Advice for robot transportation to championships
 

Team 8 will be attending championships for the first time in several years, so we are starting from square one as far as robot transportation and shipping to championships.

Just looking for some advice on how to ship the robot... Do most teams bring two crates? Wooden vs metal crate? How exactly does the FedEx donation apply to championships? How does the shipping process work in general? How do you get batteries to the competition? Do they supply batteries?

Sorry for exhaustive number of questions, and I know there are already some threads about this out there, but they are mostly older threads. Any insight and advice would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,
Devin (FRC 8 Paly Robotics)

Re: Advice for robot transportation to championships
 

Re: Advice for robot transportation to championships
 

Make sure to have the proper paperwork on your crate, (read the robot packaging and transportation section of the manual mentioned in the above post). We simply built 1 sturdy wooden crate (it worked out just fine for us). Last year when we qualified for champs we had fedex come and pick it up from our school once school was out. I'm not sure about the fedex donation question. Regarding batteries, you bring those on your own with the rest of your tools (I assume this, my team is located in St. Louis so we don't fly) I'm not sure about batteries on a flight (I know that they don't allow it internationally).

Re: Advice for robot transportation to championships
 

Ship the batteries in your crate, along with the robot. The verbiage that has to be on the crate to allow this to happen is in the shipping crate construction document. SLA batteries cannot be transported via air (domestic or international).

Re: Advice for robot transportation to championships
 

Anyone have any CAD drawings or pictures for the crate? I've read through Section 5.7 already, but I'm concerned about the "must be able to withstand stacking" rule. How sturdy do you guys build these?

Thanks.

Re: Advice for robot transportation to championships
 

Assume that you'll have an overloaded crate on top of yours, which then gets a forklift tine through the side. (I've seen a metal crate take some obvious forklift damage, and several wooden crates have taken SOMETHING falling through them...)

I realize that doesn't help much...

Re: Advice for robot transportation to championships
 

Shipping Crate Construction: http://www.firstinspires.org/node/3846

Re: Advice for robot transportation to championships
 

Some creative teams have designed their crate so that it can be used as part of their pit. Saves on having to get rid of your crate, and waiting to get it back.

Re: Advice for robot transportation to championships
 

What about robot transportation after the event?

We are shipping our robot to Worlds because we are required to. It would be much more convenient for us to drive it ourselves. After Worlds, we are hosting our end-of-year celebration and I'd like to have our robot available for parents to see and for siblings to drive. However, I'm concerned we won't have it back since the instructions state it may be 6-8 weeks.

While we can take the robot, we cannot transport the crate. Are we allowed to take the robot with us and ship the empty crate back? We've built our crate with shelving to use for future years.

Thanks.

Re: Advice for robot transportation to championships
 

There is really no way anyone would know what is or isn't inside of your crate when it leaves the event.

Re: Advice for robot transportation to championships
 

Unless the outbound weight is ~120 lbs less than the inbound weight.

Re: Advice for robot transportation to championships
 

Nobody is checking though.

Re: Advice for robot transportation to championships
 

This is about where we were last year. You are required to use the "free" shipping to get your robot to CMP, but you may bring the robot back by separate channels by filing a form that says you will provide transportation for your robot back to your build site.

It took a bit, but I located the proper sections in the admin manual:

You still have a few days.

If you miss this deadline, I sincerely doubt that FIRST would notice if you sent a bunch of spare parts (or even scrap metal) back rather than your robot, as long as it was in your crate.