Worst you've seen to the Defenses?
 

What's the worst damage you've seen to/from a defense this year? Both Competition and Practice. Bonus points for pictures.
We at 1764 built some practice defenses, but never truly got to use them due to some bad time management, however we invited other teams to come over and use out practice defenses and goals while we kept working (while overall detrimental to the robot progress, it was rather effective at getting us chairmans at GKC) and one of the two teams managed to rip off the rock wall part of the rock wall, We got apology cookies at GKC though, so I guess it balanced out?

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Not exactly to a defense, but this was from a defense:

https://scontent-sjc2-1.cdninstagram...572032_n.jp g

During the semifinals at Beach Blitz, our practice robot took a particularly hard hit from going over a defense and the neck just kind of snapped. We tried scoring the ball we had in the low goal (pneumatics and intake motor were still connected) but it kept rolling out of the goal. Eventually, the right side of the intake hit the main breaker and we died right next to the batter. Luckily, 5802 made eleventy billion shots during the match and managed to push us onto the batter at the last second.
We won by 10 points.

In the future, we'll make sure that critical joints are better supported. The turret was a constant battle of eliminating the weakest link throughout the entire season, and it just reached the point where we could no longer eliminate the weakest link.

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I personally wasn't at worlds, but 133 blew 2 tires, 2 different matches during finals at Carver

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Anyone from MAR have the video of you guys executing the portcullis after FIRST banned them from off season use?

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Probably not the worst, but one I have a video of :

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I seem to recall 558 causing some Sally Port carnage at one of the NE district events... I think it might have been Hartford.

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558? Nooooooo

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We sheared our intake gearbox during our first QF match on Carson. It was so loud, you could hear it over the announcer and music on the livestream.

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About four teams (including us) kept hitting the moat way too hard during the GA state championship. The holes where the toggle bolts go in got stretched out so badly that they had to replace the whole defense base and put the competition on hold for about a half-hour.

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Re: Worst you've seen to the Defenses?
 

Well... We had our drive gearboxes unprotected... (I think you can see where this is going) and during a Qual match at Denver we drove over the Ramparts hit our CIMs and sheared one of them completely out of the gearbox. It was hanging on solely by the wires that connected it to the PD board. We finished the match though and crossed at least one other defense dragging our CIM around the field.

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Return of Team 900

The Field Strikes Back


See Kevin's post above for the robot in action!

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Team 6166 at the Northern Lights Regional sheered the polycarb off the drawbridge while going through it.

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The combined Palmetto Regional field jacked up the Cheval de Frise so badly that the portcullis was mandatory for several rounds.

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At Chezy Champs teams sheared the heads off most of the bolts on the casters attached to the rock walls.

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Our good friends on 5869 show us how to truly defeat the portcullis.

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Does the field wall count as a defense? Chesapeake District Greater DC Qualifier... Robot Exit Stage Left. Broke through the field wall. Not our robot though and I can't remember which teams it was.

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Before the Portcullis started eating Field Supervisors later in the season FRC 772 did this to the Portcullis by repeatedly ramming it instead of lifting it. They got a yellow card for their efforts.

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Has yet to cause or receive any damage, but I'm curious how the Log Roll will fare at GRITS (Georgia Robotics Invitational & Tournament Showcase) on October 22nd.

Here is the provided description:
The Log Roll is composed of two 3.5 inch diameter logs in a 3 degree X shape that your robot must traverse. Both logs roll on independent bearings and will have a textured "bark" applied to the outside.

The Log Roll will replace the Portcullis in Category A. The other Category A defense is the Cheval de Frise.

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I'm anticipating plenty of sadness and frustration over this.

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This pretty much describes every single wood-version Portcullis ever made. I don't think I've seen a single one that survived the whole build season intact (with the possible exception of ones that were never used with actual robots).

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386 broke the Drawbridge in half at South Florida. I will include a picture later if I remember.

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This is my new favorite video.

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I added a feature to a low bar once. After some robots knocked the pipe out of a practice low bar, I tried to repair it by stapling the fabric back together over he pipe. I needed something solid behind the fabric so the staple gun would work properly. I came across two scrap wood blocks, one of which I set the pipe on so it didn't pull the fabric down, and the other I held behind the staple gun. The staples went farther than expected, and bound the wood block to the low bar. I ended up using zip ties.

