Never Do This, and Other Good Ideas Gone Bad

[rsisk]

Originally Posted by Billfred

JVN's silver Sharpie tip was a revelation this year

Also, don't use the bumpers as pillows after you have used the Silver Sharpie Technique, the numbers will transfer to your face. Not that I have first hand experience after the all nighter Monday before shipping or anything, just sayin....

[Brandon Holley]

Originally Posted by the man

I must say our old team, 2645, used set screws all the time with no problems, we used mechanum wheels, a scissor lift, and a cable winch. All on one robot with no problems except a broken logitech controller. One of those examples of engineering gone right.

Pics or it didn't happen....


-Brando

[M. Mellott]

Never try to wire a robot at 3am unless absolutely necessary - Jags don't like to be wired incorrectly.

Never use pneumatic tires on your drivetrain when you need to accurately place a game piece - This one used to be "never use pneumatic tires period" after our 2005 robot (it was like riding on big springs--bounced like crazy), but 1114 showed me last year there really was a use for them on a drivetrain--driving a 140-lb. robot quickly over 12-in. bumps and surviving.

Never use tank treads for high-speed drive applications--climbing and pushing only - Don't get me wrong, they worked great for our 2008 robot, but the continuous high speeds were causing the inner treads to get stress crack (despite steel reinforcement), and those things are expensive.

Never use a high-complex drivetrain (or any system, for that matter) when a much simpler method will do - Despite the coolness factor, our 2010 robot showed us that articulating drivetrains just weren't necessary.

Never forget the six degrees of freedom - Pieces tend to shear or break spectacularly when you do.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by rsisk

Also, don't use the bumpers as pillows after you have used the Silver Sharpie Technique, the numbers will transfer to your face. Not that I have first hand experience after the all nighter Monday before shipping or anything, just sayin....

Pics or it didn't happen.

[efoote868]

If its rated for 25lbs, it probably doesn't have a safety factor of 4, and it probably can't handle 100 lbs.
The "Little Pulley that Could," couldn't.

[the man]

Originally Posted by Brandon Holley

Pics or it didn't happen....


-Brando

Sorry we dont have a lot of pictures but there are some cool videos on our old website http://rprobotics.com/ under the media tab in 2010 videos. You can see our mechanum, scissor lift, and see the winch pull us up. as for set screws im not really sure how else you would attach something to the toughboxes

[Madison]

Originally Posted by the man

Sorry we dont have a lot of pictures but there are some cool videos on our old website http://rprobotics.com/ under the media tab in 2010 videos. You can see our mechanum, scissor lift, and see the winch pull us up. as for set screws im not really sure how else you would attach something to the toughboxes

...with the provided machine key? ...in the provided keyway?

[the man]

Originally Posted by Madison

...with the provided machine key? ...in the provided keyway?

And a setscrew to hold the sprocket in place.

Wait were you guys just saying no setscrews as in no transferring of torque with a set screw?

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by the man

And a setscrew to hold the sprocket in place.

Wait were you guys just saying no setscrews as in no transferring of torque with a set screw?

We try to avoid both, but transferring torque is the worse of the two.

[the man]

One thing we will most likely never use again are casters. Our rookie year, not our best year, we used caster is much the same way they are used on menards carts, two in front two in back and two drive wheels in the middle. It was very unstable and hard on the toughboxes.

[M. Mellott]

Originally Posted by the man

One thing we will most likely never use again are casters. Our rookie year, not our best year, we used caster is much the same way they are used on menards carts, two in front two in back and two drive wheels in the middle. It was very unstable and hard on the toughboxes.

Couldn't agree more! I've seen nothing but problems for teams using casters of all types, especially when climbing ramps or going over a bump of any kind.

[Alex2614]

Originally Posted by IKE

I will let someone else cover scissor lift.

Ugh... don't even get me started on the scissor lift.

Go to a competition without replacement parts, including an extra minibot.

At SVR this year, the small gear that controlled our who arm system snapped in two after a team hit it with their claw (accident, of course!). We had no other gear to replace it with, and spent the remainder of the competition playing defense (which we weren't that bad at).

Also, our minibot got executed. During yet another collision, our minibot somehow fell off our robot, got stuck under our wheels, and got half torn apart by us. Then, once we got off, the other teams, including our alliance, ended up running it over 1 way or another (again, all accidents)!

To anyone who attended SVR this last season, if you found a neodymium magnet attached to you your robot somewhere, and you went against 256 in a match, can we have it back?

[Andrew Remmers]

So far I would have to say my worst experience was 8020 elevators... But thats me.

[pfreivald]

Originally Posted by Joyride_67_1902

So far I would have to say my worst experience was 8020 elevators... But thats me.

Last year we had excellent success with Bosch Extruded (e.g. metric 8020) -- totally rocked the Finger Lakes Regional with a highly successful endgame. (I think we failed to lift only twice, and both of those times were because of issues totally unrelated to the performance of the lift itself!)

Bosch has slide carriages that fit their 30mm extruded and work extremely well. We used more of it this year for our minibot deployment.