Re: Silver Scorpion lives.
 

w00t!:D

We have attended 3 FIRST competitions (Long Island, UTC, and Nats) and 1 post-season competition (Battlecry 3) thus far.

During the actual FIRST season the robot was very kind to us. The only real damage to the bot revealed itself during the national eliminations (bent ball grabber due to constant abuse) and was conveniently "repaired" by team 181, the birds of prey. There were some minor upgrades to the bot (tape measure tether :p, etc) to make it function more efficiently/effectively.

Currently the robot is in decent condition. The motors function properly (that drive train is still kicking), the ball grabber still works, goal grabber still works, etc; however, the robot isn't looking as good as it did when it was shipped. The paint job is ruined, some of the decals are scratched up, and the base is slowly shaving away. The cosmetic damage is to be expected and is not a big deal.

The NYC Regionals @ Columbia Univ.

The FL Nationals @ WDW

Thank You to Teams 348, 41 - NYC Alliance and Teams 84, 175 - FL Alliance for choosing us Team 522 as your partner in trying to go for the gold!

There was also the PA Robot Challenge Thank You Teams 61 and don't hate me for this but i really don't remember our other alliance partner off hand but who ever you are thanks!


This years robot had a couple of failures but it mainly cicrulated around the drive train. Poor design was the cause and we will build a better robot next year. as for last years "WILMA" is still alive and kicking and continues to maintain a 0 mechanical failure record in 2 years; year 1 competition year 2 ambassadorial services. "DOROTHY" is this years and has had at least 2 drill / tranny problems. one at the regionals where we had sheered a roll pin then later that day blew tranny and motor luckily it was on a practice day and us students Matt C. and Joe C. stayed a little bit later with Team 694 Stuypulse and repaired the damage before competition day. same problem occured in the nationals.... but we didnt sheer a roll pin we just got hit from the wrong direction and something in the tranny snapped. at the PA Robot challenge we sheered a roll pin.

WILMA - Now rests temporarily at the Queens museum of science - 0 mechanical failures
Dorothy - sits in our robotics room with that sheered roll pin from May - at least 3 mechaincal failures. we know now not to build a drive train that similar to this years drive train. To many chains, gears, ratios and problems. difficult to maintain when you got only 5 minutes between matches. hehe maybe we can get a nice break during comp day to repair our robot. maybe like an extra 15 minutes for lunch. eat then repair.


mike


WILMA will always live on. She just keeps goin and goin and goin and goin. etc....


[quote]90% of the work is done by 10% of the team

You're forgeting the scrimmage at the beginning of the season, at suffied i think it was.

1 FIRST/ 2 offseason

Our robot is pretty scratched and bent from our offseason competitions. On our drive train, we ended up breaking the shaft that comes out of the atwood motor in our last match at the IRI. There is a chuck of tire gone from when we almost got flipped over in one of matches at the IRI. It's still fast and works okay. :D

I thought the biggest battle scar was the Beatty-Hammond match at MMR. We put a nice bend in the 30x30 bosch at MMR... running full speed in all of the 12+ FPS glory toward the goal...

It actually prevented our caster/brake mechanism from sitting straight. We fixed it by rotating it around so the bend was facing outward.

It was IL match 64 if you wanna look it up on Soap108.

It was us Team 41 the all mighty Robo-Warriors (who might I add had realized that a certain PWM had fallen out trapping us between hi and low gear would have made it back into the endzone to defeat the alliance at PA) STUPID STUPID cable

and to reply to the actual post

NYC Regionals (2nd Place) WOOHOO

Nationals (Best Cart Ever) So much freetime

PA Robot Chanllenge (ARGHH STUPID CABLE)

and hopefully the MOE sponsored thing and the Brunswick Eruption

oohh
P.S. at the PA thing we kinda borrowed your (522's) big box of cable ties and neglected to give it back before you left ooops sorry

yupp
 

when we started ouur off season comps, we looked half-way decent. after mayhem it wasnt too-too bad, even though we tore one of our lexan wheel guards off. but after battle cry, wow! even though we spent a day "cleaning" it up, it got mangled at battlecry. but our bot takes a lickin & keeps on tickin. plus our awsome mag wheels kicked so much butt and they worked amazingly! now we have ply-wood wheels that are ok, they look bad but do the job. so anyone who is going tho riverrage, look out cause here we come!! good luck everyone!:)


