Bridge building help!!
 

Team 4070 is a rookie team and we need help with how the bridges work so we can build one for our practice field. Any diagrams or helpful information would be greatly appreciated.

Re: Bridge building help!!
 

Diagrams are with the rules. http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprogr...ated-documents

Part labeled field drawings.

Re: Bridge building help!!
 

thank you

Re: Bridge building help!!
 

Something else that may be helpful is the "field tour" Of the bridge. It can be found here: http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?desktop...aqqmoLgQ&gl=US

Re: Bridge building help!!
 

bad link.

try this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&fe...&v=-AMaqqmoLgQ

Re: Bridge building help!!
 

Sorry about that...This is what happens when I post from my Ipod

Re: Bridge building help!!
 

Rather, take a look at Team Drawings - those are boiled-down, simple replicas of the actual bridge that serve as functional replacements that teams can more easily build.

Re: Bridge building help!!
 

I have an issue with the low cost version of the bridge as supplied by FIRST. I have already contacted them about it ans supposedly the information was forward to their engineering team.

The main issue is the deck of the bridge is supported only by 4 3/4" wide ribs all in the same plane. As long as the bridge experience loads in the vertical direction or along it's length that is fine. By if it sides a strong side load (unsupervised hyperactive students or mentors) there is very little to keep the four ribs from simply folding over. For our kickoff event we added blocking between the outer and inner ribs. This took the form of a 6x15" piece of plywood that we attached between two vertical ribs, the top deck and the 2x4 on the bottom.

Also, I believe the plans call for the deck to be attached to the ribs using glue and staples. Use screws instead the staples. After a day of use at our kickoff volunteers were helping to pack up the field. Grabbing the first one by the deck (and not the underlying ribs) the volunteer promptly lifted the deck and left the rest of the structure sitting in place.