How do you make your second robot?

[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.