Unusual robot

[archiver]

Posted by James Jones.

Engineer on team #267, The Demolition Squad, from North Broward & St Andrews and Motorola.

Posted on 4/12/2000 10:40 AM MST


In Reply to: Re: ..and the SPAM team.. posted by Andrew Rudolph on 4/11/2000 4:37 PM MST:



I used to work at Pratt & Whitney and was on the SPAM team since they started 2 years ago. We were always short of designers (4 designers in '99) and machine shop support (1 machinist). Well, last year Pratt announced a major restructuring and that most of the jobs in South Florida were moving to Hartford, Conn. The team debated before the season about whether to continue but decided they would because of some very motivated and enthusiastic kids that were on the team. Well, one of their designers (myself) took a job at Motorola (and joined team 267) in Sept. so couldn't help. Another one of their designers had to take over the controls programming. They were down to 2 designers (BTW one of those designers was my Dad who I had roped in the first year). Well the season started and my Dad had to go out of town on business for 2 1/2 weeks in Feb. and their machinist got the flu and was down for a while. Not to mention UTC (Pratt's parent company) did not provide any funding as they had in previous years (NASA came through to help make up the shortfall). So, even though they had worked extremely hard they shipped a robot that had no working basket and lift system to deposit balls. They worked extremely hard all through KSC regionals but couldn't get a basket system working. They were picked to go into the eliminations at KSC where they shut down my team (267) by keeping us and our alliance partner from scoring and causing us to burn out 2 FP motors which kept us out for the rest of the competition.

They wanted to make improvements after regionals but their machinist couldn't get into the shop in the 2 day window so they decided to stay within the rules and didn't fabricate much of anything. They decided they were going to be a defensive robot so came to nationals and fabricated a bunch of lexan armor and tried a bar chin-up system I think.

All during Regionals and Nationals they were very generous with their abundant tools and helped my team out of a jam more than once when we just didn't have the right tools for the job. They were one of the best defensive robots out there and it was too bad they didn't get picked. In a way I'm glad though because after KSC I didn't want to have to play against them again!

Their future is also unclear since one of their last designers took a job with another company and many of their other members have jobs that are slated to move to Hartford sometime next year. With morale at Pratt what it is, I doubt they will be able to replace them.