Mechanical Reliability

[mechanicalbrain]

Yeah KISS is golden. I'm a heavy believer of Murphy's law. I apply it to everything I do. Thats pretty much it really, if something on your robot can easily cripple you're robot make it as protected as you're comfortable with. I guess the big thing though is making it easy to repair. I know we have a habit of bringing a duplicate of all our electronics, programs, and even a bunch of raw material. At VCU the team next to us literally had their arm torn off, yet in less then an hour they had the entire thing working, thats what I call teamwork!

Anyways this is a great thing to think about now because when you build a robot you keep this foremost in mind. It's no fun to watch the robot you spent many all-nighters working on start spewing "magical electrical smoke" in the middle of a match. I speak from 100% experience here.

Since I mostly do electrical though ill give an obvious pieces advice that I think allot of teams could or do benefit from. really take the time to organize, secure, and and label wires (at both ends if possible). It makes not only tracing and diagnosing problems much easier, but it also protects the wire from being pulled or tangled.

Best of luck and I hope this helps.