the firefly effect

[Stuart]

"what was that?"
"I dont know, what was that"
"did something just fall off my goram ship?"

ok this all comes up because last week we were stress testing the robot, and bolts/nuts/ other things kept falling off and no one knew where they went( we have sense decided that those parts went that important seeing as it hasn't broke in half yet).

so I want to hear some other teams stories about things on the robot falling off.

[Al Skierkiewicz]

During the building of Apollo spacecraft, the vendor would put the ship on a three dimensional rotating table that would eventually rotate out all loose parts before the craft would be considered to be worthy of zero gravity. When it was over, three five gallon buckets of stuff were swept up from the floor which included stripped ends of wire, hardware and other things.
From "Chariots for Apollo".

[ReaverOfSouls]

During the times we scrimmaged against other teams nuts and bolts would fall off our robot. After an extensive search we never found their original location. We concluded they were parts dropped in by accident and forgotten, hopefully.
__________________________________________________

The eternal war rages on. Who will win? pirates or ninjas...

[Jeff Rodriguez]

Originally Posted by ReaverOfSouls

During the times we scrimmaged against other teams nuts and bolts would fall off our robot. After an extensive search we never found their original location. We concluded they were parts dropped in by accident and forgotten, hopefully.

AHHH!!! REAVERS!!!
j/k

[Will Bale]

A wrench isn't a nesscary part is it?

Last Night, we tested the robot and a large, (yes I said LARGE) wrench fell from somewhere on the robot....Along with bolts, nuts, and a very interestingly cut piece of Aluminum...

The first test....the battery wasn't secured, and we dragged it for about 10 seconds, because I couldn't see the back side of the robot...

[KenWittlief]

on sailboats the sails and rigging are held up by shackles. Little U shaped fastners with a bolt that closes one end.

One of the tricks sailers play on noobs in their first race: at the start of the race you toss an open shackle onto the deck of the boat next to you.

The skipper thinks it fell off his mast or rigging, and stops to figure out where it came from. If you really lost a shackle from your rigging then either your sails, or you mast would come down.

[psycho7]

about half the time when we used our shooter mechanism, set screws would fly off at near dangerous speeds. but no one ever got hurt.

thank goodness for lock-tite


yeah, LOTS of things have dropped around the shop, knives, screws, screwdrivers, cell phones (mine kamikazied twice before I duck taped it), oh yeah and the robot some how fell off our cart.

[Chipawa]

We used a good bit of extruded aluminum, all bolted together with probably 100 bolts.

Our first shakedown runs of the robot would result in at least a few bolts left behind. We affectionately call them robot droppings.

I'm sure a lot of other teams using extruded aluminum have similar stories.

[Zyik]

Firefly <3

We havn't had anything drop off yet... but probobly soon. Had lots of things drop around the shop though.

[Greg Perkins]

Originally Posted by psycho7

about half the time when we used our shooter mechanism, set screws would fly off at near dangerous speeds. but no one ever got hurt.

thank goodness for lock-tite

in the words of great men...
"set screws (inhale audibly)"

do not always rely on set screws to connect sprockets or gears to shafts. keys are always a good choice to use whenever possible.

[JVN]

Originally Posted by Greg Perkins

in the words of great men...
"set screws (inhale audibly)"

do not always rely on set screws to connect sprockets or gears to shafts. keys are always a good choice to use whenever possible.

I know there are some out there who will disagree with me (cough...Paul...cough) but I've used setscrews for gear allignment in the past with no problems. I'll never transfer torque with a setscrew, but using them to keep gears in place on a shaft... no problem.

Set screws don't inhale audibly... poor engineering inhales audibly.

[GaryVoshol]

After you tighten the set screw on the collar, please remember to remove the t-hex tool before revving the shaft.

[DHarris]

Everytime we drove our 'bot, nuts, bolts and screws would just drop off then disappear. I ahem...accidentally rammed it full-speed into a row of our already crappy-looking red lockers and knocked about half a dozen bolts and nuts off. We never found most of them

[Rick TYler]

Originally Posted by DHarris

I ahem...accidentally rammed it full-speed into a row of our already crappy-looking red lockers and knocked about half a dozen bolts and nuts off. We never found most of them

The key difference between you and me is that our red lockers are fairly new and only shed some paint when the robot mysteriously rammed them at full speed.

[James1902]

First off love firefly,
second of all we've had some things fall off like nuts and bolts. We also had a master link on our chain come off and we lost the chain.