How do you make your second robot?

[Rangel(kf7fdb)]

This year we went with a cheaper and easier approach and only made only one set of manipulators that include the catapult, arms, and harvester. The only thing we have two sets of is the drivetrain, electronics, and manipulator mounts. Altogether our manipulators weigh very little and were able to swap what we needed depending on what we were focused on. For bag day, we kept the harvester, catapult and manipulator arms and took it in as withholding for our first event. From there we took the harvester, catapult, and newly made scaling mechanism, refined that, and then took them to Vegas for our withholding. In order to reduce workload at champs, we left our climber and manipulator arms on and only took the harvester and catapult back for refinement and practice. Altogether, we think we can put the harvester and catapult back on in an hour once we get to St Louis. We think we will probably go this way every year since the workload is much less and have less to worry about in regards to differences between the practice and competition bot.

[Michael Corsetto]

Originally Posted by Rangel(kf7fdb)

This year we went with a cheaper and easier approach and only made only one set of manipulators that include the catapult, arms, and harvester. The only thing we have two sets of is the drivetrain, electronics, and manipulator mounts. Altogether our manipulators weigh very little and were able to swap what we needed depending on what we were focused on. For bag day, we kept the harvester, catapult and manipulator arms and took it in as withholding for our first event. From there we took the harvester, catapult, and newly made scaling mechanism, refined that, and then took them to Vegas for our withholding. In order to reduce workload at champs, we left our climber and manipulator arms on and only took the harvester and catapult back for refinement and practice. Altogether, we think we can put the harvester and catapult back on in an hour once we get to St Louis. We think we will probably go this way every year since the workload is much less and have less to worry about in regards to differences between the practice and competition bot.

This is a great way to manage robot revisions while staying on a budget.

I advise a majority of teams to buy two kit bot frames and move mechanisms like you described.

Thanks for the input.

-Mike

[llamadon]

Originally Posted by Rangel(kf7fdb)

This year we went with a cheaper and easier approach and only made only one set of manipulators that include the catapult, arms, and harvester. The only thing we have two sets of is the drivetrain, electronics, and manipulator mounts. Altogether our manipulators weigh very little and were able to swap what we needed depending on what we were focused on. For bag day, we kept the harvester, catapult and manipulator arms and took it in as withholding for our first event. From there we took the harvester, catapult, and newly made scaling mechanism, refined that, and then took them to Vegas for our withholding. In order to reduce workload at champs, we left our climber and manipulator arms on and only took the harvester and catapult back for refinement and practice. Altogether, we think we can put the harvester and catapult back on in an hour once we get to St Louis. We think we will probably go this way every year since the workload is much less and have less to worry about in regards to differences between the practice and competition bot.

+1 to this

For our 2015 robot we did the same thing and it helped a ton with continuity between our practice bot and our competition bot. Having mechanisms be modular and easy to remove helps with this. In essence you are getting 30+ more hours with the essential components of your robot before and between competition, which you can break and improve at your own leisure. It helped the team I was on at the time improve substantially between competitions.

Put shortly you don't deal with the same gremlins you worked out at home when you get to comp, because they were already worked out at home.

[GeeTwo]

Originally Posted by Rangel(kf7fdb)

This year we went with a cheaper and easier approach and only made only one set of manipulators that include the catapult, arms, and harvester. The only thing we have two sets of is the drivetrain, electronics, and manipulator mounts.

++ It wasn't really what we intended, but is essentially what we've done the past two years. We didn't do it so much to save money as manage our time.

[Collin Stiers]

we have an odd process for building our practice robot
1) build Chassis V1
2) work out redesign of chassis based on info from our device design that is nearing completion
3) build chassis V2 (final one)
4) mount final devices to final chassis
5) mount a remake of the final devices onto Chassis V1

[juju_beans]

This year we kind of just winged it and went ahead and built the main frame and such for the practice robot right from the start from old parts and had that done and wired up in about a week. Then we had the shooter mechanism caded up and we built that. We had a fully working practice bot by week 3 or 4 I think, and after everything looked good we built our final bot which was kind of the same minus some major changes to the electronics board and some different materials.

The biggest difference was the big lifting pistons was not on the practice bot, and during competition we found that it was way harder to pick up balls with the pistons on.

tbh the practice bot in my opinion is more of a prototyping robot instead of a bot that you would do a lot of practicing on unless it is the exact same.