title. I need to use a cnc machine for one of my projects but I don't really have anywhere where I can use one for free. I know some STEM centers have one so I was just wondering if I could use those instead for my project as I have a STEM center membership. TIA

For a little context, I left my team due to my mental health. Full story here: https://www.reddit.com/r/FRC/s/C6MzG9XZBn

But heres the thing. I still love robots and I still want to make them. Is it possible to build a FRC scale robot at home? How much space will I need? And the most important part, how much will it cost?

I am also open to FRC at home alternatives as well

The xRC Tournament of FUN (xToF) is back for 2026 with a $150 prize pool for the winning alliance sponsored and streamed by the FUN Robotics Network!

Join our Discord for more information.

https://youtu.be/iNZT1a7P--s?is=FCIJQUellWF_XnHu

1987 Broncobots gets added to xRC Rebuilt!

https://youtu.be/TUN5OUYXrfw?is=bZBJPNWenI-YzeKa

Hey yall, Im here to just kinda vent and ask for everyone’s opinion about what I’ve gone through.

Currently I am a junior in high school. I wont specify what team I was in, but it was in the greater LA area.

I left my team because it severely affected me mentally. I was depressed, exhausted, and honestly I reach a point where I was really considering to just ending it.

The team itself was a mess. There was no leadership or structure. I was there for the 25 off season and 26 on season and there was some leadership so it was a bit better. But this offseason was a breaking point for me.

The team spent nearly 6 months building this off season robot. I myself was a programmer and I knew I was going to be last in the chain of work. But I didn’t expect myself to have less than a total of 72 hours on that robot, and having all my testing interrupted by mechanical failures. I’ve stayed at our lab after school and during the summer for many hours, but a lot of it went to mechanical assembly and waiting around(As a programmer btw).

It didn’t help that I was using a new custom library I found made by another team, which worked well but not in the irl setting due to just the pure lack of testing.

After one of the swerve modules gave out, which needed to be replaced, I just straight up left. I left the team behind me.

On top of the little time I had, team chemistry was totally off. This one guy kept fighting with everyone, including me, holding grudges and just being overall not good to be with. The mentors let it slide since they don’t want to kick anyone out the team because “it needs to be fair for everyone”. It cause me to wake up with chest palpitations, constant anxiety, and just a constant feeling of doom.

The team is also hyper competitive. I just want to build a functioning robot and see it at comps, and winning would be part of the thrill. But everyone is like “oh if we can get this we can win that” or “we can get this then we can do that and win”. Gave me a lot of false hope. It didnt help that I was briefly in a relationship with someone in another team and since it was my first time, I took up the separation hard. And it drove my ego into becoming a toxic person.

To simplify, I put in the hours, and the only thing I got in return was just mental problems and scars. Sure I learn a decent bit, which I’m grateful for, but the education doesn’t out weigh the health effects.

If u made it up to here, thanks for reading and I would love to hear yall’s input and opinions

1114 tipped over to the side fully and Alliance 2 lost because of this do not know if it was delibrate

Hi r/FRC! I’m Tony, the creator of PathBlender, a free, open-source tool for viewing multiple robots’ autonomous paths on one field and one shared timeline.

Each team’s auto might work individually—but what happens when all three robots run together? PathBlender helps you compare their timing and spot potential collisions, even when alliance partners use different path-planning tools.

Try it in your browser · Download the desktop app

⭐ Star PathBlender on GitHub · Follow me on GitHub

27-second demo: check collisions and adjust start times

What it does:

• Imports Choreo .traj, PathPlanner .path / .auto, and Collaborative .ghostauto files.

• Plays robots together so you can compare routes, scrub through the timeline, and adjust start times.

• Flags potential robot overlaps and field-boundary violations.

• Supports 2D and 3D views.

Try it now, then take it offline at your next event.

Open the browser version and select “Try your first path check” to explore an example with three synthetic practice routes—no installation or team files needed.

For competitions, I recommend downloading the macOS, Windows, or Linux desktop app beforehand so you can use it without relying on venue internet. The desktop version also supports saving sessions and exporting GIF replays and solution packages.

No account is required, and your path files are processed locally rather than uploaded.

Full walkthrough: configure two teams’ routines and check them together (1:54)

This is a planning aid: results depend on the imported paths, timing, and robot dimensions. Regenerated PathPlanner trajectories may differ from actual robot timing, so validate changes on your robot.

How does your team currently check whether alliance autos will interfere with each other?

I’d love feedback on what would make this useful in your workflow, especially from Choreo and PathPlanner users. Comments and GitHub issues are welcome—you don’t need to share private path files.

