Thread: Bad Robots
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Unread 14-04-2014, 17:30
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Jibsy Jibsy is offline
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AKA: Jared Baribeau
FRC #3756 (Ramferno)
Team Role: College Student
 
Join Date: Jan 2011
Rookie Year: 2011
Location: London, Ontario
Posts: 95
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Re: Bad Robots

As mentioned before, kudos to you guys for getting out to an event as pre-rookies, that's a fantastic start already.

There has already been lots of high quality input given here, but there's one thing I would like to add to that I've learned from personal experience. That has to do with the design and build of mechanisms.

As has been mentioned many times above, building robots is hard. What you will find though, is that there are teams that have little trouble whipping together prototypes in a day or two that functions at or above par of most of those at competitions. Put together a full robot of prototype level mechanisms that work, and you're already above average.

So where's the challenge here? The challenge comes in actually building mechanisms that WORK. I remember back to my first year (2011), spending countless hours working on building a minibot and a deployment system. The prototypes I built were clunky, slow, and only sometimes worked - even though the task wasn't super complicated. I remember having an idea I was excited about on how to pick up tubes, but not having the slightest clue how to actually build it.

Picture in your head now - say you wanted to create something like a drive-train. Odds are you could picture something in your head, but wouldn't know where to start as far as actually designing it.

To cut to the chase, between now and kickoff of your very first FRC build season (WOO!), imagine stuff, then research how you build build the stuff you imagined (via Chief Delphi, mentors, other teams, etc.), design the stuff, and then build it!

Being a pre-rookie team, you probably don't have a stockpile of supplies kicking around to make stuff. Which brings me to another point - if you can work now at finding mentors, machine shop sponsors, metal/plastics sponsors, you will be in a good place come kickoff.

I would love to keep going, but my break is up! If you have any questions, feel free to shoot me a message. I would love to help y'all get started!
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