[Mike Hendricks]

Last year, we were getting everything all ready for the bot to go into the crate (the night before we shiped the bot) and realized that half of the welds that held the drivetrain on the frame cracked. We worked till about 2am that night tearing everything apart so the frame could be rewelded (without damaging anything).

This year, we had a problem with our lower arm transmission's output shaft. It was mild steel, with a keyway cut in it. The only problem, is someone overlooked the amount of torque that is put on that shaft. The keyway basically opened up, causing almost no control of the arm. As a result, yesterday the bot was torn apart (took about 15 minutes .. hehe) and a new shaft was machined from a sway bar off a mazda miaita (the shaft had to be turned down from about 5/8 to a little under 1/2. Then the gear was welded on and bot reassembled. Sadly, we never had time to do any programming/driver training yesterday. Programming is now 2 days behind, and we still havent had anyone else but the programmers drive the bot.

I dont forsee anything else breaking, but whenever people are programming/driving, there are a few people there that are just mechinical .. waiting for something to go wrong .. and if it does, they can fix it in usually less than an hour (with the exception of welding and machining)