Re: Worst you've seen to the Defenses?
 

That is impressive

I'd say some of the longest lasting damage I encountered was from our teams practice drawbridge this year. It was not built out of wood, so the worst we could do to it was pop the string out of the pulleys. It, however, would bind up something terrible. To cope with it, we had to gear the arms very high, and precisely time the lift. We shredded so many gears on that thing. We get to the practice field at the first competition and just have to bump it up lightly with our arm....

That overgearing plagued us most of the season, and we spent finals of our first event playing defense because the gearing failed again ::ouch:: Entirely due to faults in the design, we definitely should have used sprockets and chain or belts and pulleys, because at that torque any sharp shock or stall could break the system (usually this happened with the cheval). Hindsight is 20/20

My brother (our secondary driver) started wearing one of the shredded gears as a necklace.:rolleyes:

Re: Worst you've seen to the Defenses?
 

I wouldn't count this as damage but I have the share it. If you can't tell that's the drawbridge.

Re: Worst you've seen to the Defenses?
 

I can't wait to see the Log Roll! It should be fun.

Re: Worst you've seen to the Defenses?
 

Our driver on 3005 got a trophy from TRR this summer when he broke off the polycarb divider on the batter ramps. That seems pretty common though.

The worst I personally witnessed was as game announcer at Alamo, and this all happened about 5 feet from me. 4091 accidentally used the wrong auto code in a match, making them go full speed over the moat and crash into the driver's station. They weren't done though, and about 2 seconds later the robot did a 180, and went full speed back to the center of the field. It hit the defense divider by the secret passage right in the middle of their intake. The entire defense holder got ripped off the field. This was only one of many delays for the very long event.

Re: Worst you've seen to the Defenses?
 

............ What gear ratio and motor combination were you using to manage that?! o_0

Re: Worst you've seen to the Defenses?
 

The worst I've seen done to the field was at week one Hatboro-Horsham. I think the photo will speak for itself.


https://twitter.com/FRC708/status/706292723519758336

Re: Worst you've seen to the Defenses?
 

I was just the GA, not my robot.

Re: Worst you've seen to the Defenses?
 

As a ref at the Rhode Island event, I saw a robot in Auto go full-speed backwards (not sure if it was programmed wrong or just placed on the field the wrong way around), right into a Cheval de Fail, bending one of the "planks".

https://twitter.com/laj517/status/713440848839630848

For the entire year, I alternated between being amazed at how much carnage happened to the field and its elements, and being amazed at how well it all held up considering what it was going through. I know the New England fields' bottom-of-driver-stations diamond plate will never be the same again, even though during take-down we jump on it trying to get it straightened out again.