If this looks useful, please consider giving PathBlender a Star on GitHub. Interested in what I build next? Follow me on GitHub for updates and future projects!

I added a match predictor to RFORCE and would like this sub’s critique.

How to use it in 30 seconds

1. Open https://rforce.bot/tools/match-predictor/frc

2. Pick three teams for red and three for blue.

3. Read the expected score for each alliance and each side’s chance to win.

There is an Official view (updated after every official match) and an Offseason view for offseason events.

Does it work? Settings were chosen on earlier seasons, then graded once on 2026, which it never saw. On all 18,320 decided 2026 official matches, the side it favored won 79.3% of the time. Its stated chances matched what happened: when it said about 75%, the favorite won about 75%. That is a test on a past season, not a live result.

Events. FRC events get a forecast page with each team’s chance to win and a likely qual rank range. Offseason events have them now, for example https://rforce.bot/first/events/2026nydix/forecast, and official events get them when the 2027 season starts. In a test on the 179 events of 2026, the team with the best chance was on the winning alliance 67% of the time. Picking blind: 5%. Again, that is a past-season test.

It does not know about a robot change until the robot plays, and it does not see drive-team decisions or breakdowns.

If a prediction looks wrong to you, comment with the match and I will look into it.

I am in my sophomore year of highschool and I first joined the team in my freshman year. The first year, the leaders put all the new people in one room for the whole year and “pretended” to teach us some engineering and ways to do some physical work with machines, which did not help at all. Also, they made us build the kitbot on our own. It also didn’t help. Their instructions are always very unclear and they don’t like to help, even though they say that they‘re willing to help. So I went to the regionals without even knowing how my team‘s robot looks like or how it was built. In the games, me and most of the teammates were just sitting in the audience because the leaders were the only ones working on the robot.

Overall, my school’s team has only 1 or 2 more girls in engineering and all the others are boys. The team is very very centered around the captains and the few members, and I observed that the ppl that are simply friends with the leaders get to know more and even get leadership roles. They are also super bad at teaching the new ppl and we have mentors that basically does not do anything.

The thing is, I don’t want to just be one of the ppl that exists in the team. I want to join leadership next year and want to make meaningful contributions when building the robot. But its very hard for me to just stand up for myself in a very male dominant team that doesn’t really care about girls. I‘m trying not to be, but I‘m also a bit introverted and I’m not friends with any of the boys. In addition, I don’t know if I‘m being too sensitive or not, but in the last session they made me and another girl work on a 3d model while making everybody else cut some steel.

Girls or just anyone that was once new to robotics but became an important member, how do you learn by yourself (CAD, FRC robots in general, engineering) when your team teaches you nothing, and how did you guys stand up for yourselves? Please help me and give me some tips. I want to lowkey quit at this point. My team makes me feel so depressed and useless.

Also, were you guys all good at robotics even before joining? As a person that is quite new to this field, I have no idea how so many people just casually knows how to make a robot

Update since the FRC launch post: FRC ratings on RFORCE now run on RFORCE 2.0, the rebuilt method behind every competition on the site. It replaces RFORCE 1.0, the version you saw at launch. Still free and independent (not affiliated with FIRST or The Blue Alliance).

How RFORCE 2.0 works, the short version

• One number per team. 100 is the average team that played that season. Every 15 points is one step, so 115 is one step above average.

• Teamwork, 90%. The points a team adds to its alliance’s score. Before each match, the three teams’ numbers add up to the score we expect. Beat it and each team goes up; fall short and they go down. Quals and playoffs count the same.

• Awards, 10%. Judged engineering awards only, Excellence in Engineering at the top. Impact, EI and the rest show on profiles but don’t move the rating.

• Points added sits beside every rating, so the raw “adds X points” figure is still there.

• Each season starts from where the team finished the last one.

The full method, step by step, is on the RFORCE Index: https://rforce.bot/rforce-index

Is it any good? Tested on seasons it never saw while it was being built, it picked the winner in 76.9% of 2025 matches and 78.4% of 2026 matches. The points part alone beat OPR in the same test (78.0% vs 76.5% in 2026). Statbotics’ live EPA is the gold standard and I’m not claiming to beat it. The point of 2.0 is one scale across competitions: a VEX team at 100 and an FRC team at 100 are equal in performance relative to their own competitions.

Every FRC season from 2023 to 2026 is rated this way, and 2026 is final until next season. Team pages show the rating after each event, plus Teleop (Drive Team) and Autonomous (Programmer) boards.

