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Unread 19-05-2009, 13:43
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Re: What do you guys do with your old robots?

I believe that all of the machines since 2000 are around and in storage. As far as funtional, I think most could be with some preparation.

We mostly use them to reminiss and discuss design details with the students. They collect a truly gross amount of dust! These actually remind me a lot of retired racecars. Incredibly high performance machines in their day, but without continuous TLC they quickly turn into relics.

2009 - Will be used at IRI and other off season events.
2008 - Functional but the frame took quite a beating from numerous wall slams in Automode
2007 - Technically complete, but suffered catastrophic fatigue failure during YES expo demonstration. I consider this an engineering achievement considering how much a premium weight was that year (see Behind the Design book), and the machine pretty much lived exactly 2 seasons worth of competition hours before numerous fatigue failures occurred simultaneously. Too bad the book submission was turned in before this occurred. We actually had a practice bot that year that suffered the same fate after about 10 hours of practice (10 hours of drive time is actually quite a bit of driving). FRC seasons were typically around 60 matches for Team 33 which equates to around 3-5 hours of drive time (if you include event practices and Auto-mode tuning)

2006 - Functional, but requires significant warm-up period to get the belt drive system working. Also contains numerous fatigure fractures throught the system. It would likely self destruct if an attempt was made to compete in the 2006 game.
2005 - Would require new arm counterbalance bungee and then would be functional.
2004 - haven't seen it operate since 2006. If there was a stair climbing challenge, we would likely revive it.
2003 - One of our mentors loves to revive this one each year because it does a really cool death spiral dance.
2002 - Haven't seen this operate since I was helping out with 249. We contemplated reviving it this year as it had its own trailer mode when it docked with the playing pieces that year.
2001 - I know it is there, but it looks foreign to what I know as a 33 bot.

Earlier bots were dismantled. They are now pictures and memories.
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