Show us your roll-off pit areas!

[sanddrag]

At Madera and Los Angeles, Team 973 the Greybots from Atascadero had a beautifully-designed and built pit area, that they rolled out of their trailer and into their 10x10 area. The extent of the pit setup consisted of removing a couple bungee cords, and plugging in an electrical cord, and they were ready to run a competition. In less than 5 minutes, their pit area is fully set up. In fact, it rolls out of their trailer fully set up. Virtually nothing else is needed to be done once in the venue. During finals, over the course of 5 minutes they were able to move it to field-side, and they were back in business just as if they were back in the pit area, with no difference whatsoever. It has electrical and network all wired in, and air and vacuum plumbed in, and big mushroom e-stops for safety. It's a masterpiece they've dubbed the "Super Pit" and I'm hoping they post more information about it online.

Anyhow, I'm calling this style of pit area a "roll-off" pit area. I'd love to see pictures of other teams that do something similar, particularly from teams who own a trailer they roll it out of.

[cadandcookies]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

At Madera and Los Angeles, Team 973 the Greybots from Atascadero had a beautifully-design and built pit area, that they rolled out of their trailer and into their 10x10 area. The extent of the pit setup consisted of removing a couple bungee cords, and plugging in an electrical cord, and they were ready to run a competition. In less than 5 minutes, their pit area is fully set up. In fact, it rolls out of their trailer fully set up. Virtually nothing else is needed to be done once in the venue. During finals, over the course of 5 minutes they were able to move it to field-side, and they were back in business just as if they were back in the pit area, with no difference whatsoever. It's a masterpiece they've dubbed the "Super Pit" and I'm hoping they post more information about it online.

Anyhow, I'm calling this style of pit area a "roll-off" pit area. I'd love to see pictures of other teams that do something similar, particularly from teams who own a trailer they roll it out of.

Any chance there are pictures floating around of 973's pit? It sounds very interesting and cool.

[Billfred]

4901's is not quite as grand, but if I ever get transported to some faraway land and have to start another team it's the model I'm going to. To go from that to transporting, just pop off and roll the banner, detach and retract the holder behind it, lift the workbench off, then lock the toolboxes shut and roll them away.

We supplemented this with two sets of plastic shelves, which go up and down with a few whacks of a mallet and store larger items (kit totes and the like) neatly. Those shelves are actually sitting in our (short) robot crate right now somewhere between Columbia and St. Louis.

We transported this pit setup, our robot, 1772's robot, 1772's (knocked-down) crate, 1772's (travel-friendly) pit structure, some extra miscellany, and two suitcases* in the back of a standard Ford E-Series cargo van, and it should fit just fine under the bus to go to St. Louis.

---------------------------------------------

By now 4451's pit setup is the stuff of legend, but I don't have good pictures on hand of their transport structure. There's a large cart (made of Bosch FMS extruded aluminum profile, natch) that holds all the panels of their pit for easy and safe transporting from their trailer to the pit, along with a few stepladders. Once they're done setting up, they roll this cart back to the trailer (I assume) until it's time to tear down. The garage was standing when we rolled back into the pits after the Orlando finals, and they beat us out of the arena. They must be doing something right.**

*Everyone complains about kids needing to use deodorant, and I'm not about to be part of the problem!

**That's understatement--I know they're doing something right!

[Marc S.]

An interesting feature of what 973 dubs "The Super Pit" is that the top shelves are supported by air cylinders and can retract to fit under low doorways. They use compressed CO2 and it allows them to have tall shelves without having to worry about transportation height issues.

[Travis Hoffman]

Is it just me, or does 973's pit arrangement as shown in the picture extend out much wider than the pit marks on the floor?

[dodar]

Originally Posted by Travis Hoffman

Is it just me, or does 973's pit arrangement as shown in the picture extend out much wider than the pit marks on the floor?

Looks about 2 feet past.

[Kevin Sheridan]

Originally Posted by dodar

Looks about 2 feet past.

They normally dont have that tool chest on the far right positioned in such a way. They only had this arrangement since a bunch of pits were already packed up and they moved the mobile parts of their pit closer to the queuing area. Normally everything fits in the 10'x10' space very nicely.

[dodar]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sheridan

They normally dont have that tool chest on the far right positioned in such a way. They only had this arrangement since a bunch of pits were already packed up and they moved the mobile parts of their pit closer to the queuing area. Normally everything fits in the 10'x10' space very nicely.

That kinda felt like what it was looking like when you see alot of open pit areas next to them. Thats a real slick setup.

[AdamHeard]

I'm surprised no one has noticed the built in flammable cabinet....

I won't spoil any of the features of it, leaving that for the makers themselves to post.

I'll say a father/son pair made this beast with the help of a few others, and the rest of the team absolutely loves it.

It does fit in the 10x10 window, but as shown this is during elims when we occupied empty pits near the field.

We're driving it to champs, and are very excited to use it there.

