What every mentor is thinking right now is...
 

Two mentors from 3824 tonight after running brutal cycles all day:

Craig: "Boy, I hope our bot stays together"
Lonnie: "I think there are about 8,000 mentors thinking the same thing tonight."

Re: What every mentor is thinking right now is...
 

First comment from one of our mentors was "well I better go start packing the toolbox"

Re: What every mentor is thinking right now is...
 

We had to replace a length of chain after every match during Week Zero this weekend.

We're planning on making the switch to #35 chain before our competitions.

Re: What every mentor is thinking right now is...
 

A collective "We underestimated how strong to make the bot for Stronghold, wear and tear is ridiculous"

Five separate systems broke on first practice day...without defense being played

Followed by "We made a Jack of all trades again, we did not follow own lesson last year not to do it all just do one thing the best"

We can do it all hopefully...see if that works this year.

I'll add "Need more practice , less engineering"

We might be doing back to back week 1 for sure and likely week 2...not sure if the bot will survive

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Every step of the way this year I was thinking "we're over-building this thing". Now I'm thinking "We might just survive..."

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Aside from our shooter forcing itself free of some shaft collars, we didn't have any mechanical issues from a week 0 practice event.

I think the reliance on half inch hex shafts and bulky bearing supports might have been our saving factor. We haven't snapped chain, nor have we bent any of our drive components. We're also slamming over all the defenses at ~11fps.

I'm concerned about longevity of the smaller bits after six or seven matches. Retaining clips, E clips, and other small consumables tend to wear down, and the spring steel they're made of just isn't made for these types of force.

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I can't believe I let build season distract me from the fact that iHop had unlimited pancakes for a few weeks.

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I'm glad I'm getting a cold today, instead of last week.

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At the end of the first full day hard practice, we had 15 nuts and screws on the carpet...Now to find where they came from... We might just dip the entire bot in a Locktite bath before bagging.

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LOL!! I've got a buddy mentoring a team with an 80/20 frame. I'll pass on that advice. We thought of wrapping our robot in those big summo balloons and just bounce our way thru a competition.

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What component will we break next?:eek:

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I told my students that we should buy a case of blue threadlocker and sell it at the competition as a fundraiser. After reminding them to go over everything and threadlock it.

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Last year, we saw how playing so many matches in the new IN district affected our robot in wear and tear. Now that we have a real Alliance vs. Alliance game with some rough defenses, I'm curious to see how District bots compare to Regional bots at Worlds. All I can say is if your robot doesn't break something at a competition, you're probably in the minority...

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Thats what we said in 2014. Lets not.

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Week zero made me very happy that we built a simple robot that could function even when things weren't perfectly aligned... we almost used hex shaft to pivot our shooter and now I'm extremely happy that we used those flexible IGUS bearings.

Still running into issues with wires that weren't secured properly, though... (that's what we'll be working on Monday and Tuesday, in addition to some driver practice).

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I can't wait to see the destruction. This year is gonna be fun on a bun!

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We blew the 20A fuse on the PDP early morning yesterday at our week zero and fried a VRM due to bad wiring. (thankfully we fixed that issue) Other than that we didn't encounter many mechanical/electrical issues.

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Ouch. We killed a gyro when we plugged in our robot for the first time, but fortunately that's been the worst for us so far... the main thing has been the cable to our right shooter motor, which got unplugged in two of the matches we played in Saturday.

I'm somewhat concerned that that's been the worst of our issues so far, we must be missing something...

Re: What every mentor is thinking right now is...
 

How expensive was the gyro you guys fried?

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No idea. It was one of a few that have apparently been lying around for a few years. I'd guess around $30, so not too bad, but if we had to go out and buy another it would be dipping into a mentor because we're just about flat broke right now.

Re: What every mentor is thinking right now is...
 

That's good that it wasn't too expensive.. I was afraid it would be one of those expensive ones that you guys fried.. You guys could always try and find a local team in the south metro area to borrow a gyro from.

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"I hope the other teams have an answer to robots with rigid supported pool noodle blockers 54" tall." :)

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Like I said, fortunately we had another couple in a box somewhere.

We're really fortunate to be surrounded with a bunch of friendly teams down here. 2220 in particular helped us out a lot at their week zero-- both with some of the last minute modifications we had to do and giving us a cylinder when we didn't have one that would let us load our boulder. It's great to have friends :)

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I'm thinking: "That poor field... I hope it can stand the horrible beating that our robot is going to unleash on it" seriously our driver has no regard for anything but getting from A to B quickly. I love it.

I'm also thinking that the JVN Calculator should come in the KOP. It's our first time actually doing the math for all of our mechanisms and for some reason math actually works.

