Floppy Drawbridges
 

After watching the Palmetto regional these past couple days, I'm a surprised about how floppy the drawbridges are. I've seen lots of teams who have mechanism to pull the drawbridge down from the front. My team had assumed we could do this as well, but I'm concerned that the drawbridge will be too bendy to apply force in that direction. On wooden defenses it is possible.

Can somebody with experience with the "floppy" drawbridge elaborate on how it has affected gameplay, or (more specifically) if it is stiff enough to pull from the front.

Thanks!

Re: Floppy Drawbridges
 

My team has the exact same question. So far all of the drawbridges we've practiced with were made of plywood but the ones used at comp look much more bendy based on the live stream.

Re: Floppy Drawbridges
 

I haven't seen a single team pull the drawbridge down from the neutral zone at Palmetto. It wouldn't surprise me at all if this was done intentionally by FIRST to force teams to work together. It sucks that the floppy nature of the drawbridge wasn't talked about earlier in the build season.

Re: Floppy Drawbridges
 

If you read field assembly you would have known....
door plastic, drawbridge
Its in there

Re: Floppy Drawbridges
 

I'm aware. There was no discussion about it on CD to my knowledge. Discussion would've helped more teams become aware.

Re: Floppy Drawbridges
 

I was completely aware that the door was made of polycarb. I was asking for feedback from team who have had experience with it, because I was not privy (until this weekend) to how different it responded to manipulation as compared to the wooden defenses most teams are using.

Re: Floppy Drawbridges
 

There were a TON of people talking about this at the kickoff in NH. Many people were hooking the top of the bridge and seeing how bending it was. Not only that, if you hold the edge down the springs bow the middle of the bridge maybe 6 inches off the ground.

It was the fact that so many teams would never see an actual drawbridge until their first competition that started me thinking about tortugas.

Dr. Joe J.

Re: Floppy Drawbridges
 

The field tour videos mention that it's built from polycarb, and if you watch as they move it, you can see it be bendy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx57...hNoAqp&index=7

Granted, they don't show what happens when you pull down from the top of the drawbridge...

Re: Floppy Drawbridges
 

I knew it was polycarbonate and was a little surprised to see how much bending there was in Week 0 events.

We replaced our plywood door with polycarbonate today and tested. Our drawbridge isn't a perfect analogue for the field, but I think it's pretty close.

Our mechanism still works okay. In reality, I think the flexibility of the polycarbonate makes it a bit more reliable. We don't need to be quite as gentle and deliberate about how we go about lowering it.