Things you only do ONCE!

[EricH]

50. Connect the battery's terminals with a pair of bolts.
51. Use a drill (press) and file/sandpaper as a lathe. I understand the BeachBots go through at least one lathe of that type per year on average.
52. Power on a mill with anything other than a tool in the cutter. (The bar used for tramming in the head survived, but the gauge didn't! And no, that wasn't me.)

[Oblarg]

53. Attempt to cut hardened-steel shafts on a chopsaw (In my first year on the team, the head of drive mechanics attempted to do this. You can guess how it went. Ultimately, we turned the de-toothed blade into a pretty new clock for the shop teacher, as a consolation.)

54. Let the new electronics freshmen wire up 5 of your motor controllers, and attempt to run them without checking that they did it right. Great way to burn your money, literally.

55. Stall a fisher-price motor.

56. Reach out and flick the little-piece-of-bolt-hanging-on-by-a-thread-after-being-dremmeled with your finger.

57. Splice a PWM cable and a power cable in similar locations, and then proceed to tape the splices so that they're right text to each other. To this day I have no idea who did this, but it killed no less than three digital sidecars.

58. Leave a flashlight sitting in the drive train during an elimination match.

[cbale2000]

Originally Posted by Gregor

27. A week 1 regional.

Our team... EVERY YEAR. >_>


53. Pull the PWM cable out of a speed controller and let the connector fall onto the +12v input terminal of said speed controller while the robot is powered on. (Fun way to make magic smoke though)

[Nick Lawrence]

54. Win the Chairmans award at the FIRST Championship.

... Unless you're 191.

-Nick

[Grim Tuesday]

55. Use window motors on something that should be fast


We managed not to learn from our first time.

[BrendanB]

56. Use versa wheels.

[Iaquinto.Joe]

57. Leave the shooter motor unplugged before a match.

[faust1706]

Wire a kinect backwards. Not only did it destroy the kinect, it shorted the O-Droid X2 board it was plugged into. $250 dollars...gone.

[Jorge Ayala]

Originally Posted by Bstep

Design the robot with Mechanum wheels.

+1

[cpeister]

58. Cut spring steel with a hack saw.

[Grim Tuesday]

Originally Posted by BrendanB

56. Use versa wheels.

I don't want to break the flow of this thread, but why not?

[Jorge Ayala]

59. Design the robot before analyzing the game properly

(My team, three years in a row...)

[BrendanB]

Originally Posted by Grim Tuesday

I don't want to break the flow of this thread, but why not?

Versas are amazing for about one match. They are the closest thing to a cleat you can use. After that they wear down extremely fast. They also don't have much if any lateral traction since the grooves only face one way.

We switched our drive wheels out a lot to keep traction throughout events.

[Joey Milia]

Originally Posted by Oblarg

53. Attempt to cut hardened-steel shafts on a chopsaw (In my first year on the team, the head of drive mechanics attempted to do this. You can guess how it went. Ultimately, we turned the de-toothed blade into a pretty new clock for the shop teacher, as a consolation.)

Done that, cut the tip off a destroyed end mill to start turning it into a boring bar... but we used the correct abrasive blade...

[Eagleeyedan]

Originally Posted by Iaquinto.Joe

57. Leave the shooter motor unplugged before a match.

This killed us in a match but it truly was only done once.