Meet the Fabrication Subteam

Fabrication is the subteam that makes the parts designed by the Prototype and Design subteams.. Fab, short for fabrication, works primarily in the build room and machine shop using various machines to make all the parts for the robot. This year, the subteam consists of 14 people, lead by Juniors Tyler Hagen and Ian Wardowski. They work with three seniors: Kim Cotton, Brendan Wille, and Allison Zoski, three juniors: Jena Kendro, John Cynowa, and Donte Childs, three sophomores: David Burns, Ty Combs, and Zachary Moore, and three freshmen:Max Augustyn, Joe Raona, and Matthew Seamon. They use CAD prints from the Design subteam to create parts for the robot. They are responsible for the entire process, from picking the material, laying out the part, to the final creation of the part. Once they finish the part, the team member that made it stamps the part with their initials and the part number. Students use all of the numerous machines in our machine shop to create the parts we need. We have a very busy machine shop that is in constant use during our build season.

Essential to this process are the mentors who oversee and double check each student’s work. They ensure safety while operating machinery and verify the accuracy of each part, guiding and teaching students along the way.

• Jim Reichenbach has a great sense of humor and is known for being straight to the point. He seems to truly enjoy working with the students and teaching them how to make parts well and take pride in their work. Mr. Reichenbach works as an engineer in global propulsion in fuel systems group at General Motors.
• Brain Baranski is a great person to work with and is never afraid to call out a student when their piece isn’t made properly. Mr. Baranski works as a senior industrial engineer for the powertrain manufacturing industrial group for Ford.
• David Moore, a first-year mentor, is calm and gives helpful advice. Mr.Moore during the day works as an engineer in global propulsion systems in the cylinder head group for General Motors.
• Jeff Lorenz is a great instructor of how to work with the machines and everyone respects him. He’s our go-to mentor for everything in the machine shop, and keeps everything running and well maintained for us. Mr.Lorenz owns his own wood shop business and has helped us by making custom parts for us.
• Dan Bouguer is a great help to the students as he tutors them in math after school on some days. Mr.Boughner is the only full-time teacher who is also a mentor, he works as a geometry teacher at Bishop Foley.

The fabrication subteam is a crucial part of the building of our robots. The mentors of fab are all skilled in their fields of work and translate that into helping out the robotics team in every aspect. The robotics team could not survive without fabrication because without them we could not build our robot.