Re: What do you guys do with your old robots?
 

We put our old robots on a shelf we built in our lab.

1999 - Disappeared
2000 - Stripped to the Bare Frame
2001 - Displayable
2002 - Disappeared
2003 - Displayable
2004 - Displayable (Just needs some gearbox work)
2005 - Functional
2006 - Displayable
2007 - Stripped to the Bare Frame
2008 - Functional (except for broken 3rd arm)
2009 - Functional

Maybe we'll get to restoring some of them over the summer...

Re: What do you guys do with your old robots?
 

We got our four robots together for our end of the year banquet. I think three of them could be made to work.

Re: What do you guys do with your old robots?
 

We keep the previous year's robot and the current year's robot. The other one's we get rid of.

Re: What do you guys do with your old robots?
 

We still have our 2006 main machine and twin together, primarily because they are fantastic demo machines that can really work a crowd. Our other bots have either been scrounged for spare parts, completely disassembled, or modified for prototyping. We could probably get most of them back together with a little work, but for now it's 2006, 2008, and 2009 that are in functional order.

Re: What do you guys do with your old robots?
 

I believe that all of the machines since 2000 are around and in storage. As far as funtional, I think most could be with some preparation.

We mostly use them to reminiss and discuss design details with the students. They collect a truly gross amount of dust! These actually remind me a lot of retired racecars. Incredibly high performance machines in their day, but without continuous TLC they quickly turn into relics.

2009 - Will be used at IRI and other off season events.
2008 - Functional but the frame took quite a beating from numerous wall slams in Automode
2007 - Technically complete, but suffered catastrophic fatigue failure during YES expo demonstration. I consider this an engineering achievement considering how much a premium weight was that year (see Behind the Design book), and the machine pretty much lived exactly 2 seasons worth of competition hours before numerous fatigue failures occurred simultaneously. Too bad the book submission was turned in before this occurred. We actually had a practice bot that year that suffered the same fate after about 10 hours of practice (10 hours of drive time is actually quite a bit of driving). FRC seasons were typically around 60 matches for Team 33 which equates to around 3-5 hours of drive time (if you include event practices and Auto-mode tuning)

2006 - Functional, but requires significant warm-up period to get the belt drive system working. Also contains numerous fatigure fractures throught the system. It would likely self destruct if an attempt was made to compete in the 2006 game.
2005 - Would require new arm counterbalance bungee and then would be functional.
2004 - haven't seen it operate since 2006. If there was a stair climbing challenge, we would likely revive it.
2003 - One of our mentors loves to revive this one each year because it does a really cool death spiral dance.
2002 - Haven't seen this operate since I was helping out with 249. We contemplated reviving it this year as it had its own trailer mode when it docked with the playing pieces that year.
2001 - I know it is there, but it looks foreign to what I know as a 33 bot.

Earlier bots were dismantled. They are now pictures and memories.

Re: What do you guys do with your old robots?
 

The more recent ones we use for robot demonstrations but any robot older then 06 just sits on shelves at J&J. We will occasionally bring them out and dust them off to show the new members what we have done in the past. It makes for a really nice photo to line up all the robots that the team has made since 2000.

Matthew Simpson
Team 75 Leadership/driver

Re: What do you guys do with your old robots?
 

So far we have been pretty determined to keep all our bots together and functional. It is nice to have them all running for demos and presentations. They each represent a lot of effort and history and are more valuable in tact than the value of any part that might be scavanged from them. The few times we have borrowed something from them we have replaced it.

Re: What do you guys do with your old robots?
 

Kept for deminstrations and out of season tournaments, then used for education of new team members before finally scrapping for usable parts and then anyone that has "emotional attachment" to a part of the robot that is no longer usable is alloud to keep it,

i have our revolver from Aim High and our drive train from overdrive


Reason for scrapping is due to no storage space and attempt to keep budget down but mostly no storage space :-(

Re: What do you guys do with your old robots?
 

The Firebirds (433) have a program called DYR (donate your robot) for old robots.
A few years ago we adopted a school in Ghana, Africa, and we assisted them in forming the first FIRST team in Africa.
We used to bring them over here for build and competition season, but now try to bring robotics to them.
Over the past two years we have collected and shipped enough parts for the Ghanaian students to build three robots.
However, our goal is to be able to expand the program to other surrounding schools.
This is where you come in:
We are collecting old robots, parts, tools, control panels, etc for another shipment.
PM me if your team has anything they want to donate.

Thank you so much:)