[Foster]

Thanks to all that responded.

I took the responses from last night and from another team (thanks Dave) [take the battery out, take the boards out from the cRio, make sure that only the zone you will weld is exposed-physically protect everything else, keep welder connections close to the weld site] and we welded our support on at 10 AM this morning. Everything worked out well, all in all a 10 minute project.

DEWBot-5 is very compact. Things that may break and need to be changed out are on the outside where they have good access. Things that have low probability of breaking (like the cRio chassis) are in the center. Likewise things that have a good chance of breaking and need repair / replacement are held on with bolts.

Battery swap takes ~30 seconds, we can remove / replace the bumpers in less than two minutes to get full access to the drive train. Adjustments to the drive train is via access holes in the frame, the T-Handle is our friend, so the bumpers don't need to come off for minor changes.

But, welding is a skill that we wanted to have in-house to allow some design and fabrication flexibility. We have a 85% welded frame with 80/20 at the key points, ones that have components that may need to come on and off. The frame is strong and light while being versatile. Our moon-rock tower is also welded, but can be repaired / modified with bolts and some pre-tapped components.

Electronics use the remaining available space (come see us at Chesapeake to see how we fit 10 cubic feet of electronics in a 5 cu ft space). But there will be a spare spike and a spare Jaguar mounted for easy swap in case of damage. Electronics can be changed with some difficulty, but again in the order of probability of happening. We have a second cRio mounted on a debug board designed by our programming / electrical mentor. It allows us to work on the programming while the build team has the robot. We can swap cards out of it and into the robot if they get damaged, takes about 5 minutes.

Thanks again to all that responded and I will take the comments back to our team.