[DonRotolo]

Being in MAR, we go through up to 18 matches in each of three events (=48 matches) plus CMP and maybe a regional too... we need to hold together for maybe 80 matches! So building durable is required.

If you can, build a practice robot. It does not need to be perfect, just about the same as the production robot. We often use a previous year robot. Then all the prototype mechanisms get mounted.

Then beat the snot out of it. Slam it into walls, hard reverses and turns...try to break it. When it does, fix it stronger. Repeat until you are almost out of time.

Then build the final robot. Remember, it does not take as much time to fabricate the robot as it does to design it, so for the production robot we KNOW what needs to be built, it does not take long to build it.

As you can guess, it does not break often.