pic: Surprise! Your crate was crushed by _____ .
 

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WHERE DID IT ALL GO?

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!?!?!

Did you recieve any contact of any kind from the shipping company?

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What did the shipping company have to say about this happening?

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What in the world happened!?!? That is insane! Details please!

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Who can honestly sleep after being a part of something like this?

The shipping companies are being paid big bucks to safely transport expensive machines that students spend hundreds of hours building, and this is how they treat the crates?

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THAT IS A TEAM'S WORST NIGHTMARE! That would leave me speechless and at the same time crying!

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OMG! Are you guys getting any sort of reimbursement for it???? Has anyone taken responsibility for it??

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First I saw a pic of a robot who's crate fell apart (and survived) now a pic of a robot nearly obliterated by something crushing it. That looks pretty bad but I suppose it got fixed. Did they mention exactly what caused that damage?

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Someone.Is.Getting.Sued.

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Was the crate actually crushed from the outside or was the damage done by other stuff shipped within the crate? I ask because the visible walls of the crate appear intact and still square in the pic.

Do you have any pics of the overall crate?

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Secondhand info here until the Toltechs get back. From what I heard, it seemed like something large and heavy dropped through the top of the crate. And then someone removed whatever it was and replaced the crate top with a new piece of plywood.

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ok, so I guess its time for FIRST to either

A. host a crate design contest. Points awarded on cost, amount of weight the crate can support on its top before it collapses, how far it can be dropped before it breaks open, and simplicity of construction. Winning design becomes the standard FIRST robot crate

or

2. supply a baseline crate design like they do for the low cost field design

?

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I think those are a couple of swell ideas, Ken.

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Yeah Crate design that is robust and light is a challenge. Our crates have been pretty robust for years but the budget reductions have brought us to a point were every once counts. We've been looking for some type of lightweight crate that can support another 600# crate stacked on top of it. Right now our robot crate is 277# empty so just adding the robot with the controllwe already makes us over the 400 # limit.

I'll have to think of something this summer.

Ellery

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Next year, along with all the other robot requirements, they can add:

R073: The robot must be 56" tall when bolted into its crate, and able to support 600 lbs through its frame with up to 2gs of vertical acceleration, for up to 300 hours.

(problem solved!)

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Did anyone else see the crated with the hole in the side of it in Atlanta? It was by the exit of the field by the parts table. It had a huge hole in the side of it.

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Kevin pretty much has the second hand information straight. Shepard produced a document indicating that the crate was received damaged. I have that report. I didn't have time to start the process with FedEx until my brain had recovered from the weekend and competition and I could keep my eyes open after the bus ride back to Texas. FedEx's initial report is that their facility in Tennessee reported the crate had damage when it arrived there. The investigation continues... One can only speculate as to if a jet engine fell off a plane or if another crate slipped off the forklift.

This tragedy makes it appearant that teams must include in their budgets for the coming years estimates for drayage over-ages bills as low cost robot insurance. The championship winners, our pit neighbors, the robowizards have a diamond plate aluminum construction for their crate. Seemed like over-kill to me until Wednesday evening about 7:30 PM.

A bit of catch 22 irony is that SES would not ship our robot back to our school if the crate was still broken. We visited HomeDepot and bought 4 sticks of 2x4s, a box of 3" screws and used the 3/4 inch plywood that SES donated for a new lid.

To answer the question about internal damage. The entire crate exploded outwards when the roof collapsed. The perpetrater put a brand new piece of plywood on the top as it was completely destroyed and then used a 5 lb box of nails to get the crate back into the basic box shape.

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This is really unacceptable. Accidents do happen, but from what I have read the shipping company is saying that it received the crate damaged, and you know it was intact when you shipped it. So it sounds like this is a blame game. I don't think I could take it as well as you have. It it had been my robot, I would really be angry. (There are a few words I would want to add, but I'm not allowed to say them on this forum) :mad: :mad: :mad:


What came first: the student or the mentor?

