Most Unfortunate Incidents

[Qbranch]

Originally Posted by Meredith Novak

We were talking about this very robot last night with our team. We were alliance partners in Atlanta (after you beat us at Boilermaker). The "llama" is one of my favorite of all time robots - I was very sad when it did that lemming thing and died I hope the great Chicago fire of 2008 is your only unfortunate incident of this year...

Great Chicago Fire... love it... i think.

Well, don't feel too bad about the '05 bot. Our operator (taylor) this year and I resurrected it about a year ago... and added limit switchest this time. It was so easy!

...But... unfortunately, it was REALLY late when we finally got the arm all running again... and unfortunately a tetra we picked up got hooked on a rollie chair... taylor looked at me, I looked at him... we were both thinking... YEAH! Pick up the rollie chair!... and so i pushed the control stick forward...

And the motors ran... and ran... and ran... and suddenly my tired brain and his, at the same time, realized: If the chair isn't moving, and the motors are running... something's getting a lot of energy stored in it....

Shorly after that, the sprocket on the output shaft of the transmission resolutely said "No." and EXPLODED!!! leaving several large dents in the robot's monocoque skin... and more startlingly, a 1/4"x1/4"x1/2" chip out of a cinderblock wall about 15' behind the robot.

I didn't say that one at first because it wasn't an on-season thing... but everyone... there are lessons to be learned:

1) don't work on robots that late at night that have that high of a gear reduction in them
2) wear safety glasses
3) sprockets can explode
4) AndyMark gear reductions are probably NOT the thing in your drivetrain that's going to fail.

Well, thats it, and it's nice to know you all are thinking about us BombSquad, because we think about you too... well, that and your floppy accumulator...

-q