Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Al Skierkiewicz
Oh, if an engineer had just spent one or two hours with that team before competition, their experience could have been more positive. (for instance, when the FIRST tranny came out, it was very sensitive to friction caused by misalignment of gears and shafts) This advice did not need to come from an engineer, just someone with the experience to identify the problem.
|
A couple of years ago, a sophomore team in our area was having a problem building their robot. They put out a call for help here on CD. After several e-mails back and forth over a period of several days, I was still unable to visualize the problem and they still had not solved it. So I arranged to go out to their shop to actually see what the problem was and what their resources were.
Within ten minutes of my arrival, we had used equipment they had in a way they hadn't thought of to accomplish the solution. I spent another hour or so there and helped them with two or three more minor issues, mostly because it was an hour each way and I really didn't feel like getting back in the car yet.
If I hadn't helped them they would have been dead in the water. No progress had been made for several days while they tried to work out this problem. Some how at that point I don't think they needed to spend anymore trial and error time. They did have an alternate solution, which probably would have rendered CNC'd parts useless. I'll bet they wouldn't have forgotten that lesson either ...
BTW they won the Xerox award for their robot at our regional. Somehow I don't think the aid I rendered made it any less their robot.