[David Guzman]

First of all I want to thank 1626 and 1758 for being great alliance partners. We are so sorry we let you guys down at the end. For those of you who were watching the web cast or the competition from the stands, I would like to explain what happened to our (1251’s) robot; there is a learned lesson in the end and an advise for others.

During semi-final match number 2 we broke the plastic coupler that connects to the window motor, which drives our turret. This was due to the heavy defense that was being played on our arm. After this match was over 1626 made a brand new piece for us in literally less than two minutes. The kit piece obviously had some modifications. This shows how great they are working in a team and being gracious professional. THANK YOU GUYS. In the mean time we drilled some holes on our robot to lock our turret into place so we could at least score with up and down motion. Unfortunately in the heat of competition and the shortage of time we did not think of covering our robot to catch the aluminum chips. On the first final match our robot did not move. We had no idea why. We kept looking for a problem and we could not find it. On the second match the drive train kept dying and the arm would not go up sometimes. For the third match our arm would not go up at all, the motor did not even try, but it did in the other direction. We kept looking for a problem in our electronics. Everything looked fine. When we got back to the pits to crate the robot we decided to find the problem, and we found that the aluminum chips we did not catch were in the pwm and digital inputs in the controller.

Lesson learned, NO MATTER WHAT cover your electronics when cutting metal on the robot. We usually do but we were in a rush and made one BIG mistake.
Overall we are very happy about the competition. It was GREAT. Thanks to all of the volunteers and the people that made it happen.

David Guzman