[Oblarg]

We here at 4464 didn't have many failures at all on our robot this year, despite it being our rookie year - admittedly, we have a lot of FRC experience between our mentors, but as important as experience is it's perfectly possible for young teams to make robust systems. You simply need to keep in mind a few things:

1) Keep it simple. This is far-and-away the biggest thing you can do to keep your robot in working order. The more moving parts a robot has, the more it will break, pretty much without exception; complexity breeds failure modes. This is a fundamental law of engineering.

2) Overbuilding is better than underbuilding. The weight limit is a pain, but mechanism failures are more of a pain, believe me. It is better to be able to fit fewer mechanisms within your weight limit and have them all be overbuilt than to fit a large number of mechanisms which are all prone to breaking.

3) Machine things well. This does not mean that everything must be CNC'd or professionally done, but it does mean that you should always err on the side of caution and make things slowly and carefully. A few minutes shaved off your manufacturing time is not worth the many hours of headache that comes with a poorly-build mechanism. If you don't have one already, try very hard to get a mentor with lots of machining experience. One of our mentors this year is a career machinist, and the effect it had on overall build quality is tremendous; I learned more about proper machining and construction this year than probably in any other year of FRC I've been through.

4) Don't design things you're not certain you can build with the resources you have. This feeds into simplicity - be conservative in setting design goals, and stretch if you have the ability. Doing things the other way around is a recipe for inconsistency and frustration. I learned this the hard way on 449, many times. The time for wild ambition is in the offseason, not in the build season - when you're under a deadline and success is important, stick to what you know you can do.