5607 almost crossed the Cheval de Frise, then decided that following a destructive robot wasn't the best idea. Red robot(435?) in the secret passage was about to go back to the courtyard, then decided, "I think we'll stay out of their way..." :D

What was that portcullis made of? Did a wooden robot break a wooden defense?

Looks both entertaining and slightly terrifying. Will there be a webcast?

+1

Re: Worst you've seen to the Defenses?
 

Yep, wooden.

At the Fall Classic, we had to repair the low bars (wooden) three times. The third time, right after the second time, we had to pull them off of the field to repair, so we ran the Rock Wall instead for a few matches.

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At GKC, we had knocked off the plastic cover on the side of the sally port at some point. That was the extent of the damage I saw. I know we have video of that somewhere...

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At GKC we had a funny instance to add to our list of things we gave out with our No Robot Left Behind (NRLB) program. The field crew came into the pit looking for tools and we gave them a hacksaw, which they used on the ramparts IIRC.

I found a description: "In Kansas City, the balls held up reasonably well, but the parts on some defenses took lots of abuse. A pin holding down the Ramparts got damaged, and it took a hacksaw to get the Ramparts removed from the floor. The Sally Fort doors were also in frequent need of repair between matches. Other defenses were accumulating burrs. We wonder how the field will hold up to several more weeks of competition."

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We share a practice field with 3130 and their low bar was a bit narrower than the competition one (that or ours was wider). I stopped counting how many times we broke it (way more than 5). Some of their freshman got a good learning experience at least....

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Remember that curie division match where the portacalus came out good time good times

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Link

We had a fun match at SMR.

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We had a tracked robot and as a result we didn't need very much ground clearance (only slightly more than an inch), we had a polycarb bellypan, which was fine the whole season, our wooden version of the rough terrain though is a different story. I (the driver) tore some of the blocks off the rough terrain.

In competition at Rocket City one robot attempting the drawbridge managed to start peeling the sticker off the bridge part as they pushed it down. No real damage as it just got stuck back on, but certainly interesting.

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So, for purposes of shooting and being defended... did they complete a crossing?

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My guess it would be a field fault.

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I think it counts as crossed. The robot ends fully contained by the opponent's courtyard. Nothing says it has to end completely free of contact with the DEFENSE.

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It does count as a crossing but thanks to the rock wall coming out of the outer works it is a field fault

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Our base driver had a love/hate relationship with the Sally Port this year. It was damaged in a number of matches and the field crew gave the team some pieces as a trophy (notably a gas shock and a piece of the frame itself).

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The defenses at the Suffield Shakedown were all wood and were beat HARD. I saw ramparts become a ramp. Drawbridges and portcullises becoming open doorways and overall some pretty badly beaten field elements.

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I didn't say it wasn't a field fault, I just answered Andrew's question.

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Yup, that's the one I was remembering!

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I believe it was at the Chesapeake District Championship (home of the dramatic e-stop malfunction) where someone attempted to cross the ramparts at high speed and sent them flying across the field.

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It would. But Alex got the point of the question - Playing the game of "not a field fault" would this constitute a valid cross. It was an exercise in rule reading for folks.

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Worst I've seen was actually our team, at the Lakeview competition (Week 2). We were crossing the moat, got stuck 3 wheels in, and our clamping gearbox was bashing into the moat beam repeatedly. I was in the spy box when I saw our entire axle assembly fall apart, and I didn't know if the drivers knew. I was signaling wildly to stop, because they kept moving. Later in that match, our alliance tried helping us to the batter without letting us know, so we took a lot of damage in the impact then. The worst part is that we were queued right away. We lost that match with a grand total of zero boulders scored, but managed to get 3 RP in the next match after running across the massive high school to the machine shop. Unfortunately TBA has videos of all our matches except that one.

Edit: I misread the post. I thought it was the worst damage done by a defense to a robot, not the opposite.

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Your misreading was a misread. Damage goes both ways in this thread.

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Lol thanks Eric.

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I may of broken a cheval in every district event I went to. It wasn't on purpose, they were just . . . there. Sorry First.

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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:

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

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

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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.

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

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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

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I was just the GA, not my robot.

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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.