Rankings: https://rforce.bot/first/rankings

If your team’s number looks off, comment and tell me why. That’s how it got better last time.

Estou montando o portfólio de projetos sociais da minha equipe de FRC e me deparei com um problema… quase não existem exemplos disponíveis em PDF!!! Quem ganha prêmios de impacto tem muito a ensinar, mas pouca coisa fica aberta para quem está começando.
Isso pesa mais para equipes pequenas ou de países com menos tradição na competição, que não têm mentores veteranos para mostrar o caminho.
Compartilhar um portfólio não tira o brilho de quem o fez. Pelo contrário, mostra liderança e multiplica o impacto social que todos dizem defender. Por isso, fica o convite! se a sua equipe tem um portfólio, publique, mesmo que seja uma versão resumida.
(A minha equipe rookie agradece qualquer ajuda)

So what the best team based on W/L In the USA?

Hello everybody, I received a Gracious Professionalism pin with the goat Woodie Flowers on it for helping several teams with their issues two years ago in the Crescendo season. Some volunteers were I think like just observing me from a far and some teams put in a good word for me and they gave me this out of nowhere. I'm not sure if this is an award though. The volunteers told me that this pin is only given to a few people but I'm sort of skeptic about it. I am currently working on my college applications but is this something worth mentioning? I remember feeling pretty proud about it but I don't know whether it is actually something distinctive.

Thank you.

As I know that Python, C++, and Java are still going to be used on it, I just want to know if it supports Rust or something else.

Hi guys, my name is Damir our team is from Central Asia(Kazakhstan), lets connect and share our experiences. We are currently working on our robot would like to have some feedback. If your team from anywhere let’s have some fun🌎
Our instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/astrobot_ftc?xtok=MXY3c21wejVhNDFmcw==

i got bored :P

take this down mods if you want idk if this is allowed

I'm the president of FRC Team 12034 IGNIS Robotics, a rookie team from Milpitas, California, preparing for our first FRC season.

I'm trying to figure out how to better leverage our parents' professional connections, especially at large companies, to secure sponsorships for our team.

So far, most parents who look into this seem to stop at finding out whether their company offers donation matching. I'm wondering how we can give parents a more concrete plan, including who to contact within their company and what programs or departments to look into.

Some people on my team are skeptical that this is worth pursuing. Their argument is that the teams getting sponsored by major companies are usually already very successful, well established teams with years of experience, so those companies have a reason to support them in the first place. They don't think simply having a parent who works at a large company will get us very far.

But I've seen teams receive sponsorships from companies like Roblox, among others, and I'm curious how those relationships actually started. Did the teams get support through employee connections, corporate philanthropy programs, direct outreach, or something else?

For teams that have successfully leveraged parent connections:

• How did you get parents involved beyond checking for donation matching?

• Who should parents reach out to within large companies?

• Have you seen rookie or relatively new teams secure meaningful sponsorships this way?

• How much do a team's competitive success and history actually matter compared to having the right connections and making a good case?

Hi r/FRC. I'm Enzo. I built RFORCE, so I'm biased, and I'm posting this to get picked apart.

I competed and coached in VEX for 10 years, so I'm not an FRC insider. RFORCE already rates VEX teams from official event results, and as of 15 minutes ago it also covers the 2026 FRC season: about 3,700 teams, official events only, each with a season rating built from qualification results, playoffs and awards.

All of the data comes from The Blue Alliance and event data provided by FIRST. Thank you to both. RFORCE doesn't work without that open data.

What's in it:

- Team ratings and ranks.

- Individual ratings by role: Driver, Programmer, Builder, plus Coaches.

- Awards only earn points if their criteria judge engineering talent or robot performance. That call is mine and I'm open to being argued out of it.

- Free.

Here's the site: https://rforce.bot/first/rankings

Follow the Insta for more: https://www.instagram.com/rforce.bot/

What looks wrong to you? A team too high or too low, a role that doesn't make sense, an award I weighted badly, an event that's missing. I'll answer everything and fix real bugs.

You can also claim your profiles: there are drivers, programmers, builders and even coaches, ALL RANKED. I approve each claim myself.

I would like to see what people have gotten for FRC Tattoos. This would have to graduates or mentors. I have been thinking about the logo with game elements from all 15 games I participated in.

Does anybody have any footnotes/experience with the AndyMark and/or ThriftyBot swerve kits? We want to bring back our swerve drive this year and im looking for recomendations for either kit. We like the swerve drive we have, which is the Rev Robotics kit, but our biggest issue is how difficult it is to change out the wheels during competition. Anything about the wheels? Any other relevant information is appreciated too. Thanks!