Welder promises Venango Tech’s bot is tops

By Lorri Drumm

MEADVILLE TRIBUNE

With help from a student who recently took first place in a welding competition, the RoboBOTS team from Venango Technology Center doesn’t plan to repeat last year’s performance on Saturday. The 12th annual RoboBOTS competition kicks off at 9 a.m. at Meadville Area Senior High School with 42 teams from 22 schools battling for top honors.

Travis Crate, a senior welding student at Venango Technology Center (VTC), took first place in the Skills USA Welding Competition in District 10 held in January. Crate used a lot of those winning skills to help create what he said is a “bot nobody else has been able to build.”

He wasn’t about to give up any secrets, but he said creating a forklift or a cutting robot requires a lot of welding.

Crate has much more faith in this year’s robot than the one the group created last year.

“Last year we had a dud,” Crate said. “It was a problem child from the beginning.”

Crate’s team faced off against Cochranton Junior-Senior High School in the first round, and it didn’t take long for the Cochranton robot to inflict enough damage to spark a small fire in the battery pack of the VTC robot.

The VTC competitors didn’t let last year’s early knockout discourage them. They went back to the drawing board and revamped a design they used a few years ago, according to Robert Fugate, the team’s adviser for the past six years.

“Right now is the time we’re all kind of nervous. We’re trying to work out any kinks and trying to teach welding at the same time,” Fugate said. “The instructor from the auto body class has been helping, too.”

Crate didn’t seem nervous about the competition at all, but he has been at this for a long time.

While this is his fourth year as a team member, Crate has been attending competitions since he was young and went with his dad, Travis Crate Sr., who is a welding instructor at the school.

Crate Sr. said his son has other skills in addition to welding that contribute to creating a battle- worthy robot.

“He was into remote-control cars when he was younger,” Crate Sr. said. “Now he’s a great truck mechanic and he has a CDL license.”

That CDL license may keep Crate from attending Saturday’s competition.

“Sometimes work is a priority,” Crate Sr. said.

Lorri Drumm can be reached at 724-6370 or by email at lorrid@ meadvilletribune.com.

Venango Technology Center welding student Travis Crate is seen while shielded metal arc welding.

ROBERT FUGATE/Contributed photo