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yeah i didn't like that shipping company "yellow transportation" at houston i was calling everyday telling them that they haven't shipped our crates off and they said it was impossible for them to still have our crates and then one day i was furious and demanded to talk to the higher up and it turns out he found where they were at while on the phone with me and he said "holy crap.....can you call us back" lol so then 2 days later we got our robot but that company didn't seem that professional

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What was so freaky was it happen on the same aisle as our crate being demanded.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=47125

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Sooooooo... now we know what got dropped onto the other crate! (your crate!) :ahh:

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My props to your team to immediately start figuring out ways to fix the problem instead of going on a rampage of a blame fist. Fix robot first, point finger later (if at all needed). A lesser group of people would give up at a sight like this. What a great show of character of your team and the teams that helped you!

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heres an idea to save a robot in the future ... packing peanuts.... I can see it now, getting to a competition and as every team uncrates thousands of small packing peanuts fill the pits floor... ok maybe the idea is a bit flawed, but humurous non the less... so other then the clean up (which would be rather fun what do you think? (I suggested it to my team while packing this year, but they wouldn't hear it)... and now for the real question... what amount of damage could be saved from packing peanuts?

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:ahh: You think something that did that to a robot would even blink at a bunch of packing peanuts?

Seriously, though. Packing peanuts are mostly intended to keep objects from violently shifting during transport. When you're trying to protect something from being crushed, you mostly put big "Do not crush" and "Fragile" stickers on it. And little pyramid things that get smashed and let you know that someone has put something on top of it. Or you build a box that can support 600 lbs on top of it and hope they don't try to put 800 lbs on top of it.

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Oh, man. This is why you insure your package through the shipping company. We insured our crate for $4000 (the cost of the robot plus the crate materials) just in case something like this happened - did you? =\

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OMG! i feel very sorry for you. what are you going to do with the shipping company? This was Fed-Ex right? because that would be the free shipping that FIRST supplies, so the FIRST community needs to do something about that.

Also, our crate might have been dropped, not our robot, but our supplies, because the wheels on our cart went straight through the bottom.

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I wish that the shipping companies would realize the how much work actually went into building these robots. I wish I could also run a test next year with our robot and add some sensors to monitor its up and down/side to side movement during shipping just to see how rough it really is.

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first off I was beeing sarcastic I know it wouldn't save the robot, but I am very interested in how much of a difference it would make... if you have a robot in a crate, and you fill the crate with packing peanuts, the peanuts will act like a pillow if something falls on it, it won't protect it i know, but I am interested in seeing what the difference it will make... and besides its more of a humorous thought I've had, one of uncrating and millions of packing peanuts flowing out of the crates and onto the floor... I guess I am just a big fan of packing peanuts (and I know they wouldn't save a robot)

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this would be a very interesting idea and great project for the acceleromiter and gyro, if unused on the bot. Problem being would be the power supply during shipping. But you could use the robot batteries and tie them together and have a thumbdrive as the storage drive. Maybe use something as small as a palm for the interface. Hmm, where'd my old pda go....

-Mike

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there are little devices you can buy that you put on the outside or inside of shipping containers

to see if it gets tipped, dropped.... and how much shock and vibration the container receives in transit

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Name?
Price?
Store?

Tomasz Bania

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Ive seen them on shipping docks, I dont have any supplier names or costs.

The simple ones are stick-on things, almost like labels, that contain fine colored sand in a narrow clear enclosure. The top of the enclosure is sticky like tape.

so if your container gets tipped the sand ends up stuck in the tape on the top side, and you have a clear indication your shipment was up-ended.

Other similar devices are available that trigger at certain shock and vibration levels. The intent is you can put one on every container you ship (because they are cheap) and it will tell you if the crate has been mishandled. To keep the shipping company from replaceing the ones that were triggered you can put them inside your container.

Obviously if your crate is smashed then you dont need a little device to tell you its been mishandled.

