Show us your roll-off pit areas!

[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?

[nathannfm]

Originally Posted by coalhot

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

Here is the web page about it, it is quite outdated tho, we have 2 of these now, the original is for the back and the new one is for the right side. We also added a matching battery cart for the corner. I will try and get a picture to post here at Bridgewater this week.

Also something to note, we have it set up in our lab at all times so we can get used to working with it. When we are in the pit it's just like a smaller lab. I can't imagine working in the pit without it.

[Victor4400]

Here is the one from Cerbotics 4400, as you can see we focussed a lot in the safety

[nathannfm]

Here is our pit as set up at Bridgewater, they gave us a nice inside corner next to some collapsed bleachers so we had a bit more than 10x10. If it's tight we move the battery cart to the inside corner.

[pwnageNick]

This isn't exactly a roll off pit but our team designed and built a custom battery cart that makes things much easier for setting up the pit, and also makes it easier for eliminations for having the charged batteries closer to the field. We have the CAD file available online at our website here.

It is able to hold 12 batteries, and can hold 4 of the 3-bank chargers AndyMark sells, however we have 2 of the 3-bank chargers and 3-single bank chargers for now. We usually have chargers for the drills and such set up on top of the cart when it is in the pits. We also have a battery spill kit that is always inside the cart.

Let me know if you have any questions about it.







-Nick