What you DON'T what your robot to do!
 

Our first match of the 2013 season...
BX 1023 Crash

Re: What you DON'T what your robot to do!
 

How bad was the damage?

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JESUS! That thing bounced! Also one of the faster 30 pt climbers. What happened after that?

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What was creating the magic smoke?

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They missed 2 matches and fried a sidecar and some wires, but eventually made it back out onto the field and 30pt climbed.

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We were out 2 matches.. sidecar was fried, wires fried.. so we had to completely rewire it.... then we worked on untwisting and unbending parts.. thanks to the machine shop for getting a weld that broke for us (yes, we had to take our bot to the garage) :) Worked on the shooter first... got that working and then went to work on our climb again...

The problem.. we don't put our final lock on top level because we have to "manually" remove the bot. We did not have a way to powder coat our practice pyramid. We welded our practice pyramid and these are very flimsy (sorry, but they are, but it is our fault for "overbuilding" our pyramid). So.. we never had this problem on our home field..

Now we are putting our full lock on it, and found a way around the removal. We made a successful 30 point climb. :) .. Had to fix a stuck dumper... thought we were going for 50 again finally, but something went wrong with our controls and it stopped recognizing our climb controller, (totally unrelated to fall obviously) so we were stuck at 10 point climb.

Tomorrow, we will be trying for 50 points, and hoping to get picked! :)

By the way.. to all the teams at Detroit today.. BX1023 thanks all of you that stopped by to ask if we needed parts, help, etc.. and to offer your "condolences" for our fall! We greatly appreciated all of the support you showed us! I am so proud of my team for getting it back up the pyramid! We'll see how tomorrow goes!

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702 in la 2011 that sucker caught on fire! Luckily they were able to get their pdb flopped before the next match but it was still an awesome sight

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That's impressive to come back from that kind of fall at all. Many robots wouldn't score again after that kind of tumble!

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You don't know how scared, depressed, and hopeful this video makes me...Our team is planning on doing something similar. Our original climber idea will not work out, but we are using our withholding allowance to get something working which is pretty similar to what you guys did. I am so scared that our robot is going to fall off the pyramid!

I am hopeful because your team was able to come back after that fall, and because your design is so similar to ours and seams to work! I wish you all the best of luck tomorrow!

Edoga

Re: What you DON'T what your robot to do!
 

Debbie,

I feel so bad for you guys. Climbing is so scary!

We actually just experienced that same situation earlier this week. Our robot looked almost identical in how it fell and how it "flipped" and "bounced" off the tower.

Luckily ours was the practice robot. Frame was twisted and we blew the digital side car. We'll see if anything else happened today.

Good luck! Keep going forward, I'm sure you guys will have everything locked down and ready to go for eliminations

-Adam

Just to explain the extent of our damge, when someone asked what didnt break, the best reply was, what didnt break?.

But seriously. Our hopper and dumper arm and basket were smashed, the shooter tray was bent pretty bad, the uprights that hold our dumper welds broke, the shafts to hold the dumper bent, the fingers on the claw sheered off, as said before the sidecar shorted, and all the pwms completely melted, and an internal climbing component bent.

Hope that answers some future questions:)

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So glad to see you back in business. This is the nightmare scenario for all of us who are packing a climber but can't decide whether or not to use it.

Thanks for sharing the video and the updates. Hope to see you at MSC.

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We thought for a second about not climbing anymore. But, we had invested too much time into the design, and we had not had that problem on our practice field. In hindsight, the danger of not being able to latch tightly so that you can undo it mechanically, may have changed our idea on our design, but we did find a way to put our main lock on the top level and still get it off in a relatively decent amount of time. It was definitely sickening to see weeks and weeks of hard work destroyed in seconds. But it was also a growth moment for my team because they immediately decided we would climb again. Too much residual damage though to get it securely climbing. Our last regular match, we had decided to not risk it, and ruin a shot of getting picked. We went out to shoot and do a 20 point climb, but we got jammed under the pyramid. Good luck your team! I hope you make it! Let me know how it goes!
We were hoping too, and we did make a climb, but a pin fell out of our dumper (more residual damage) and it didn't dump. The second time we were hit while our first upright knocking us off our climb. The third, we had a problem with our camera, so we couldn't get a good line up :(

Sorry to hear about your practice bot. I was amazed that none of our electronics had to be replaced aside from our sidecar and pwm cables. :)

It is very scary for sure! I would say it is very important to powdercoat (we didn't/tried spray paint, but wasn't the same) your practice pyramid as it is SO slick, and to make sure it is exactly as stable as the real one. We welded ours so it didn't fall on anyone, and I guess that came back to hurt us when we lifted off the top of the pyramid the first climb. I hope FIRST makes the top of the pyramid more secure, but we did work around that problem. it is just scary that it can be pushed off so easily.

I still cringe each time I watch it. Thank you all for your thoughts. I hope you all continue to climb! But, bring lots of pwm cables all ready to go. Thankfully we have a place at competition that we could fix a weld break. So proud of my team for not giving up. Good luck to all of you!

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I hate to be the guy to spoil your success story but your climber may have one fatal flaw, when you grab the level one bar to pull yourself up are you making contact with the angled pole while still on the ground, if you are then you have constructed one of the most amazing illegal climbers I have seen to date. Just a heads up so it's not a surprise if it gets called at one of your other events. On a side note, that was an amazing recovery to rejoin the competition within two matches.

Re: What you DON'T what your robot to do!
 

We don't make contact with the vertical pole. Thanks for the head's up though. :)

Here is our first match of Saturday morning. Still a few hicups from damage done, but still we were happy to see it! :) Bedford Saturday