[Lisa Perez]

At the 2011 Traverse City District Competition, 830's planetary gearbox casing sheared itself in the middle of quarterfinal matches, and there was no way for us to bring it to the site machine shop to get welded in time for the next match. In a little bit of a bind and not wanting to completely forgo scoring capability, we decided to fix it by using screws to attach a piece of aluminum to the front, middle, and back of the casing to lock the segments together. I very vividly remember saying to one of the pit crew students, "Drill through the casing until you feel the outside of the ring gear or until I hear the change in material." Surprisingly, it worked up until the last 20 seconds of Finals Match #3!