Quote:
Originally Posted by lukevanoort
In contrast, consider 68, Truck Town Thunder. I never saw their robot in person, but I have seen a number of their matches on video. Their arm was a good deal slower than 1618's, but their gripper was very effective. They were a well above average scoring machine, not only at the Championship, but also at the toughest event of the year, IRI. (of course, their drive system was solid too; nobody pushes Truck Town, nobody (except 177))
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Well, obviously you didn't see our performance at Great Lakes Regional...ugh...
This gripper wasn't the most inspired idea...

But I digress...
First 2 days: enter conference room. Eat. Talk. Draw. Eat some more. Talk some more. More drawing.
Mon-Sat of first week: get to it. Nothing at this point is set in stone; we had prototype ball flingers (two years ago) in our shop that we never used (2 curved arms side-by-side welded together, put the ball in it and fling it outward...the ball *shoots* off the end of that...up and over the cage wall and into a very expensive GM project...

)
Build chassis, get it ready to be welded, etc. As soon as it's done, start building manipulator. Since I spend my time on the other side of the shop, I'm not so tuned into the progress...I'm trying to change that for this year.
Somewhere between 4-5weeks in I get the practice bot; this past season it was nothing more than the prior year's chassis, with the new arm mounted on top. If it hadn't broken so easily I would've been done on time...that's my story and I'm sticking to it...
The final bot is always just being wired on the night before ship date. There's always something stupid--wired backwards, not tight/loose enough, etc. that makes our first competition not so great...I hope to make my part better this year.
So testing and practice time are at the first regional usually. That, and on our practice bot, but the practice bot is so ghetto-rigged that we were wiggling wires to get the pneumatics to trigger...
That's about it.
JBot