Never Do This, and Other Good Ideas Gone Bad

[Ian Curtis]

Originally Posted by IKE

So the scissor lift reminded me that there are a lot of designs experienced teams have tried once, and forever sworn off. This thread is meant to be a compilation of "Ideas gone bad" especially the ones you see year after year. Add your Gone Bad designs, and please explain details:

I will let someone else cover scissor lift. My favorite is the big hopper of balls with a single slide open door. These always work in your head, and they always fail in practice. Typically FIRST picks a compliant ball that wedge together and jam at the exit. This leads to frantic ramming in order to unjam the hopper.

I think anytime you have balls in an open hopper you are asking for trouble. Look at 254/968 in 2006. While they had a big hopper, they several belts at the bottom to get them moving towards the shooter.

We had fair success keeping them in line (i.e. a tube with a width equal to the diameter of the ball so they couldn't bunch up), but even this clogged on us a few times in 2006. So in 2009, we always kept a grip on them.

Moral of the story: Keep something you can power on gamepieces at all times. Leaving them "to do their own thing" will only lead to heartbreak.