Broken Boxes

[Pengiun Joe]

I've been hearing a few things about people breaking their boxes. How many people have had problems with these things breaking? Someone mentioned that in some areas the cold might be causing them to become brittle, so please mentioned where you're at and how you've been storing them.

[Johca_Gaorl]

In Newport News, VA.

We've been stacking them (12 high once!) knocking them down, kicking them. And they've been in our robot room, which might be a little cold. However, we haven't been subjecting them to any forces that robots won't be able to easily create. We are gonna go through these fast at competitions.

I believe someone said Woodie expected us to go through 5 or six a match.

[HolyMasamune]

We haven't tried yet, but storing it in a semi-warm place (aka not out in the rain and cold and then smashing it with your robot against the ground) would prevent it from breaking. Hopefully, FIRST's tubs won't break during the competition or else that would be bad, especially with all the slamming and grabbing, etc.

[Rickertsen2]

all i can say is i hope first has lots of tubs.

[tatsak42]

And they'll have fun carrying around rivetted boxes, no nesting boxes to save space..

If two 130 lb robots going at full speed hit the same box at the same time at the top of the ramp, something's gotta lose.. and the most likely candidate for that is the bin. Just like the reason you can't have protruding stuff in teh wire mesh. If two robots get in a fight with both robots' wheels meshed in, the wire's gonna lose.

[Gadget470]

We stacked the boxes (in correct format) on flat ground just to see how much room they actually take up. After our menotrs repeatedly told us don't knock them they are still cold and probably brittle, we had a team meeting. After the meeting, one mentor tackled the boxes and broke 3.

[Frostbyte]

I think its fairly safe to say that they better have a nice supply of extra boxes there at the competition.... or else there better be a walmart near lol... Do you think testing a bat on one might be acurate of something someone might be using to hit the boxes with lol

[Mark Pettit]

Our teams put the boxes to the test by repeatedly knocking the wall off the top of the ramp, pushing through the cluster at the bottom of the ramp with our bot, throwing them across the room, and my students are even using them as seats. All of this with, thus far, no breakage. Of course, we don't have the freezing weather in Arizona that most of you with bin problems seem to have, so it sounds like the cold is really what's making them weak.

[Simeon]

our bins haven't exactly cracked or get destroyed, but we noticed that they are very undurable... hopefully FIRST has a new set of bins for EACH competition (which i doubt). dropping them from one or two feet already makes sounds that boxes usually don't MAKE... so we're just trying to pad all the floors where we drop the bins so that they don't break.

nevertheless, they've made the game, we can't do too much about it.

[Funny]

I would have said 0 but that wasn't an option. Maybe its because we store our boxes inside, but I don't think a single one has broken. They are getting those worrying white marks though...

[Natchez]

With one swing, 8 tubs broken and plastic splinters flying everywhere. I’m proud to say that everyone was wearing safety glasses at the time. ALWAYS wear your safety glasses!

During our STUDoBOT activities, we were evaluating the Jimmy Connors/Tiger Woods/Babe Ruth strategy where the first automated move is to whack the tubs with a racket/club/bat going at a high rate of speed (not too difficult to do with a set of nested tubes and some surgical tubing), we swung a 10' long 1" schedule 40 PVC like a baseball bat at a height of about 4.5'. It was very effective, knocking most of the tubs down the ramp into scoring position, BUT the plastic went everywhere. Unofficially, 8 tubs were broken BUT are still usable (tops were NOT riveted).

Although one can view "fragile" containers as a bad thing, I think that it is a VERY good thing. If we were using something like the Rubbermaid Totes (these are the soft plastic tubs that you can run over with a car in -50 degree weather and they’ll survive with only a scratch), I’d expect to see the above Babe Ruth strategy generating tip velocities in excess of 150 mph. We’d have to provide hazardous duty pay to the referees. Cheers to FIRST for picking "fragile" containers.

I'm starting to believe that breaking boxes this year will be analogous to tearing up the carpet from last year. Some teams will spend 6 weeks trying to cushion the impact only to show up at a regional to find out that teams are consistently breaking containers with their opening move and ultimately winning because of their speed to the containers. Although I’m not exactly sure how you would do it, hopefully FIRST will set some guidelines on destruction of containers. Maybe we could use Dave (dlavery) to stand in front of the mechanism and whack him to see if it hurts since HE is the one that came up with this game

Take care,
Lucien

P.S. Please send all hate mail to my personal email address ...Dave.Lavery@mypersonalemail.com

[GregT]

Im currious... has FIRST set clear guidlines on what still counts as a bin? Say a bin gets broekn in half and both half end up on the same side, is that a bin? What if 1 half is on one side, the other on another. What if 75% of the bin is on one side, etc?

[Reed B.]

If they really think they're going to go through 5-6 crates a game, they probably would've just stuck with balls.
In any event, I don't think it's going to be too horrible. A lot of crates are going to fall when they topple from the pyramid, but considering that a)they're light and b)they don't have large, heavy objects in them, I don't think they'll take too much damage. Granted, our team hasn't yet tried to see how many we can smash yet, but I figure if the containers start taking enough damage in the early regionals, the refs and inspectors are going to riot, not to mention the field crew.

Im currious... has FIRST set clear guidlines on what still counts as a bin? Say a bin gets broekn in half and both half end up on the same side, is that a bin? What if 1 half is on one side, the other on another. What if 75% of the bin is on one side, etc?

My guess is that the bin wouldn't count.

-Reed
"Ketchup on a hotdog? NOBODY puts ketchup on a hotdog!"

[OneAngryDaisy]

Originally posted by Reed B.
If they really think they're going to go through 5-6 crates a game, they probably would've just stuck with balls.
In any event, I don't think it's going to be too horrible. A lot of crates are going to fall when they topple from the pyramid, but considering that a)they're light and b)they don't have large, heavy objects in them, I don't think they'll take too much damage.

Ever knocked over a pile of five bins? After five or six falls they get messed up pretty badly- and they'll be falling on other robots/wire mesh

[Greg Perkins]

i havent read all of the rules yet, but if you break a box, are you disqualified? i mean, last year if you popped a ball, u were disqualified....anyone know?


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