Badjokeguy:D

One thing that Ian left out about team 810's robot is that during the New York City Regional is that we broke off a piece of the lexan on our robot. You can see here.

Well, thanks to the quality of our pit crew and their preventitive maintainance, our robot had no major problems, except for one time when we over tightened a screw, messing up our goal grabber. But when we brought the robot home, we took it outside for an outdoor pep rally (we didn't know it was outdoors until we realized the gym was empty) and snapped a drive pin. Otherwise, it is in good shape.

Sorry Watchung H.S. I forgot! Please don't hurt me.

Anyways, yeah stupid PWM Cables. FIRST has go to find a better way for the cable to be connected to the devices. They come out of the speed controllers and Spikes to easily let along the robot controller.

Really, you still have the twist ties. Was wondering what happened to them, hehe now i know. Doesn't really matter b/c we have plenty of them. You can never have two many twist ties.


And a question for 810 Mr. Mechanical Bulls. ummm. when you broke a piece of lexan i think team 522 had a hand in its breaking. I know in one match we were against one another in a match and we umm. kinda hit you on the side leaving a hole. we did not intentionally want to hit you put we saw what your stratedgy was and decided to go defense. don't remember if we actually won or loss that match either way my team did break a piece of lexan from your robot and i apologize for it. Our robot who did the damage "Dorothy" also apologizes.

We went to Buckeye, MMR, Nats, and IRI.

For the most part, our robot is still in excellent condition. The only real damage we sustained was to our polycarb paneling and the treads on our wheels. The polycarb paneling is pretty dented and scratched, but still functional. We did go through about 7 sets of wheel treads, however. Other than that, our robot is fully functional.

TEAM 88 TJ2
 

J+J Regional
UTC Regional
Nationals

Rally in the vally
Mayhem on the Merrimack
Battle Cry
River Rage (Sept.)

Condition of this years ROBOT
ALL SYSTEMS ARE RUNNING GREAT and we are ready for River Rage. But we do have a BIG hole in our team made by our grads to be filled, good luck to ALL in the class of 2002.


Condition of last years ROBOT (it works) !!!!!!!


SEE YOU AT RIVER RAGE

we went to the Long Island regional and to BattleCry3

IT's working condition... uhhhh....
 

IT has a really weird way of aging. Everything works perfectly, without degrading, but then something suddenly goes wrong without warning. There isn't much we can do to our robot for preventitive maintenance for this kind of thing...

For instance, at a Science Museum demo we went to, one of the keys popped out of the keyway between our drive sprocket and the cut shaft. We need to fix that but haven't gotten around to it.

Overall I think IT's gotten a bit slower and weaker, but I'm not sure. The body panels look like they've been through a sandblaster because they end up on the floor every single match, and many people (including us) tend to drive over them. Our wheels are holding up fairly well (especially the aluminum ones, lol). The back, screw-studded wheels should probably die at Maryland, but we have replacement assemblies so it's all good.

We look forward to the Maryland State Fair and the DuPont/MOE/Lunatecs event in October.

Amazingly enough, Peacemaker from 2001 is doing well. We didn't think this would be the case, because he used to have incredible tread problems (slipped off every 5 minutes after nationals), but he's better and hasn't slipped off since we added a tightener. We retrofitted a compressor to him, so now his claws can open and close with impunity.

We plan on using IT as a demo to next year's students - "DONT BUILD THIS KIND OF ROBOT!"