Fabrication Lead Interview (Seth Humphries)

Who is Seth Humphries?

Seth Humphries is a junior at Northview High School. This is his third year on the team, and he is our current Fabrication Lead. Outside of robotics, Seth enjoys playing piano, working with Legos, snowboarding in Colorado, and desires a career path in mechanical engineering.

What is Fabrication? 

Our Fabrication sub-team is primarily responsible for building the frame of the robot using metal and wood. Members use the OnShape creations from the Design sub-team and build them to specifications. During bootcamp, new students learn how to use the various machinery, preparing them for the build season. Once build season begins, students apply what they learned from bootcamp to help construct the new season robot.

Q&A 

Q1: What got you interested in joining robotics?

“I competed in FLL in elementary school, but I had to stop due to COVID. There was no FIRST program at my middle school. However, I found out later that Northview had an FRC team, so that's when I joined our team.” 

Q2: How would you describe your leadership role to someone not in robotics? 

“I work on hands-on stuff. I teach students what fabrication is and how to use all the machinery properly. I watch over students during work sessions to help prevent them from injuring themselves. I communicate with other sub-teams, like what Design or Electrical and how we collaborate, and manage Fabrication students on what we are doing and how to build it. We don’t want to waste material or redo parts, and that’s where my job comes in.”

Q3: What prior fabrication experience did you have before becoming part of leadership?

“Outside of robotics, I only have a little experience, like helping my family with home or woodwork projects. In FLL, we mainly worked with Legos, not the machinery we use in fabrication, and it did help a little. In robotics, I learned about 95% of my fabrication knowledge from our team bootcamp, as well as two years of experience on the team.” 

Q4: What personal goals do you want to achieve this season? “Although I am the Fabrication lead, I don’t know everything about fabrication, and I would like to improve that. I need to ask other people about the specific terminology concerning our robot, so this is an area of knowledge I am focusing on. I’m sure I’ll greatly improve in this area when build season arrives.”

Q5: What sub-team goals do you want to achieve this season?

“I want the freshmen to do more work. In the past, freshmen have not done as much work as others, and it can be rather boring. I would like to include them more when the build season begins, like making more parts and fabricating more materials. I think they can handle it, and if not, they can just do easier work until they can manage it.”

Q6: Which fabrication project was the most challenging, and which was your favorite to work on?

“My favorite project was probably our ReefScape robot’s elevator because there were a lot of features and mini projects to work on. The hardest project was likely the ground intake because we worked so hard on it before GRITS, but never actually used it during the competition.”

Seth’s dedication and commitment to learning and educating others about Fabrication makes him an essential part of the Fabrication of the sub-team and the success of the whole team. We cannot wait to see his work when Rebuilt comes out!