Since you're thinking about bumpers, let me just weigh in about something related. You know how FIRST says "As a guideline, BUMPERS should be removable by one person in less than ten minutes."?
That's bad advice, and will come back to bite you if you follow it. Will you have enough time between elimination rounds? (Are you willing to blow a timeout to get your stupid bumpers back on?
)
Each segment of bumpers should be removable by one person, without tools, in less than ten seconds. (There are a few extremely limited exceptions to this dictum. If your robot fits through an ordinary 36 in door, and/or you've demonstrated that there will never be a need to carry it through a door, you can leave the bumpers on—as long as you've
also implemented a bumper cover in the other colour, or have those multicoloured bumpers with the quick-change flaps.) The bumpers should also go back on pretty quickly (for obvious reasons).
It's really easy to accomplish this. Pins or wingnuts (and enough hand clearance to get to them) are simple, effective solutions. Home Depot and especially Lowe's (I don't think Lowe's has made it to Calgary yet) have plenty of small hardware that will make this straightforward. So does McMaster-Carr.
While I'm on the topic, your bumpers are free structure: use them as such. If you use good quality hardwood plywood, 0.75 in of it should be pretty much indestructible. Although with many robot designs, it's simultaneously possible to fulfill the speed-of-removal criterion while still allowing the bumpers to contribute significantly to strength and rigidity, I'll grant that maybe the ten-second rule could stand to be relaxed a bit if you've got the bumpers really solidly anchored to the frame. Call it 30 seconds, in that case.
I never said there was anything wrong with the kit frame, simply that it was weak. - Viper37 [more] 
20-05-2011, 04:25
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