What the !@#$ were they thinking?
 

I think it's high time that CD had an appropriately GP thread dedicated to bonehead plays. While there is certainly the obvious matter of the entertainment value, the real value of this thread will be in the general improvement of the safety and quality of the FIRST Robotics Competition as a whole. Encourage students to read the thread. Encourage mentors to read the thread. Learn from the mistakes of others!

In the interest of GP, please do not post the names of the offenders, but general descriptive terms (veteran, rookie, underclassman, upperclassman, officer, controls, mechanical, programmer, student, mentor) are in order.

Here's an initial entry, from my first year as a full-time mentor:

The wiring on our 2013 Ultimate Ascent robot was a mess, due to a combination of several effects:

• No mentor who had ever done wiring professionally
• Wiring being left to the crew who really wanted to program
• Inadequate volume (and even less access area) in which the control system could abide.

However, possibly the neatest, best-soldered, best-shrink-wrapped, and generally least visible connections on the whole robot were executed by a rookie. Unfortunately, these were a black-to-red, red-to-black splice providing power to a jaguar motor controller. My best reconstruction of events is that the veteran/upperclassman/wiring lead fried a second and a third jag before asking any mentors for help.

Re: What the !@#$ were they thinking?
 

I think that we should let sleeping bonehead moves by mentors and roboteers continue to sleep. I'm sure that many of us have done something cringe worthy in the search for robotics excellence. Those are life lessons that have been learned and create a special bond inside the team that they happened to or with. We shouldn't intrude on those special moments. Especially from Team 1640 from long ago.

Re: What the !@#$ were they thinking?
 

I think bone headed mistakes are worth talking about. They are like COTS parts -- why should your team make them, when others have already made them for you?
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Edit: see next post. Bone headed link fixed.:o

Re: What the !@#$ were they thinking?
 

Is one of the top ten mistakes posting a hyperlink to a file on your hard drive? :D

Re: What the !@#$ were they thinking?
 

On one of my teams the mentor said: "Student, drill right here", as he pointed to the spot.

the student, well trained in doing exactly as the mentor said, did just that - and drilled through the mentor's finger.