Production Timeline

[EricH]

Originally Posted by lemiant

Thanks, that is what I was looking for. Specifically I'm wondering how long the physical building of the robot takes.

It depends on a couple of factors. I can't give anything for sure because of both of those factors.

1) Robot Design. In general, a more complex design takes longer to build. Even with a bit of practice at swerves, it will take longer to do a swerve than a 6WD. The simpler the design, and the fewer parts it has, the faster, in general.

2) Time to CAD. You're leaving this out. It's reasonable to figure that to get to the point of a full CAD, 2 weeks is the target time. However, all that CAD time does not have to exclude building time. If you have half of the robot designed, or a key part, get busy building before the CAD is done and you shave off time.

3) Shipping time. You need material, and that takes time to arrive. Especially if BaneBots (or some other supplier) doesn't anticipate the sudden massive demand on their product caused by 2000 FRC teams and runs into a supply shortage.

4) This is the big one, but precision will kill you. If you have a wider tolerance, you can get stuff done faster, but you may need to widen holes or move them to get stuff to fit. (Or you get a "slop fit", which needs to be checked every match to avoid the looseness growing...) But, it will work eventually. On the other hand, having everything with very high precision/tight tolerance means that if you mess anything up, you have to go to a slop fit/re-"machined" jury rig setup. It also takes longer to do.

From experience: I'll go with the 330 machines I worked on, 2003-2007.
2003: About 3 weeks. The last 4 days were spend replacing a cast-iron gear in a gearbox. Simple machine (4WD, 4-bar arm, 2 single-joint pneumatic wedges, single-motor jaws).
2004: About 3-4 weeks. We weren't exactly done on ship date. Complicated machine (4WD, 2-motor lift, 2-motor arm on top of the lift, 1-motor slider device at the top of the lift, 2x pneumatic extensions in 2 different places, 1 winch-locker--and a testing device on the robot at ship didn't get finished and was later replaced)
2005: Week 4, we cut metal. Week 5.5, we were driving. One joint was the holdup--once it was located, full speed ahead. Simple machine (6WD, single-pivot arm, 2x 3-hinge wedges)
2006: IIRC, started around Week 3-4, finished around ship date. Relatively complex machine (6WD, 3-motor+gravity multi-belt ball-handling system)
2007: Practice robot running Week 3, competition around Week 6 just about complete (there were changes from the practice robot). "Simple" machine: 6WD, single-joint arm with pneumatic extension/gripper, 2 independent ramps. See 330's 2011 robot for an idea what it looked like.