Re: Never Do This, and Other Good Ideas Gone Bad
 

Couldn't agree more! I've seen nothing but problems for teams using casters of all types, especially when climbing ramps or going over a bump of any kind.

Re: Never Do This, and Other Good Ideas Gone Bad
 

Ugh... don't even get me started on the scissor lift. :P

Re: Never Do This, and Other Good Ideas Gone Bad
 

Go to a competition without replacement parts, including an extra minibot.

At SVR this year, the small gear that controlled our who arm system snapped in two after a team hit it with their claw (accident, of course!). We had no other gear to replace it with, and spent the remainder of the competition playing defense (which we weren't that bad at).

Also, our minibot got executed. During yet another collision, our minibot somehow fell off our robot, got stuck under our wheels, and got half torn apart by us. Then, once we got off, the other teams, including our alliance, ended up running it over 1 way or another (again, all accidents)!

To anyone who attended SVR this last season, if you found a neodymium magnet attached to you your robot somewhere, and you went against 256 in a match, can we have it back? :p

Re: Never Do This, and Other Good Ideas Gone Bad
 

So far I would have to say my worst experience was 8020 elevators... But thats me.

Re: Never Do This, and Other Good Ideas Gone Bad
 

Last year we had excellent success with Bosch Extruded (e.g. metric 8020) -- totally rocked the Finger Lakes Regional with a highly successful endgame. (I think we failed to lift only twice, and both of those times were because of issues totally unrelated to the performance of the lift itself!)

Bosch has slide carriages that fit their 30mm extruded and work extremely well. We used more of it this year for our minibot deployment.

Re: Never Do This, and Other Good Ideas Gone Bad
 

80/20 (and maybe Bosch too) sliders really start to bind on multi-stage compound elevators. You also have to keep the 80/20 perfectly square to minimize binding, and at height there's a higher tendency for torsion. We scrapped 80/20 in favor of powder coating + teflon for slide friction that was close to what a bearing slide would have; the box aluminum also resisted torsion alot better.

Re: Never Do This, and Other Good Ideas Gone Bad
 

We have not had even a single issue with Bosch slider carriages binding on multi-stage compound lifters -- and from trackballs to minibots to entire robots, we've really put them through their paces! I can't speak for 8020.

Re: Never Do This, and Other Good Ideas Gone Bad
 

I don't know if the majority of my team would agree with me on this, but here's what I think:

2006: No more turret designs. According to members & alumni, 06 was an all around horrible year, robot and all.

We broke this rule in my first year. (2009) Needless to say, our robot scored once that whole year.

2010: Do not try to stop a pnumatic cylinder halfway. We had a "Bump Mode" that allowed our robot to go over the bumps. To do this, we had to activate our pnumatic kicker, and then immediately bring it back about halfway so that the kicker would clear the surface of the bumps without the kicker breaking the plane of the bumpers. Sounded good in theory, (which, according to a forum regular, is a nice place) but it did not work in the real world.

And the new one for Logomotion: NO MORE BUMPER SKIRTS!!! Those things are horrid.

Re: Never Do This, and Other Good Ideas Gone Bad
 

Turreted shooters were on Einstein in both 2006 and 2009. Well designed and built turrets work just fine.

Re: Never Do This, and Other Good Ideas Gone Bad
 

In that case, I guess we suck at turrets, along with keeping our robot underweight...

Re: Never Do This, and Other Good Ideas Gone Bad
 

Though they have been known to work fine, I can't recall any robots that did better then their non-turreted counter-parts. Perhaps there are exceptions to the rule, but I certainly think its a good "never do this" example. Often times, the turret slows down the shooting process because it takes too long to aim.

Jason

Re: Never Do This, and Other Good Ideas Gone Bad
 

Tell that to 217. Their 2006 and 2009 robots disagree.

In 2009, turrets could have been unnecessary (depending on design specifics), but not all years are like 2009. In 2006, they were much more useful when you were making long-range shots and the camera worked.

Re: Never Do This, and Other Good Ideas Gone Bad
 

I wouldn't exactly rule it as a "never do this." There were many successful turret designs I'm sure, my comment was focused on our team, rather than all the other teams.

Re: Never Do This, and Other Good Ideas Gone Bad
 

25 in 2006 as well. Their turret was pretty darn effective.

Re: Never Do This, and Other Good Ideas Gone Bad
 

27 in 2003... 2004, 2005, and 2006. There are pretty detailed pictures of 2005 and 2006 on here.

Re: Never Do This, and Other Good Ideas Gone Bad
 

Why not?

Re: Never Do This, and Other Good Ideas Gone Bad
 

All of the counter examples are teams with lots of engineering support. Making things spin is not as easy as it might seem, and I think most of the "never do this" in this thread really mean "Don't do this unless you have the engineering support to do it right." For example, scissor-lifts are pretty common in the real-world, but the vast majority of FRC scissor-lifts don't really work that well. I can't think of a single design I've never seem implemented well by someone, but for some of the more complicated ones I've seen a heck of a lot more poor implementations than good ones.

Re: Never Do This, and Other Good Ideas Gone Bad
 

Perhaps I forgot to type the word "exceptions" in my post. I could have sworn I did.:rolleyes:

As far as 2006 though, turrets did serve a purpose. I will give you full credit on that count. I suppose some games do cater to turrets better then others.

Jason

Re: Never Do This, and Other Good Ideas Gone Bad
 

What about the conveyor belt you tried didn't work? :confused: Was it the flawed execution, or the excess fixing time, or some other reason?