[Pretzel]

I still have the crescent end of a combo ratchet/crescent wrench that we used to make a gearbox addition in order to prevent backdriving of a motor at all times. The funny part was that at first we installed the wrench the wrong way, meaning that it had to be taken completely apart (a not so kind procedure) before being reinstalled.

There was a part last year on our robot, which held the end of a Dart actuator in place, that was meant to be CNC milled. It was a small part that was to be made from box tubing with precision, not thinking about the small surface area of the part, I attempted to run it on a CNC mill with a tape plate (3 of the 4 sides had to be cut, hence the tape plate). One loudly thrown part later, I decided that manual machining would be precise enough since we did not have enough time to machine a fixture for the part at that point in the build season. Thus was born the "TNC" (Tyler Non-numerically Controlled) bracket, a part which could only be described as "passable" after using a belt sander to attempt to shape the part from a rectangular piece of box tubing down to the teardrop shape specified in the CAD model. It was eventually replaced after two regional events worth of abuse caused it to begin to buckle (I later postulated that techniques used such as "using a vice to mash it back to square" and "beating on it with a hammer" did not result in it having the highest measure of structural integrity), but while it was on the robot it fairly evident that it did not belong despite the fact that it worked.