Anybody let the magic smoke out?

[Ryan M.]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

What about the magic noise in the mechanical parts?

most people are not aware that mechanical parts are made in machine shops where they are pumped full of noise (which is why machine shops are so loud)

the noise must only be let out of the parts a tiny little bit at a time - if the noise leaks out all at once the parts will fail. once all the noise has escaped from the parts you have to send them back to the machine shop to be pumped full of noise again.

With electrical parts its almost impossible to get the magic smoke back in, but with mechanical parts a skilled machinist can often pump it almost full of noise again.

One last thing, if a mechanical part fails on you, sometimes you can get a little bit of noise back into it by yelling at it, kicking it, or pounding on it with your fist. This might put enough back into it so it will work for a few more minutes.

Don't clicks and snaps from motors-with-rachets-being-driven-backwards release a lot of that noise at once?

[The Lucas]

I think we fried the Analog Inputs on a controler for GeroniMOE last year. We hooked up hall-effect transistors (magnet actived transitors) with pull up resistors to sense embedded magnets in drive train sprockets. Our hope was to get a good readout of wheel revolutions but we noticed that those transistors and the gyro stopped working. The rest of the controller still worked so we put it on the practice bot (Sitting Bull) which didnt need a gyro.

[Adam Y.]

We messed up the RC pretty bad last year. Were were testing out the robot on tether and only had one half of the ramp up. Drove it up to the top of the ramp, then it accidentally launched itself off the cliff on the other side, tearing the tether port off the RC cause the cable wasn't long enough.

We did the same thing with the RS port. Fortunately we fixed it.