What did your robot sacrifice for First Frenzy?

[IronSlayTallica]

We sacrificed sleep and a lot of our time in the preseason. We took a risk and laid out/built our drive train before the kickoff. That's why we're not stressed now and happily packed it into it's brand new, pretty painted crate tonight. We actually spent a lot of time on... i guess it would be... public appeal. It's quite shiny and our cart matches our crate which has hand painted detailed flames. We really haven't had much to do except having everybody drive at least once, messing with different programming (Making it more efficient to switch) and making it, as I say, pretty! This is the first year we're not stressed with weight. We're actually a tad under.

[pras870]

Yes, it's shiny because I wound up polishing/compounding almost every main part on our bot this year on what seemed like a weekly basis. It's always satisfying when you come back covered in compound after a hard long night.

[Tom Bottiglieri]

we couldnt decide what we wanted to sacrifice.. so we made all different stuff to do everything, and we're gonna decide what looks best at regionals.. (8 arms in the crate baby)

[Aignam]

Everyone on our team is worried about our seemingly high center of gravity. It's been a long time since we build a robot with a high center of gravity (not since 2000, but we all know how that worked out..) and we're generally worried about tipping. Theoretically, if our arm is in the closed position during a fall, we should be able to push ourselves back up and keep on driving. We'll see.

[Ryan Albright]

the only thing we sacrificed is herding balls well the front of our robot will do it but we dont have a specific thing for it. we didnt sacrfice anythign on ground clearance our robot sits lower then any other of our past year robots 1' in of the ground but we can still get up the 6 in step

[IronSlayTallica]

To clarify...

We didn't actually build it. No metal working was done. No machining, nothing. We thought about it, drew plans, etc. No actual building. Slip of the fingers. Sorry if that came out differently than it really was.

[galewind]

We Sacrified too much time developing and agreeing on a strategy, which, in the end, we weren't able to accomplish due to too much time spent developing and agreeing on a strategy.
....

sooooo.... due to weight we changed the manipulator designs at the last minute. Our drive system, electronics (with battery), and frame weigh a combined 97 pounds (without skins). Our old manipulator weighed 31 pounds, deweighted, and it was not in complete working order. We COULD have put it on, but it would have been very difficult and time-consuming to remove weight from the rest of the robot.

So we went with something more simple that seems to be good to go, but we didn't get any practice time with it. We do know we can grab and hang, though, and get rid of 2x balls... oh, and we're annoyingly fast and versatile on the field. heh, we find that climbing the 6" platform is significantly easier than taking the stairs.

[Jonathan M.]

Well.. At first we decided to sacrifice hanging. However the chasis was still made to be able to climb the platform. We spent the majority of the 6 weeks building and designing the 2x ball handler. In the end, the night before our scrimmage we added the hook that was designed a week prior, and tested the hook out at the scrimmage. So it would turn out that the hook worked better then the 2x ball handler! Since then we replaced our "gripping tongs" with different grippers that work better. So I'm not sured what we sacrificed all together, we can do pracitly everything on the field, but what we do best is hanging. And the one thing we concentrated on the most is 2x ball handler.

[OneAngryDaisy]

we sacrificed being able to go up the 6'' platforms.. took off our tread subsystem after we learned it hurt us more than aided us.. we'd rather go with a low drivetrain instead of having something sticking out at risk of flipping.

the second major sacrifice we made was picking up the 2x balls- we can stuff them in and push them out, but can't actually grab them. Instead we focused on the 2x balls' smaller cousin.

[Aaron]

IT'S SOUL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[andy]

At first, it was designed to be narrow (22 inches) to go up the stairs with a 3 inch ground clearance for the stars also. There were to be "outriggers" to prevent us from tipping and to heard small balls. We got wide. We can still go up the stairs but why? We can reach the bar from the carpet. So the ground clearance was for nothing...

Good luck ya'll!!

-Andy

[pras870]

Ok, just to clarify things on what IronSlayTallica said. Team 870 did not build their drive train before the seasons got underway. Yes we did start to look at things and design it, but no actual building took place. I know a number of teams start planning a drive train and anything else they think they may need before the season starts, which is in the guidelines of FIRST. No building should be started before the game is announced, and with our team no bulding did occur. Everyone slips up on what they say every once and a while, and I assure all of you, from an experienced adult/mentor on the team, no building took place before the season started. I'm very sorry if this is an incovenience to anyone and if anyone looks down upon us from one team member, but I assure you that only a design was made before the season. Sorry for any incovenience this may have caused.

[Tuba4]

Originally Posted by IronSlayTallica

We took a risk and laid out/built our drive train before the kickoff.

If this is what you actually did, you took quite a risk. Check robot section 5.2.5, R09. "Teams must fabricate and/or assemble all custom parts and assembled mechanisms on the robot by the 2004 team after the start of the Kick-off."

[Phil_Lutz]

Originally Posted by IronSlayTallica

We took a risk and laid out/built our drive train before the kickoff.

Isn't that against the rules?
Thought you were not to design/build anything prior to kick-off.
If that's the case you will have a hard time moving your implements around the field without a drivetrain.....


Phil

[Joe Matt]

We took a risk and laid out/built our drive train before the kickoff.

Uh, yeah, guys, you can't do that. That's VERY illegal to the nth degree. Unless you said something wrong....

As for Dave Lavery and his KK.... lets go back one year to the 2003 VCU Regional....