What you DON'T what your robot to do!

[Wayne TenBrink]

So glad to see you back in business. This is the nightmare scenario for all of us who are packing a climber but can't decide whether or not to use it.

Thanks for sharing the video and the updates. Hope to see you at MSC.

[Debbie]

Originally Posted by eedoga

I am hopeful because your team was able to come back after that fall, and because your design is so similar to ours and seams to work! I wish you all the best of luck tomorrow!

Edoga

We thought for a second about not climbing anymore. But, we had invested too much time into the design, and we had not had that problem on our practice field. In hindsight, the danger of not being able to latch tightly so that you can undo it mechanically, may have changed our idea on our design, but we did find a way to put our main lock on the top level and still get it off in a relatively decent amount of time. It was definitely sickening to see weeks and weeks of hard work destroyed in seconds. But it was also a growth moment for my team because they immediately decided we would climb again. Too much residual damage though to get it securely climbing. Our last regular match, we had decided to not risk it, and ruin a shot of getting picked. We went out to shoot and do a 20 point climb, but we got jammed under the pyramid. Good luck your team! I hope you make it! Let me know how it goes!

Originally Posted by Adam Freeman

Debbie,

I feel so bad for you guys. Climbing is so scary!

We actually just experienced that same situation earlier this week. Our robot looked almost identical in how it fell and how it "flipped" and "bounced" off the tower.

Luckily ours was the practice robot. Frame was twisted and we blew the digital side car. We'll see if anything else happened today.

Good luck! Keep going forward, I'm sure you guys will have everything locked down and ready to go for eliminations

-Adam

We were hoping too, and we did make a climb, but a pin fell out of our dumper (more residual damage) and it didn't dump. The second time we were hit while our first upright knocking us off our climb. The third, we had a problem with our camera, so we couldn't get a good line up

Sorry to hear about your practice bot. I was amazed that none of our electronics had to be replaced aside from our sidecar and pwm cables.

Originally Posted by Wayne TenBrink

So glad to see you back in business. This is the nightmare scenario for all of us who are packing a climber but can't decide whether or not to use it.
.

It is very scary for sure! I would say it is very important to powdercoat (we didn't/tried spray paint, but wasn't the same) your practice pyramid as it is SO slick, and to make sure it is exactly as stable as the real one. We welded ours so it didn't fall on anyone, and I guess that came back to hurt us when we lifted off the top of the pyramid the first climb. I hope FIRST makes the top of the pyramid more secure, but we did work around that problem. it is just scary that it can be pushed off so easily.

I still cringe each time I watch it. Thank you all for your thoughts. I hope you all continue to climb! But, bring lots of pwm cables all ready to go. Thankfully we have a place at competition that we could fix a weld break. So proud of my team for not giving up. Good luck to all of you!