About Us
We are FIRST Robotics Team 151, the Nashua Tough Techs. Our team was founded in 1991 and first competed in the 1992. We won the Chairman’s Award in 1995 and are a Hall of Fame team. We became a community based team in 2016 after 25 years as a school based team, but we still maintain close ties with the Nashua High Schools. We are a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. The team is open to any high school aged student. Our meetings are usually held in MakeIt Labs, 25 Crown Street
Nashua NH.
Our Season
Our official season runs from mid-June to mid-June, but summer is spent on special projects and preparations with our adult mentors and student team leads. For most students our season starts with the new school year. The months from September to December are spent in training for the “build” season, the 6-8 week period when we design and build our robot.
The build season starts with “Kickoff”, usually the first Saturday in January (unless it falls on the 1st or 2nd of January). On Kickoff day all the FIRST Robotics teams around the world are simultaneously told what the season’s game will be, via streaming video. At this point the team activity switches into full gear. Each year the robot must be built entirely from scratch.
At the end of build season we move onto “competition” season. Typically we compete twice during this period, once near the beginning and once near the end. These two competitions take place in New England. If we score high enough, we move on to the Regional competition. And if we score high enough there, we earn the right to compete in Nationals.
Students
Our team is “student led” which means that the robot is designed and built by the students, with the mentors taking primarily an advisory role. The team is organized into sub-teams which each concentrate on training for specific functions involved running the team and building the robot. At the beginning of build season we re-organize into “system” teams, with each system team responsible for building one functional part of the robot.
In addition to the robot related sub-teams, we also have several sub-teams that are responsible for the operations of the team. The groups are responsible for fundraising, community outreach, media relations, team safety and much more. All the things the team needs to keep running. We aren’t just looking for students that are good at engineering, if you have a talent, we can use you.
Sponsor Us
Our team is run primarily from the generous donations of our sponsors. If you would like to donate to our team, you can do so using our Square Page. If you have services that you would like to donate, please contact us directly at toughtechs151@gmail.com.
About FIRST
FIRST is a program for promoting STEM learning in school aged children and was founded in 1989 by Dean Kamen and Woodie Flowers. The name stands for “For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology”. You can learn more about FIRST on their website. Our team competes in the High School aged program “FIRST Robotic Competition” (FRC), but many of our student members also mentor teams in the programs for younger children, such as “FIRST Tech Challenge” (FTC) and “FIRST Lego League” (FLL).