Nightmare Repairs At Competition

[Kyle A]

My junior year on the team, 2006 Aim High (edit), The robot we shipped in the crate was far from perfect. The hopper to hold the balls was non existed the shooter kind of worked part of the time, and the electronics were out in the open. When we got to the Pittsburgh Regional and opened the crate there was a ton to do. Going out for our first match, everything was held on by zip ties and velcro straps. After 2 matches of not making any shots we had a team meeting, a few robots that were only dumpers were really good, and we had a vote to rebuild the robot from a shooter to a dumper. It was decided to go for the dumper, so a group of us started striping the robot down to its frame. Another group started going through all the spare parts we brought. we had angle, aluminum plate, lexan, and a ton of rivets, so we got to work. With some help from some other teams we cut the aluminum in half forming 2 triangles, while another group used a heat gun to bend the lexan into a shape that would work. After riveting everything into place onto the frame, we went out for our last practice math after missing 3, The robot worked pretty good we could pick balls up and dump them into the one point goals, but when picking up a few balls would fly right out of the hopper, and also at the end of the match we were back heavy and tipped of the ramp. Back in the pit we had a bunch of those fold up hampers, so we took and riveted one to each side of the hopper, tested and it worked great. Next we had to figure out how to stop tipping, we looked around for a bit and finally picked what to do. In the pit we had 2 steelface heads, our team mascot, cut out of steel for decoration. We bolted it to the front of our robot, and went for final inspection, we passed at the last moment.
I know it is not a nightmare repair like other teams have had but it is one that I will always remember, and I feel for teams like 1592 and 801 because I know it is not fun rebuilding a robot in one day. below is a picture of before and after.


I also remember one year a teams robot crate was shipped upside down and they had to rebuild, can't remember the team or year though.