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Thinking:
Why did we put so much chain on this thing?
How many times will it skip before stripping the sprocket clean?
What is going to fall(fly?!) off next?

Re: What every mentor is thinking right now is...
 

Time to iterate, more.

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Mentors: "Of the 100 things we thought of, 90 worked. Of the 100 things we DIDN'T think of, 100 didn't work."

The main benefit of the scrimmage: realizing how many things our there you didn't realize would be a problem.

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QFT. We fabricated new intake plates that gave us better performance, but literally redesigned an hour after assembly to add support for another mechanism. Iteration is love, iteration is life.

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Thinking I need a day or two without robots. Then to iterate and practice like crazy with our practice robot.

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SO glad we ditched that 10-wheel design...

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"It's a hardware problem"

Payback for YEARS of "it's a software problem"

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Tuesday Night and 'bot in a bag can't come fast enough!

My feeling is the game this year will see a majority of teams underestimating the wear and tear that will be placed on their machines. I predict seeing many robots laying dormant on the field at various times during the matches.

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"You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Andrew Schreiber again"

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Robot not fully plugged in was a programming issue.
I called out our MORT programming captain for that as CSA in our own hosted district event.
Yes I was a programming mentor then as well.

Surely the software should be able to communicate to other robots to plug our battery back in ;)

When hardware and electrical can't figure out how to do something in design eventually it's a software problem :p

Last in - first out on the blame train.

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It is going to be rough. We spent most of the morning at week 0 securely fastening stuff that fell off of our bot.

There were several robots that never made it to the field.

It's going to be very very rough. After 14 matches at the Suffield Shakedown we felt it. A good amount of broken rivets and a pretty badly bent piece of bar stock. For that reason we are switching to steel barstock for our indexer mount. We are also making some pads for our shooter arm to make it feel the defenses a little less. Although to be completely honest I'm pretty happy with how it held up.

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What did we forget........?

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Here's what I'm thinking in

10...
9...
8...
7...
6...
5...
z...
zZz...
ZzzZzZZZZz

Re: What every mentor is thinking right now is...
 

Two sixteen hour marathon build days behind me :ahh: - I feel like I just came back from a competition. Need Sleep...

Re: What every mentor is thinking right now is...
 

My plan for Wednesday night.

Back home Tuesday morning, then Tuesday night I'll be here.

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Three thoughts:
(1) What is sleep?
(2) We need to practice, practice, practice.
(3) We're forgetting something... forgot what that was, though...

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Since our first event is week 0.5 and I don't get my normal week of extra sleep before competition I'm try to decide how much sleep one could get during quals of an event that early.

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...we might not have time to shoot the reveal!

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Last year --- Lots

This year --- NONE

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Maybe one year we will be ahead of schedule.

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There's 13 hours between stop build time and the start of field build. What more do you need?

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Finally pushed the robot in some stress tests last night.

1- Shorted a PD board after crossing a defense.

2- Ripped the "L" bracket from which our drive-train gear boxes were mounted to.

3- Destroyed the low bar

Safe to say that we might have found some weakness in the robot.

Re: What every mentor is thinking right now is...
 

"Why isnt there more robot reveals yet?" :)

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(1) I remember when I could pull an all-nighter and it didn't phase me .....
(2) I wonder if I'm still married ......
(3) I wonder if 20 years of this is enough .......
(4) Maybe we should have given the software folks more time ......

Re: What every mentor is thinking right now is...
 

...and people thought Aerial Assist was rough on robots.

It's one thing to make a robot robust to moderate impacts in the bumper zone. This is easily manageable with a bit of planning, and can be hotfixed if you didn't plan for it without too much trouble.

It is another entirely to design a drive train that can slam into large obstacles at high speeds and not get torn to shreds. A lot of the standard drive best practices just weren't designed for these constraints, which I think a lot of us (myself included) are going to learn the hard way. This is my ninth year of FRC, and I can't remember anything even close to this rough. It's going to be absolute mayhem.

On the one hand, I think this is going to be a fabulous opportunity for gracious professionalism and coopertition to shine at events as many of the robots break down and teams help each other with the fixes.

On the other, I think it might make for a lot of frustration and disappointment.

We'll see.

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Our robot is doing some damage to the steel rock wall?

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What's next?

Just kidding, I already know what's next and it definitely isn't sleep.

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No early parole for time served ;)

After 20 years I know what the terror part was in the Toroid Terror game.
Once you start FRC you can't stop!

Re: What every mentor is thinking right now is...
 

"I wonder if my spouse filed for divorce while I've been at robotics for the past six weeks"