Here at Tormach, we love getting involved in education and giving students a chance to get hands-on experience with real tools. That’s why we spent last weekend at the FIRST Robotics Regional Competition, in Milwaukee, WI, cheering on kids who built robots to compete for a place at the national event. Also during the event, the State of Wisconsin signed a new law that commits $250k in general purpose revenue to grants to help high-school teams participate in robotics events, like FIRST.

Last week, we had a visit from the Milwaukee Maker Space, which is just a short drive down the Interstate. And the week before, folks from a Madison, WI makerspace, known as The Bodgery, joined us for a product demo.

Earlier this week, we spent the day at Madison College (MATC) as they uncrated their brand new PCNC 440.

The Maker community has been coming into its own in the last five years. With the help of inexpensive hardware, software, and tools, more at-home engineers and inventors have the ability to access know-how that used to be relegated to major corporations.

Robots are cool. When I was a kid R2-D2 and Rosie were fabrications of a fantastic, future-like world. Now, BB-8 and Beamo are incredibly close to reality.

In case you missed it, the old TV show that pitted highly-engineered machines against one another in a ring of metal-mangling death has returned – BattleBots. Robotics are one of the first elements of science and technology that comes to mind when discussing STEM and its benefits – and what better way to discuss robotics than to have the machines fight to destruction?