Most Unfortunate Incidents

[AndyB]

Originally Posted by Qbranch

2005:

At BMR, our robot had a potentiometer that controlled the outer link of the arm's position... in classic titanic-style arrogance, we didn't put any limit switches on the robot. When the pot became uncoupled, he mighty 1000+:1 reduction provided by two FP motors mounted to two AM planetaries mounted to a Kitbot transmission mounted to a second Kitbot transmission THEN to a 2:1 chain reduction... subsequently bent the four pieces of 1x1 extruded aluminum that made up the frame to a 20 degree angle before somebody remembered the disable button.

2006:

Rear right drive sprocket cracked in the eliminations. We subsequently lost Buckeye.

But I guess we made good on it this year. The way I figure, we've won zero regionals my sophomore/junior years (my first two years) and we've won three this year. So, I figure that's one regional per year.

-q

I remember that. That was scary. (We were alliance partners at BMR, good job btw, haha).

As a 269 member, the worst thing that happened was in second to last match of qualifiers at Toronto last year, we blew out a speed controller. We thought it was a motor and spent our time swapping it out and our elevator ended up not working in our last match. Collectively, it is a large reason we didn't see the finals. Had I been a member this year, I would have considered their first missed match in who knows how long. Should be a fun team to watch in Archimedes though.

As a 171 member for this season only, I think the worst thing that happened was during practice, we had a motor rattle loose out of our toughbox and spin around wildly (the shaft didnt spin, the rest of the motor did, and tangle a bunch of wires. A little bit of loctite fixed the issue but it was a scary moment. If you look at the motor today, you'll notice the nice spiraling shape of its wires.