Yesterday, I had an incredible day!
In addition to building this year’s tournament trophies, SMaRT Education asked me to emcee their 2012 Desert Cities FIRST LEGO League Senior Solutions Qualifying Tournament at the Palm Springs Air Museum. And what a fantastic day it was.
I was able to experience the tournament from a perspective that, until yesterday, I’ve had very limited involvement: the ROBOT COMPETITION FLOOR! I was tasked with keeping the audience excited while calling out the play-by-play for the FLL teams. What made the day even more exciting was being there to see so many of my former students putting their hard work and design skills to the test by engineering robots that would earn as many points as possible in the three, 2:30 rounds. The day was theirs, and I’m honored to have shared the experience with them.
But wait, there’s more!
Imagine my added joy when, during the closing ceremony, I watched most of those teams I had an impact on receive one of the twelve hand-crafted LEGO trophies I’ve been building over the past three weeks! Plus, every team that had a member who was in my summer camp or after school program are now advancing to this December’s Southern California regional championship tournament at LEGOLAND!
Here’s the promised images of the trophies followed by links to tournament coverage.
http://www.mydesert.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2012311030066
http://www.recordgazette.net/articles/2012/10/29/news/breaking_news/doc508ee6b92367f899550468.txt
http://www.desertrobotics.com/
Here’s a PDF of the building instructions for the robot trophy. I used LEGO Digital Designer to create the PDF. However, LDD has some limitations in regards to unconventional uses of LEGO pieces. Hopefully the images from the blog illustrate how the whole thing comes together. If not, send me a message and I’ll try to fill in the missing steps. Calista and I ordered all of the pieces for building the trophies from Bricklink.com.
The Suboken Project 
do you have a list of parts for the base?
I didn’t use a specific part list for the base. The LEGO used was based on what was available from the BrickLink stores we were buying the rest of the trophy pieces from. The base is built in two sections; a 12 x 24 stud foundation, three plates high, and platform the robot stands on is 12 x 8, two bricks high. The only specific LEGO that used on every trophy was two 12 x 6 modified tiles that left the exact space needed for the printed metal trophy plates. – http://alpha.bricklink.com/pages/clone/catalogitem.page?P=6178#T=C
Tile, Modified 6 x 12 with Studs on Edges. LEGO Item No: 6178