[dodar]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

I'm surprised no one has noticed the built in flammable cabinet....

I won't spoil any of the features of it, leaving that for the makers themselves to post.

I'll say a father/son pair made this beast with the help of a few others, and the rest of the team absolutely loves it.

It does fit in the 10x10 window, but as shown this is during elims when we occupied empty pits near the field.

We're driving it to champs, and are very excited to use it there.

I bet if you guys marketed this to other FIRST teams you would probably make alot of money.

[cadandcookies]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

I'm surprised no one has noticed the built in flammable cabinet....

I won't spoil any of the features of it, leaving that for the makers themselves to post.

I'll say a father/son pair made this beast with the help of a few others, and the rest of the team absolutely loves it.

It does fit in the 10x10 window, but as shown this is during elims when we occupied empty pits near the field.

We're driving it to champs, and are very excited to use it there.

I really, really hope to see a white paper or an in-depth post on this beauty.

You guys took functional pit design and made it into an art form. I hope I have a chance to pick the makers' brains about it at Champs.

[Allen B.]

Thanks for the compliments,

Over the previous off season, and through build season, 973 designed and built the two pit modules you see in the awesome picture of the first post. We saw that there were many benefits to redesigning our pit for this coming season and tailored the design to our resources and needs.

We will have more information about it on our website, which I will link here soon, but for now here is an overview of some of the features we built into it.

The two modules collapse down to be stowed in our trailer that we take to competitions. One of our major design objectives was that when we got to competition, we wanted to be "up and running" in under 10 minutes. As mentioned, our setup for pit consists of bringing in the two modules and our tool box, connecting power and air between them, Flipping two levers to raise the upper half with gas spring assisting pneumatic cylinders, and turning on the light switch. Since we are still improving on the design and working out the details, Madera and LA took a little longer than 10 minutes to get functional, but not by much.

The modules have a 78"x30" footprint. In the picture, we have the pit modules offset so it is occupying more than 10'x10', however the pit was designed to fit in a 9'x9' space.

Features
Electrical
-The entire pit is running through a breaker to comply to the venue's policies we've dealt with in past
-Constructed by a certified electrician
-Along the lines of safety, we have two emergency cutoff button switches that kills all power to the pit.
-A computer with 2 monitors, one per module, in pit for both PR and scouting and match schedule updates.
-We have 3 power strips designed into the pit. One module has 8, 110V outlets with 4 more dedicated outlets for the upper shelf (computer and stuff); the other module has 10, 110V outlets. Although we did not have it implemented for our regionals, by Championships we will have a 12V testing station for our standard Anderson power pole connectors. This will allow us to test motors on or off the robot.
-The last power strip is a dedicated "programmers station" with table on the end of one of our end module. This allows our programmer to stand or sit at a table with 4 110V receptacles and 2 RJ-45 ports. These are connected to both the computer and a port on the other side of the pit that will plug into the robot. This way, the robot is connected to the pit in a manner that the cord is not in the way and not connected directly to the programmers laptop.
-In the same electrical category is our battery box. It holds 12 competition batteries and is independent from the pit module.

Pneumatic
-Our pit actuates up and down to fit in our trailer but also be a comfortable height to work with. This is accomplished by 4 pneumatic cylinders assisted by gas springs to counter balance the weight.
-One of the power strips has a pneumatics testing station. With a toggle valve and regulator, we can articulate pneumatic systems by plugging them into our station. This helps with quick tests on or off the robot.

Other
-Safety being a major design objective, we have a first aid kit, battery kit, and fire extinguisher.
-Flammables cabinet
-Trash can
-Belt sander, small vertical band saw, vice and anvil.
-Vacuum built into the table top. Future iterations will have dust control outlets connected to our power tools.
-Banner mounts for sponsor logos and a regional banner.

We look forward to having it at Champs where efficiency and time is even more critical. There are other things I missed I'm sure, but soon we will have a detailed page on our website that has more information and pictures of construction and use.

[Jean Tenca]

This is so cool! I've had this thread bookmarked since it started and I can't wait to learn more. We're a second year team and have a pretty good pit setup, but this is truly inspirational. Thank you guys for sharing so much information about it.

[brennanvhoek]

We built a new pit this year as well. The wood work benches in the back fold together to 48"x48"x70" so that we can ship it as a crate to worlds. Also, everything in the pit (frame structure, benches, tables, flooring) breaks down and fits inside of the two work benches. It takes about 30min to get everything set up and is functional to be working in in 15min. It has built in power for laptops, chargers and miscellaneous tools. As we work out of a cafeteria this lets us wheel out all of our tools during meetings. This also means that we are using the same organization during competition so there isn't time wasted looking for tools that are in a different spot. We are still working on the finishing touches (lights, better sponsor paneling, battery cart) and I will post more pictures when that it done. We are pretty proud of it though.

[coalhot]

MOE has a quite similar roll-in pit. Maybe someone could post some pics?