There are more sophisticated electronic devices you can ship in a container that record the shock and vibration of the entire trip, so you can analyse a typical shipment and know what you need to design your shipping containers to withstand.

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One of the things you can use to tell if you're crate has been tipped is a Tip-N-Tell. They cost just over a dollar each but there's also a minimum quantity and that's where they'd get you, especially that you're a team shipping a few items not a full scale shipping department. There's many shipping suppliers out there but we mostly use U-Line where I work.

MSC also has some shipping supplies, probably a supplier your team has used for other needs before.

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I'm surprised at the low level of handling of these crates. I realize robot's were smashed and thats terrible, but what about companies who ship stuff Fed-Ex all the time? We are looking at a big pool (1000+ teams shipping stuff 2-5 times apiece) of examples, but the odds are still not real pleasant for an average private user. Looking at the shipping industry at a whole, I would *think* that complaints would force freighters to be more careful. Look at the airline industry: People are very rarely improperly shipped. Airlines tend to get a lot of complaints if that happens.

So, why is this happening? I can think of a few possibilities:

1. Containers are shipped this badly usually. We just need to complain more.

2. Such large containers are not commonly shipped and as a result are not handled carefully.

3. Afflicted crates are not built well, and cannot hold up during normal shipping procedures.

4. Fed-Ex puts a "FIRST ROBOT" sticker on the sides of all the crates and instructs forklift operators to search and destroy.

I kinda like # 4...;)

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After seeing this, I'm tempted to put a hazardous material triangle on the side of our crate saying that it is highly explosive...

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Wow. That is horrible. We haven't gotten ours back yet. I am quite scared

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I can't believe how damaged the robot is. For my old team, the regionals and championship were just the beginning. The whole life of the robot begins after that when we would show it off to companies and in front of our whole school and everything. I can't imagine how your team is taking this.

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That sucks man

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For anyone interested in building a lightweight yet strong crate, my team published a white paper this year which is a good, cheap, strong, and light crate. It's also easy to open quickly at competition. About 10 teams in the Boston area used this design, and all of them had no trouble with overage charges, or damage in transit.

The white paper is here: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/1781

If you are going to build a new crate, I highly suggest you at least look at this design. If you don't use it exactly, you might be able to take some of it's better features and incorperate it into your own crate.

Maybe that can help prevent some people mishaps in the upcoming season :-P

- Toby, Boston University Overclocked 246

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Well put.

But honestly if you think about it the freight workers don't care about one box they'll just tell you incidents like this happen all the time. is it right or OK no but it happens. For instance at the AZ regional i saw the "crew" transporting the crates, coming around corners, clipping the sides of the fully loaded crates without a care in the world. So basically what it comes down to is that there getting paid to bring the crates in and bring them back out w/o any regards to what is inside. It truly does suck for your team and I'm sorry.

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What do you pack your crate with to protect the bot or do you just stick the robot in the crate and hope it works when you get there? Do y'all use some type of restraining system or packing protective system? I'm a little antsy because of the electronics/CRio, etc. Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks!

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Wow...old thread. But, you probably found it by searching, so that's a plus.

We typically strap our robot down in various corners of the crate using ratcheting straps. We tend to try to get one on each corner of the robot with an eye-bolt.

Bottom line - make sure it's secure in the crate. You dont' want your robot rolling around in there.

Good luck!

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We typically mount the robot frame to a platform base (so the wheels do not touch the floor) to screw strapping to hold the robot to the platform and then woodscrew the platform to the base of the crate. Pending on the height of the robot and what is hanging out there you'll need to approporiately tie wrap or place filler to keep it from moving. We usually try to pack as many other parts in there to maximize the shipment of stuff on long travel regionals.

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As part of our weight for withholding parts, my team typically just takes off what might break, then we safely bring it ourselves to the competition.

(Major thread revival, but it is an interesting topic to discuss...I know I fear what might happen when we ship our robot).