[Kyoshirin]

1) Build the most important part last:

Did this on an offseason robot last fall. It had a bucket that lifted via parallel arms. By the time the frame and bucket were done, we had no room for the parallel arms unless we used flat. The bucket never fell back inside the frame when we let it down. We almost completely rebuilt our robot after this.

2) Use flat for parallel lifting arms:

It makes things go up and down fine. It also has the unfortunate side effect of things waving around to the sides.

3) Not read all of the manual:

We used both a DeWalt and a Globe on our robot this year. Luckily I was glancing through the manual one night (procrastinating homework) and noticed. We spent the next two weeks trying to mount the window motors.

4) Have someone build a part for a design they hate:

It either will be done wrong, or just not done at all.

5) Non-Polycord belts:

We have found that they don't work for us, from slipping to coming off the roller to being so ineffective it's useless.

6) More than one gate latch on an arm:

The amount of sway and overall inefficiency as well as a horrible lack of control prevent this from being a remotely good idea.

7) Human player fed ONLY

We did this for an offseason competition. We probably would've won if we didn't have to cross the field to reload, score, reload, score, etc.

8) Build something without a definitive strategy, or a good idea of how to make it work:

Here is a list of robots we've (recently) had to completely rebuild after the first competition fro this reason;
FIRST 09 (from Archimedian screw to polycord conveyor)
FIRST 10 (kicker and hanger both didn't work)
Offseason 10 (See #'s 1 & 2)