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

[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!