Some Rookie Advice (Wait, no we're the ones that need it so...eh nvm)

[rutzman]

Reported

[Henry Williams]

Hi, I'm a junior and Vice President on team 461 out of West Lafayette IN and I have one, make that two important things to say...
1 Make sure you have a solid idea to run with for your robot soon if you do not already. It doesn't matter as much what you do with your robot but how well you do whatever it is. The last few years we have had problems taking too long to design the robot and not leaving the time for tinkering with the final product (though we have still been fairly successful).
2 Just have fun. Whatever you do make sure you remember that you and your team are doing this to have fun!

-good luck from team 461!

[PayneTrain]

Hey kroll, I'm Wil, Web Presence of Team 422 out of Richmond, Virginia here.

Remember that everyone is always behind, but everyone also knows the final goal: February 22nd. Right now, you need to put together some benchmarks so your team is on the right track. If your team has not started building yet, don't worry! Most teams (mine included) carefully spend the first two weeks building prototypes of our ideas. Hope you all are hitting the drills and saws soon though.

There are some experienced teams out of the Hampton Roads area that should be eager to help you with a more physical presence. When I saw Southern Virginia, I figured me and some team mates could drive out to see how you guys were doing on a closed shop day. However, it's hard to cut out a 4 hour round trip drive during exams.

If you don't mind, take some pictures and upload them to Chief Delphi. Include some blurbs on your progress. For example, don't just say "We can't put together the electronics board!" Describe the problem that is holding you back.

Even though I'm only a student, I'm sure that I could round up some mentors on my team to help. In addition, there is a wealth of knowledge both in archived threads on CD, and the grizzled ancients/beloved mentors from some great veteran teams. We aren't just focused on the progress of the bot; we are also focused on the progression of the team's knowledge base, a key to sustainability.

However, the robot is still important. If you have not finalized a design yet, make sure it can accomplish the task at hand. In fact, it's time to break out my three tier list for robot design.
1. Robots that accomplish the primary goal
2. Robots that operate to fill secondary roles (role players)
3. Robots that are broken/invisible

You want to aim for tier 1, prepare for tier 2, and AVOID tier 3. Get the C-base and other assorted parts together to make sure you cna at least get a good kitbot running.

I'm going to cut it short for now, since I'm tired and have tests to study for (gotta keep up the grades to keep up the build), but feel more than free to contact me personally at thomaswpayne@gmail.com if you have any questions. Responses will not be immediate, in order to confirm accuracy. I don't want to tell you the wrong stuff. If you are interested in any other contact info, feel free to email me.

I also assume I will be seeing your team at the VA regional. I would be happy to stop by, and bring some other members along, to exchange pleasantries and information, and lend out a metric kit if necessary.

I wish your team the best of luck! Remember what FIRST is all about (hint: it's not supposed to be Freaking in Really Scary Times)

[sircedric4]

The posts before this seem to cover the team structure and schedule suggestions adequately. Here are a few technical lessons learned from my rookie year 6 years ago.

1) Pin all shafts, set screws will slip. My rookie year was Aim High and we had a conveyor belt feeding the balls into our shooter and we used set screws on a flattened shaft thinking it would be fine. It wasn't.

2) Weigh the robot frequently with a good scale capable of handling the entire robot. We used a bathroom scale our rookie year, doing the half a robot at a time method and had to cut 12 lbs in the pits on Thursday. That was ugly.

3) The 28" X 38" X 60" envelope is inviolate. You have to put your robot in a box of those dimensions and there is no slop. Build your chassis an inch shorter, we do 27"X37"X59" to account for bolt heads, and unsquare frames. My rookie year we were putting our robot against a wall and bashing it to square it up to fit.

4) Use locknuts during your build. We initially used regular nuts while building, and were going to locktite everything at the end. We basically lost a couple nights, unbolting every bolt to loctite the nuts. Using locknuts at the beginning saves a lot of time at the end. You will need some locking feature on all threaded fasteners or else your robot will vibrate itself to its inevitable doom.

That's just the list of rookie mistakes I made. We had no idea what we were getting into, and didn't learn about Chief Delphi till my second year. You already have half the battle fought by knowing to ask for help here.

And this thread lists a lot of other good technical lessons learned:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=89568

[P. Fuller]

1. When you are designing your robot, make sure that your mentors are involved at all stages in the process. They know what will work, and what will either break, not be reliable, or be unsafe. This will save you a lot of time, and tears.
2. When you are building your robot and cut materials for it, do not use a hacksaw. Use either a table saw (if appropriate), a band saw, or a miter saw. This will help you get straighter and more accurate cuts, and will make your robot look better overall.
3. Try to give your programmers as much time with a drivable robot as you can. They will not be happy if they get it the day before ship, and it will probably be a bad job (the programs will be crap.) Try to give the completed robot to your programmers at the end of Week 5/beginning of Week 6, as you will have some time to practice driving before the competition, and the programmers will have time to do a good job.
4. Most importantly, HAVE FUN! This is supposed to be something you do for fun, because you like robotics and building things. Don't make it a chore, or just something you have to do, as then it defeats the purpose of doing robotics.

Good Luck!

[magi65]

Originally Posted by Henry Williams

Hi, I'm a junior and Vice President on team 461 out of West Lafayette IN and I have one, make that two important things to say...
1 Make sure you have a solid idea to run with for your robot soon if you do not already. It doesn't matter as much what you do with your robot but how well you do whatever it is. The last few years we have had problems taking too long to design the robot and not leaving the time for tinkering with the final product (though we have still been fairly successful).
2 Just have fun. Whatever you do make sure you remember that you and your team are doing this to have fun!

-good luck from team 461!

i agree with your post last year i was a rookie team and as many troubles we had i figured out a way to have fun and to get to know my team for future complications.