What hath we wrought? 2016 Horror Stories

[adciv]

Originally Posted by TacoTheCat

Wow, we had the same problem over here, except it didn't pop up until after the season. We discovered that if the robot dropped hard enough, it would shut down. After a little bit of percussive maintenance (aka we pushed the wire back and forth for a while) we found that if you move the main power cables around enough, the robot shuts down.

I wonder if there is a good fix for this? Securing down cables a certain way, or creating more secure connections between them?

It's one of three things
1) You need to tighten the bolts down more (use a wrench)
2) You need to crimp your contacts better (use proper tools)
3) The connector housings need to be replaced (this was one of our issues)

[346CADmen]

Originally Posted by adciv

So Semi-Finals at Rumble in the Roads, there were two new custom defenses to replace the portcullis, a triangle shaped rock wall and a one way ramp. Our driver thought the ramp was the triangle and....broke the ramp away from the defenses inducing a field fault.

Thank you for the explanation, without that it appeared like he just thought driving into an 8” tall wall might be cool. You had the match in the bag before that, turned in your favor over all anyhow. Congratulations.

[BumblingBuilder]

We forgot to loctite our competition bot's gearboxes.

This lead to the horror story that was day one and early day two of North Star

The CIMs started sagging on us.

And this is where our errant design kicked in. The back of the CIMs were practically pushed right up against each other, so taking the gearbox out was not exactly the easiest thing to do. We did have our practice bot gearboxes on hand (which were loctite treated), so to save time were were going to just switch the gearboxes out for the practice bot

But this was also at the end of day one, and we played first match on day two. We were internally panicking. The swapping of gearboxes would take a long time, and we were being pushed as the pits were closing.

We left the pits with no drive gearboxes in the robot, and we had very little time before opening ceremonies on day 2. The first robots to queue are supposed to be queued up during the ceremony, but KING TeC was not there. We still had to put in the gearboxes, redo the electrical, and test to make sure everything worked.

In the latest possible time we got the robot out, but we walked out on the field not knowing if the robot was going to move.

In a stroke of luck everything worked and we had a pretty good match. The relief was beautiful.

But we were setback significantly from this problem. We didn't have time to address any of the other things we had planned to look at, so the quals matches in general ended up being underwhelming for us. We didn't show off nearly as much as we wanted to.

[AveryLevin.]

At champs, our team (4276) got our intake arm broken out of its stand-offs. It was hanging uselessly in our robot. Unable to score, we went to our courtyard to play defense and, long story short, tipped a robot over, earning us a red card (https://youtu.be/z25Bbz4DlkY). This was our last match of the season, we were paired with the Cheesy Poofs, and we won with 4 RPs. Because of our red card we were given no points and dropped to 50-something place (we would have been at around 20 or 30 with the points). So we went back to the pits where we started cleaning up and, once again, repairing the broken arm. Overall, our team has seen a lot more breaking happen this year than in previous years.

[AveryLevin.]

Originally Posted by AveryLevin.

At champs, our team (4276) got our intake arm broken out of its stand-offs. It was hanging uselessly in our robot. Unable to score, we went to our courtyard to play defense and, long story short, tipped a robot over, earning us a red card (https://youtu.be/z25Bbz4DlkY). This was our last match of the season, we were paired with the Cheesy Poofs, and we won with 4 RPs. Because of our red card we were given no points and dropped to 50-something place (we would have been at around 20 or 30 with the points). So we went back to the pits where we started cleaning up and, once again, repairing the broken arm. Overall, our team has seen a lot more breaking happen this year than in previous years.

Also a very sad moment: https://youtu.be/YHDG6jRnkQw

[TechWaffle]

Originally Posted by TheBoulderite

One of my favorite ironies occurred at IRI this year when TechFire's motor started smoking on the field.

Yeah, that was very ironic.

[Toatekua]

Originally Posted by OccamzRazor

Where was that video from this season of the robot at a scrimmage blasting down the field wall and going into a crowd? That looked pretty intense too. Nobody got hurt thanks to some nice dodging skills but that could have gone badly.

Er... That was my team.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=me6U_NBAf6g

[adciv]

Originally Posted by Toatekua

Er... That was my team.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=me6U_NBAf6g

I can confidently say you might have been the first, but you weren't the last to do that this year.

[OccamzRazor]

Originally Posted by Toatekua

Er... That was my team.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=me6U_NBAf6g

It is not the first time I have seen a robot charge into a wall but it is the first time I have seen a robot bust through. I remember the days before they put velcro on the driver stations and robots were knocking driver stations off the platform in autonomous.

[346CADmen]

Originally Posted by Toatekua

Er... That was my team.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=me6U_NBAf6g

Red and Blue boulders, oh my!