The Orange City Council approved spending $15,000 on a TinyMobile Robot at its October 7 meeting. The purchase will be used through the Joint Use Facility Committee at Northwestern College, MOC-Floyd Valley School District, Unity Christian Schools, and the City of Orange City.
The TinyMObile ProX RObot is a top-of-the-line machine that is designed for the most demanding jobs, This field painter is designed for heavy use and demanding field painting, yet it is still portable and can be deployed on the field within five minutes after arrival.
Noah Minnick, Orange City Park and Recreation Director, shares, “The biggest time savings will be with our biggest program, rec soccer. It usually takes Jaaron and me two to three days to set up the fields between pulling all the lines and keeping them square, but with the robot, we programmed in measurements, it took only 25 minutes.”
The city anticipates a myriad of uses. “The robot does have the ability to do baseball fields, but with paint, not chalk. It can paint the circles downtown for Tulip Festival Dutch Dancing, it can do parking lot lines, even custom logos,” Minnick added.
“It was awesome that we were able to get money from the GrowOC board; the machine will make fields look more professional, not just for the spectators but for the people participating in the programs. It is a great tool to use.”
Travis Rozeboom, Director of Facilities Management at NWC, stores the robot on the NWC campus, where it has seen the most use so far.
“We have a great staff, but we are always trying to find ways to be more efficient. We now have the robot operating correctly, and it is drop and go. We can set it to paint a field, and we can work on weeding and field maintenance as it works, making much better use of our time,” Rozeboom said.
The process is simple, it is operated through an iPad. If we want a custom logo, all we do is send the image to the company. They upload it into our program, and it is available for us to use, resize, or do anything else. The fields are set up in a GPS system, and we input field design and go.”
The joint venture has also partnered with Diamond Vogel Paint to order bulk paint. “Instead of each group having individual paint, we are purchasing bulk paint, keeping our shop cleaner, and providing a better system overall,” Rozeboom said. And cost savings continue. “Before, we were using 10 gallons of paint to paint a soccer field, and now we are using five to seven,” he added. The four groups are coordinating shared use through a Google calendar.
The potential uses are endless.
