How Did You Pop the Gamepiece?

[mmcewen]

So quite a few teams have mentioned how they have accidentally destroyed their gamepiece and I was wondering what the most common way is.

Our team's was a bit unconventional...the building we work in is unheated and we left the ball too close to one of the space heaters we had brought in, melting a hole in the side

[azcalg]

Our team hasn't popped it but I think most have popped from wheels that are moving too fast. Team 2383's ball looked like this after this and I think some broke from trying to herd the ball too fast

[zsm150]

...the day after kickoff, on a screw sticking out of the wooden 10 pt goal we had made.

[MrForbes]

We should have our robot ready to play with the ball in the next day or two....we'll keep you all posted when we pop the ball.

[Aroki]

We left our ball in the storage room and when we came back the next day the bladder had ruptured but the fabric was perfectly fine.

Luckily we were able to buy an exercise ball that was the same diameter/weight as the badder for <$10 at a closeout store.

[CalTran]

Saturday after Kickoff, testing the catapult. Made a change to the back plate, fired, ball shot straight up, bounced right off the i-beam above us, and came flying down onto the drill that was sitting on the table. Postmortem we decided the ball committed suicide because of the lack of end game (/sarcasm).

[Boe]

How haven't we broke the ball
we've hit the lights in our shop, we had a ball pop when it hit the goal, we had it too close to someone using a heat gun :/

[jimwick]

We were using rubber bottle stoppers for the intake rollers. They had a sharp edge and popped the ball when rotated too fast.
We have since switched to orange BB wheels.

[Richard.Varone]

Our PVC goal was backwards and it hit a screw sticking out

[BEN35678]

We shoot our ball in our prototype shooter and it bounced off the truss and came back and hit the corner of the protyping frame.

[railerobotics]

At this point I am amazed we haven't popped the ball. *Knocks on wood while typing*

[Taylor]

The corners of our shooter wheels are a bit sharp. They shredded through the ball while testing.
We'll spend some time filing down the wheels' edges (what a strange sentence to type).

[smart1]

Testing a catapult prototype and hit the end of a garage door track.

[who716]

we haven't popped our ball yet but since the chance are fairly high that we might we went and bought a ball that is similar, (same size and weight, just baseball colored) therefore if we were to pop it we don't have to wait without a ball.

[cglrcng]

Outside our High School classroom shop area doors, under an all steel overhead that is up about 13'-14' high, testing the practice bot P.U. & shooter and the shot ball hit a large "I" beam, shot straight back off & hard to the right, and right into sharp desert plant landscaping that have nice needle like straight and many very sharp pointed (think cactus needles), ends to them (we live in the desert south west).......Lots of tiny holes were resultant in the inner bladder...Lucky for us we had a few older 2' excersize ball bladders around and the outer cover wasn't actually damaged.

Now to just get some Shoe Goo (according to a post of others), and fix all those lil' tiny holes....But first an inflated trip to a bathtub to mark them all.

Affected punctured bladder is currently sitting very lonely on the shop floor mainly deflated (and referred to now as "the great white shrivelling game piece 2014"), as a gentle reminder to the students..."Stay far away from the local landscaping when testing either bot outside please, and expect the unexpected!"

Better question though I feel is...How many students and mentors have you had to remind not to sit on the only fairly expensive $52.00 game piece you have available, please? (10 so far here) Stretching out the cover in that manner, makes the ball quite out of round.