Let's See Your Robot's Battle Scars

[tickspe15]

Originally Posted by AustinH

1st match of the day in Mt Vernon on Saturday. Our loader got hooked in some manner and failed spectacularly. Had the spare swapped in and running 5 minutes later and we were 100% up and running in time for the next match.

Redundancy and resiliency are critical this year.

We kept the trashed loader as a keepsake

did anything actually break? It looks like everything came apart at the connectors. Were you using PVC cement?

[AustinH]

Originally Posted by tickspe15

did anything actually break? It looks like everything came apart at the connectors. Were you using PVC cement?

Yeah, everything was glued. There are actually chunks of shattered pipe in those connectors. Normally the passive PVC loader design we used had a ton of extra flexibility. Not this time.

[Zuelu562]

We have a pinch guard over the drive pulleys of our forward intake motor which, when down, happens to be the outermost point of the robot. We crunched that 1/16 inch aluminum at least once each match, and that's our only real battle scar, unless you want to count a robot cutting through 4 layers of bumper material...

[s_forbes]

Half way through one of our qualifying matches, we found that we were driving with what seemed to be 50% of our normal drivetrain power. Pulled it out after the match to find this.

2 of our wheels were gummed up with field marking tape. One of the kit hex bearings broke as well, I suspect as a result of the immense belt load seen when driving with our clogged pulleys.

[Ghost_Pack]

Can anyone top 801 and 1592's 2013 trailer accident?
http://oi57.tinypic.com/3507wag.jpg
http://oi61.tinypic.com/110eu5i.jpg

[MetalJacket]

Didn't get any pictures but we managed to crack welds on both our primary and backup intakes at the Virginia Regional. Fortunately we were able to get some nice gussets made up by the NASA machine shop and rivet everything back together .

[Ian Curtis]

This BAG on a 10:1 VP powers our intake. It spends most of its time inside our frame perimeter or out of the way above our roller claw. After our first QF match (or, at least we noticed it after our first QF match), it looked like this. Much to our surprise it continued working through the remaining QF and SF match ups. Once we can unbag, I can't wait to open it up and see what it looks like on the inside.



Our drivers station overhung our robot cart and got banged by a trophy case in the hall en route to a match. Of course, the laptop screen decided that this would be a great time to go belly up. Luckily, we had our classmate in the pit.

[cglrcng]

Originally Posted by Ian Curtis;1362788

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https://fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/t1.0-9/p526x296/1231622_10201636588456071_862333838_n.jpg[/IMG]
Our drivers station overhung our robot cart and got banged by a trophy case in the hall en route to a match. Of course, the laptop screen decided that this would be a great time to go belly up. Luckily, we had our classmate in the pit.

Ian, what make/model is that laptop? You check the hard drive, I'll locate the parts for you. Upper Clamshell and LCD are fairly cheap.

[Maxwell777]

So, we got a little bit of the field tape in the drive-belt....

http://i.imgur.com/wTnriib.jpg

[Kevin Leonard]

Originally Posted by s_forbes

Half way through one of our qualifying matches, we found that we were driving with what seemed to be 50% of our normal drivetrain power. Pulled it out after the match to find this.

2 of our wheels were gummed up with field marking tape. One of the kit hex bearings broke as well, I suspect as a result of the immense belt load seen when driving with our clogged pulleys.

We've had about 10 of these in our drivetrain break.
They're significantly weaker than last year's hex bearings.
We actually ran Finals-3 of Tech Valley with a bearing and a wheel missing. 5 wheel drive instead of 6.
We're in the process of taking the 2013 bearings from last year's practice bot off to put on this year's robot.

Also at Tech Valley, in our first qualification match, our catapult snapped in two a few shots after a bad dryfire in autonomous.

[J@GMFlint]

Here's the front cross brace from our AM14U chassis during Eliminations at the GLBR District. This year we took a gamble with the KOP chassis for the first time, like many teams we also highly modified it -very little is left "stock" aside from hole patterns- and we actualy found it to be a great product/value. We also found it easy to interface with our staple building material, 80/20, making iterations and repair/replacement relatively easy.

[jeremylee]

Originally Posted by s_forbes

We had the same thing happen to us also causing us to miss an autonomous shot one match. I'm sure the field crew always wonders where all that tape goes.

[cglrcng]

Robot is just fine, but 3rd Q-Match before the picking begins Saturday morning....FRC Driver station up loaded on the Laptop LCD and ready to play, robot already placed on the field and the drivers station panel is placed on the shelf, our drivers are ready to battle.....A cable from the drivers station gets caught on top of a jeans belt loop (my son's), while walking away heading back to get behind the line and wham.....The whole panel flops off the shelf upside down and all the weight lands on the edge of the display lid top edge. The display plastics of that Dell 1502 Laptop is fine, but the LCD is cracked (shattered), internally, the screen is rainbowed pretty colors in the shattered corner and just white everywhere else (they cannot see a thing on the screen), and they went on and played the match w/ it like that, and won. (The FMS is absolutely great!)

Luckily that added Dell accelerometer program came on that unit, and the HD must have parked momentarily during the fall, as the HD checked out just fine.....They borrowed a classmate from FIRST AZ, and a monitor to see by, while they copied off the programming and loaded it up for the last 2 Q's and elimination rounds.

Sure enough both BU Laptops were left at the shop 3 hrs. away (First time in years). New LCD will arrive tomorrow, $59.00 and they are back in business again.
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Things could be much worse for sure after looking at ALL the pics in this thread...Ouch on the laptop above...Snipped...."Of course, the laptop screen decided that this would be a great time to go belly up." Decided to? OK..Lol.

Something tells me that laptop screen didn't have any choice whatsoever, in that situation at all! That is much worse damage, and looks like it was run over by the loaded robot cart too!...Though if hooked up to an external monitor and that drive is still OK (Disk Check and a defrag w/ Defraggler (Piriform.com), use the Health Monitor bad sector check), all the rest looks quite fixable. Doesn't sound like the unit was on, so the HD should be absolutely fine.

E-Bay is your friend for new & used puter parts. Our drive was powered up and spinning when it flopped to the carpeted floor from the shelf. Luckily the G-Force had to be just enough to park it first before the hit. (Not a bad sector found).

And that Gummed Up Wheel and the bearing...Whoa, took some real force to break that bearing like that. I see a lot of added "character" in the pics, as they call it in NASCAR.