Re: Worst Decision of the Week!
 

i love the mention of magic smoke .. i heard about it through a mentor of mine, and thought it was of is own incarnation, but it seems many people know of it..

read carefully "BACKSIDE SOLDIER CUP VIEW" for wiring competition port ... DOH! (last year)

runaway robot w/ laptop on top? you think thats bad... we started up a 2003 RC board on our practice bot, it was donated and had no clue that the default autom code was full power forward.. .we plug it in and had autom switch on (accidentially), and it pulled the labtop off the desk, hitting the floor, and the robot lunging forward into a heavyduty drafting desk almost knocking it over, and almost pinching me in between.

but this week.. lets seee.. running around in the auto shop nextdoor, a student ran into a vehicle lift post.. ouch.. <not me

Re: Worst Decision of the Week!
 

we put our hopper together with corrugated cardboard and hot glue at the last minute.

Re: Worst Decision of the Week!
 

one of our worst desicions was allowin one of the kids to be incharge or a task when we all knew he would struggle and probably mess it up..... it really isn't his fault i just like to mess with him...lol

Re: Worst Decision of the Week!
 

We did two things that combined are rather dangerous, though we quickly rectified it

1. We built around the battery (how was this not noticed...)
2. The battery lacked proper electrical taping

So, come time to change the battery, it is in the absolute tighest possible space. Just in the path of the battery is a piece of 80/20. So, when initially removing the battery, the electrodes made contact with the 80/20 and made some rather ominous fireworks. We were, however, able to remove the battery safely, and designed a better removal path.

Re: Worst Decision of the Week!
 

I'd say one of my worst descisions was to make a mock up of our camera mount, and then go home for the night. I came in the next day, and it hadn't been remade, so it looks a little ummmm..... messy (to say the least). Our camera still works good.

Re: Worst Decision of the Week!
 

Heh. I cut the pieces for part of our control panel (the student involved hadn't been trained on the saw), and left them on a work table. I forgot about them for a while and went on the teaching some students how to solder. When I remembered the panel parts and went to get them, I couldn't find them. Eventually, they turned up in the scrap bin.

Re: Worst Decision of the Week!
 

Thanks a lot Zoheb! I didn't screw up anything important (I think). The worst decision I made this year was head-butting a prototype elevator. I had a scar on my lip for the next few days, but the elevator was structually sound.

Re: Worst Decision of the Week!
 

My worst decision this year: trying to solder a metal gear to a plastic servo shaft....

Re: Worst Decision of the Week!
 

We tried using paperclips, but found out it destroyed and was pushing the sockets out the back towards the controller. :ahh:

Re: Worst Decision of the Week!
 

We tried to MacGyver together two severed wires in a serial cable with a set of keys, tape, and spit (we were at a demo). It worked out for a few seconds, the radio modem it was connected to powered up and started transmitting, but then it died again. So we just had to resort to a new cable.

Re: Worst Decision of the Week!
 

Worst decision this year was definently a new one...

We had everything hooked up to our electronics, but the code was hung up. So, as our drive was working, we plugged the drive pwms into the shooter speed controller, and left others just dangling down on the vertical board.

This worked fine for a week, but then, I turned the thing on once, and a HUGE cloud of smoke came out from under the guard. More smoke than from a victor burnout. I thought I had somehow killed everything on the board, about 1000 dollars in speed controllers, and maybe the brain. As we examined closer, a pwm leads had draped across the power input to a victor, and burned all the insulation off of the common wire, back to the brain. So, back to panicking. The brain powered fine, but none of the pwm's would work. However, through the grace of god or something, after a code reload, all the pwm outs still worked.

Bottom line: Don't let pwms lay out. They conduct electricity or something...

Re: Worst Decision of the Week!
 

The programmers installed a gyro to help control driving straight. It worked great on the cart with the wheels in the air. When placed on the ground and gently bumped it went totally out of control and then proceeded to the olympic event bot wrestling.

It must have acted like feedback loop and increased the signal by having the bot move more every time the bot moved.

Re: Worst Decision of the Week!
 

Grabbing a very hot piece of aluminum out of the air after cutting it with the saws all for a while. ow

Re: Worst Decision of the Week!
 

I'll begin this post by saying I'm an animator - and know little about hardware.

During the course of build season, I was instructed to drill 'speed holes' through sprockets. 3/2 inch thick sprocket hubs. The drill press worked fine - and although making quite a few screeching noises, drilled through the sprocket hub.

Alarmed by the screeching noise of the drill press, one of the more mechanically inclined members came in and tried to cool the superhot sprocket with cutting oil. He attempted to drill through it again, stalling the drill press.

Later - I realized the reason that I managed to drill through it so easily was that I didn't use the cutting oil - thus not hardening the steel. This allowed me to easily chew through it while the more mechanically inclined members stalled the press.

Re: Worst Decision of the Week!
 

I was instructed to add a dual joystick control to the robot... and so i did.
Low and behold, though, the robot charged forward and did not show any intention of stopping. When we moved the joystick a little bit, the thing suddenly reversed direction and ended up hitting me in the shin. owie.
another stupid thing... this actually happened exactly a year ago. We let one of our coordinately-challenged drivers take wheel, and he ended up taking a chunk our of our schools brick wall. We put it back in with duct tape as a last resort. oh fun fun....