What is the most ghetto thing you've seen on a robot?

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

At an off-season several years ago we had a motor sticking out the side of the robot's superstructure with wires in danger of being damaged by contacting other robots. After trying and failing to fashion a wire guard out of polycarb, we pulled an empty plastic soda bottle out of the trash, cut off the top, and zip-tied it around the end of the motor.

For a non-FRC event a few years back, my team needed anti-dust shields for our drive motors (a quartet of 775s, in this case). I think they opted for the Mountain Dew cans rather than some others that might have been available... And they were covered with tape or something like that. The rest of the electronics were in more professional boxes.

[natejo99]

Not sure if this qualifies as sketchy/janky, but I have to bring up what our team has dubbed "chairbot" from 2014


https://imgur.com/bHhtJpb

[arc25565]

On our robot at the Greater Toronto central regional the screws holding a cim into a transmission were loose. Needless to say we didn't have enough time to fix it properly so we used pieces of scrap metal, zip ties and about a half roll of duct tape to hold it in place.

[chrisfl]

In 2013 we were prototyping a shooter and ran out of hubs for Banebot wheels and ended up wrapping a cim shaft in duct tape and pressing the wheel on. Needless to say the design didn't work, partially to the wheel we used and a shabby structure and partially to the uncentered rotation of the wheel.

[C.Lesco]

Originally Posted by natejo99

Not sure if this qualifies as sketchy/janky, but I have to bring up what our team has dubbed "chairbot" from 2014


https://imgur.com/bHhtJpb

I am not even kidding, hands down, no doubt, this is my favorite robot from 2014. This is so awesome. We use peices of chairs on our bot as a frame but this is next level. Fav bot fav team 2014.

[messer5740]

Originally Posted by C.Lesco

I am not even kidding, hands down, no doubt, this is my favorite robot from 2014. This is so awesome. We use peices of chairs on our bot as a frame but this is next level. Fav bot fav team 2014.

WHAAAAAAAAAA?????
Catcher only or could it shoot too? (Don't know the rules too well rookie year was 2015)

[Hitchhiker 42]

Originally Posted by messer5740

WHAAAAAAAAAA?????
Catcher only or could it shoot too? (Don't know the rules too well rookie year was 2015)

Seems like a defense bot.

[Christopher149]

Originally Posted by Hitchhiker 42

Seems like a defense bot.

Amusingly, the chair replaced a wooden structure for their second event.

Example of it earning a possession in a match (so it is much more than a mere defense bot).

[techhelpbb]

Originally Posted by natejo99

Not sure if this qualifies as sketchy/janky, but I have to bring up what our team has dubbed "chairbot" from 2014

https://imgur.com/bHhtJpb

Chairman's: light on man, heavy on chair

[Maxwellfire]

Originally Posted by nedwards28

2014 rookie year in aerial assist. Robot won't stay in correct configuration at match start. We used zip ties to hold the arm up and then used the autonomous to jerk the robot to a stop hard enough to break said zip ties. We also didn't have enough pneumatic guts to get the ball over the truss without a solid running start.

2015 recycle rush. Needed to spring load some clips that we're supposed to pick up totes by the handles during our second district competition. The only thing we had were hair ties from the girls on the team. Our running joke is that hair ties got us to Worlds.

Hair ties of various types are a continual sight on our robots: 2014 to retract the shooter after firing, 2015 to hold our sponsor panels on, and 2016 tbd

[hardcopi]

I had no idea Hartford did this for their 2nd event. This was their first year and they had some HUGE setbacks. Their main mentor was in a car accident and out for the season. We helped them to get their robot built and programmed. During St Joe, if my memory isn't failing which it always does, Enginerds, Rush, Robotarians and Joes helped them to build a catcher throughout the day. We ended up picking them for our 3rd pick.

Did I mention they had like 4 kids on their team? The girls on the team got to cheering for them because their ENTIRE team was on the field.

Here is a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72jV0C6NqkA

Now that post brought back some good memories. (BTW, we rearranged our numbers to make 5246, but we didn't have a 4 so we used a roughly 4 shaped giant head of our head mentor.

[sir tyson]

On this year's robot, our lift system consists of a tape measure connected to a motor with a hook duct taped to the end of it. The hook is attached to a "winch" (a hex shaft fitted through a socket wrench that's zip tied to the frame) with paracord.

[PeeDiddy]

We took the entire gearbox and motor assembly out of a drill and hotwired the motor controller to the arm of our robot to put it back in starting configuration post match every match.

[Daniel_LaFleur]

Originally Posted by EricH

For a non-FRC event a few years back, my team needed anti-dust shields for our drive motors (a quartet of 775s, in this case). I think they opted for the Mountain Dew cans rather than some others that might have been available... And they were covered with tape or something like that. The rest of the electronics were in more professional boxes.

This year at Dalton the RI (Hi Brandon) stated that the robot signal light was too low and could not be seen from all angles.
The students fix: Mount a Coca-Cola can on the robot and mount the Robot signal light on top of it.
Was it a kludge? Absolutely.
Did it work? Yes

[Trevor1523]

YES! This thread was made for 1523

My favourite ghetto part on one of our robots was our chain tensioner from last year. We used a PVC block which was circular (referred to by team members as a urinal cake), which was wedged between the chain and the trolley that lifted the tote to keep the chain tought.

We've used tables to bend metal, wrong tools for the right jobs etc etc.

There's probably other things that we've done, but I can't remember.