses were now taking people to Worlds of Fun, an amusement park where we had all been given a free ticket. Several of us come to this, and I end up going on a couple of rides with a couple of my fellow students.
I first went on the most scary and awesome rollercoaster I had ever been on, cause I was -not- going to back down in front of my fellow students. This was one of those high-speed ones that does loops and twists and drops you down a ramp at high speed. Frigging scary, frightening, and awesome all in one. White-knuckle all the way.
Next, after spending like 20 minutes wandering around(fortunately), we went on a more traditional one with no vertical loops, but a -very- high tower/long drop. I actually had fun there about half way through, during some high-speed loops and such.
I left at 9:30PM, got back... I forget what I did then.


Friday, I got up at a reasonable hour, ate breakfast, went back to bed and played on the internet till noon... Got lunch and stopped at a Half-Price Books that happened to be only a few blocks away, got a bunch of my stuff shipped home in two USPS flat-rate boxes.
At 6PM, we had to be back at Kemper Arena for Closing ceremonies(Second set of dark pics).
Once they got through the chatter(where I learned that there were over 5,400(!) students competing this year), they started going through the 91 contests, telling names of bronze, silver and gold medalists, and giving everyone their moment of glory on stage.

The first "known" contest to come up was Practical Nursing(all contests were in a random order). Sadly, our one Nursing student was not on the list.

Next came Precision Machining. Our Highschool student(not me)... wasn't on the list. Surprisingly enough, our college student.. wasn't either. And he is quite good.

Next... CNC Turning came up. I figured CNC milling would come right after, so I readied my camera. What happened next can be seen Here.
I got ready for it. Turning came and went... CNC Milling came... Third place... Second place.. And suddenly everyone was yelling. I had done it. I had taken second place.
I had to hurriedly put my jacket on, button my shirt, get myself looking all nice and neat for the camera. It took so long, I had about 30 seconds on stage before the camera was on me, but I managed it.

A while after that, the last contest we were involved in, Motorcycle Repair was called, and sadly, neither out highschool nor college contestants won anything.
I had been the -only- medalist from our school this year.

Once we got back to the hotel, we ordered pizza, ate until we were stuffed, got packed.
4AM Saturday morning we got up, dressed, got everything together and flew home.

And that's the end of this story. Please take a look at the pictures, and do realize... Those pictures cannot do this place justice; It was just plain huge.


Thank you all for reading,


-RobbieThe1st, AKA Robb Simpson

[RJ]

Wow! Congratulations, Robbie! Second place is absolutely awesome, especially since it sounded like a hard competition. 

[Lysander]

Awesome, man. Congrats on the surprise win.   

[Alondro]

*hmms greedily*  Well well well... technical skills... one of those things not often thought of as important in animation, until one realizes that many jigs, camera mounts, special light boxes, and tables and all sorts of gadgets are made to aid in the animation production.

We may have use for you in years to come, young one.   

[Sofox]

Congrats Robbie, that's a fantastic achievement.
Good on ya!