[Donut]

We always keep the past 2 years robots together. Once this season ended, for example, we dismantled the 2004 robot leaving us with 2005 and 2006 to hold on to. How well a past robot performed does not allow it to live longer for us (if one of them eventually wins a Regional or something, that might change), evident by 2004 disappearing since it was our best robot (made it to the finals at AZ).

Even if room is scarce, always try to keep at least one robot together at all times (this means that even when you've shipped a robot after the 6 weeks, you don't take apart the previous year's until that robot returns for good, so you still have one robot with your team at all times). Beyond that it is a decision largely influenced by available space, though a few other factors could contribute as well (for example, we might dismantle older robots even if we had the space for them simply because we've had a tradition of giving graduating seniors a part of the robot from their rookie year as a memoir, and that wouldn't be possible if we never took anything from the robots).

If your team is one of those that dismantles robots, make sure you have LOTS of pictures of those robots. The only thing I regret about our 2001 and 2002 robots being dismantled is that we don't have very many pictures of them to see how they worked if we ever want to take a design from them.