What if............???

[CRAZYMADI]

What if your robot break only three days before the shipping date?
What you gonna do??
Redesign it or rebiuld it.
or jsut disqualify...........???

[thoughtful]

I would say rebuild.

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by CRAZYMADI

What if your robot break only three days before the shipping date?
What you gonna do??
Redesign it or rebiuld it.
or jsut disqualify...........???

Depends on how much it breaks.
Nothing is irredeemable.

[Arefin Bari]

If one of the team at nationals doesn't have their robot show up at the competition (i forget which team number it was) and build a robot to compete with in a day, I think you guys can build a robot in 3 days.

One thing I have learned, NEVER GIVE UP!!!

You gotta rebuild....

FIRST gives you enough in the kits to make at least a driveable robot in less then a few hours now, if your drivetrain custom drivetrain goes bad, you really have no excuse for not having a working drive (unless you broke the kit bot of course...)

Also, get what you can done and plan to build at your competition, thats what they give practice days for (as long as you stay within the rules and the spirit of the competition, of course). Im sure teams will be willing to share resources and materials there.


So after blabbing on, I say you gotta rebuild...you've gone too far and spent too much money to just quit.

[Katie Reynolds]

Rebuild.

Even if you show up with a box on wheels, it's better than just giving up; especially after all the hard work you've already put in!!

If you show up at a competition and need some help, I garuntee at least 10 teams will send members to your pit to help out; you'll have a robot running in no time.

[KimT]

We cut out all of the pieces for our robot on the CNC mill, so it would just be a matter of rerunning the pieces, but, at least in our case, if something went wrong, it'd really have to be the ENTIRE design that's flawed, so we'd look it over before running anything.

[Peter Matteson]

Rebuild.
We did it after the UTC scrimage last year and were runner's up in Galileo after having done so.

[CRAZYMADI]

Our 4 wheel driving system and our 4 wheel steering system totally got bombed during teh DC scrimmage. Now we are switching back to tank driving to be on the safe side. Our arm still works perfect though.
Due to unalignment, the force and torque was too high, all four universal joints popped out and the steering lead screws cracked. We can't order any moe of those becasue if we did it right now, it will eb back by Tuesday noon....we can't even take any risks at this point and time.
SO I SHOULD SAY>>>>>>WE ALL LEARN FROM OUR MISTAKES...........

"SWITCHING BACK TO AN AWESOME TANK DRVIE NOW"
" WE WILL BE AT VCU, AND OUR DEAD STEERING SYSTEM WILL BE STLL WITH US TO REMIND US WHAT HAPPENED DURING THE SCRIMMAGE GAME; AS A MONUMENT."

[Denman]

a box on wheels has always got ways of scoring
If you load a tetra onto it it can push it under goals, it can stop other robots, there has always been ways for it to be ok . (Stack attack - very little but boxes on wheels in some cases ... raising the bar, could move balls around (like ours lol)))

[Mike Hendricks]

Last year, we were getting everything all ready for the bot to go into the crate (the night before we shiped the bot) and realized that half of the welds that held the drivetrain on the frame cracked. We worked till about 2am that night tearing everything apart so the frame could be rewelded (without damaging anything).

This year, we had a problem with our lower arm transmission's output shaft. It was mild steel, with a keyway cut in it. The only problem, is someone overlooked the amount of torque that is put on that shaft. The keyway basically opened up, causing almost no control of the arm. As a result, yesterday the bot was torn apart (took about 15 minutes .. hehe) and a new shaft was machined from a sway bar off a mazda miaita (the shaft had to be turned down from about 5/8 to a little under 1/2. Then the gear was welded on and bot reassembled. Sadly, we never had time to do any programming/driver training yesterday. Programming is now 2 days behind, and we still havent had anyone else but the programmers drive the bot.

I dont forsee anything else breaking, but whenever people are programming/driving, there are a few people there that are just mechinical .. waiting for something to go wrong .. and if it does, they can fix it in usually less than an hour (with the exception of welding and machining)

[Odlaw]

Ours did and it's fixed now.

[Mike Hendricks]

Alright. I'm gunna eat my words and beat myself for that post I made this morning before I went to our meeting.

We smoked a FP today .. we couldnt even put a tetra up before it smoked. So, we devise a ratchet system and fab it. Started at 11am, finished about 8:30pm. Programming started, and took a few hours to get the servo ratchet lock programmed (and tested) in sync with the arm. Then, we couldnt get the lower boom to stay stable (with feedback from the pots), so weeks of planing, waiting for parts and machining have been wasted. On a lighter note, we just dropped about 10lbs by taking that transmission off. So the arm works now. Kinda. We drove it around, capped some tetras, and called it good.

Auton time. Someone .. managed to plug the RS232 converter board in backwards, which, will fry the chip. Even if IFI overnighted it, it wouldnt get here till tuesday, which is when fedex picks up the bot.

I guess you could say we fixed it, but we scrapped alot of work .. which translates into wasted time during the build season .. time we could of spent testing and programming. I tip my hat to all the teams that manage to have their bot at a build season scrimage .. I dont know how you guys do it. Good luck to everyone ..