What do you guys do with your old robots?

[.:Brianna:.]

If you're looking for something to do with your old robots that helps other people, why not think about donating your robot to us, the FIREBIRDS, FRC team 433? We'll take your robot, pack it up, and ship it to a team we started in Ghana, Africa, as part of our Donate Your Robot/Give your FIRST robot a SECOND life campaign. Our goal is to send enough robots so that the team we started can host its own competition with other schools in Ghana and eventually fundraise enough money to help them register at a regional competition. If anyone has any questions about the FIREBIRDS' Donate Your Robot campaign, please feel free to PM me and I'll get back to you ASAP.

Thanks,
Brianna
FIREBIRDS President, '07-'09

[DarkFlame145]

We use to keep our in one of our mentor's basement, but he moved so now they are sitting at one of our sponsor's shops

[ducttapedude]

We keep all our robots and have only this past year begun to use old old speed controllers and such.

1999- was cannibalized
2000- classroom, missing one wheel, control system, and has lost it's speed controllers for the fixing of other old robots.
2001-class room, missing one gear for drive-train and control system.
2002-class room, Missing parts of control system, other than that, it all turns on and appears to be in working health.
2003-Classroom, Fully Functional
2004-classroom-gear box has one cim working on each side (the drill motors burned out on each side) Also the tower extends but does not rotate, due to faulty speed controller.
2005-Classroom, missing 2 wheels(lost at main Mech mentor's house, aka Mike D's) tower rotates but does not extend due to fault speed controller or two.
2006-classroom, fully functional except for rollers which have been turned off for demos due to the noise factor.
2007-is at the highschool w/o a classroom, that is also fully functional
2008-Driver's house to practice, last I heard. Fully functional, and possibly to be improved b4 IRI

We use our robots for several things. One, kids on our team look at them, mess with them, take them apart, put them back together, and fix them when they break while being practiced with. This helps the new kids learn lots and lots and see how it all comes together before build season starts.

Also, many students learn and practice programming by taking home old robots to practice all kinds of programming.

Also, we use them to practice like crazy during build season, and also at other times like before an offseason or two.

Demos, are probably the biggest use of the old robots as year round we try our best to do things by ourselves and often with other teams from nearby to show our communities what FIRST robotics is all about, and how valuable of a resource it is.

[jax1488]

last time i was there (since im alumni now) i checked out all the robots

team 522 =D

2001-wilma= running 100% just a squeak problem and a bimba replaced lol
2002-Dorothy= running 100% not a single problem since made
2003-Gloria= was in shambles till 06' cause she was used for spare parts. now rebuilt and workin 100% including auton.
2004-Libby=100% as well, only a replaced speed controller
2005-Cleo= 95%, we took off the tennis ball and a peice of the arm, still works fine
2006-Annie=105% (we added something to her for offseason in 06) still shoots balls great
2007-brigit= 100% ramps still good lol
2008-Miss Ella= ??% lets just say, she's getting upgraded for offseason lol ()=D

yeap.. 522 keeps their robots in shape!

[sgreco]

Originally Posted by jax1488

last time i was there (since im alumni now) i checked out all the robots

team 522 =D

2001-wilma= running 100% just a squeak problem and a bimba replaced lol
2002-Dorothy= running 100% not a single problem since made
2003-Gloria= was in shambles till 06' cause she was used for spare parts. now rebuilt and workin 100% including auton.
2004-Libby=100% as well, only a replaced speed controller
2005-Cleo= 95%, we took off the tennis ball and a peice of the arm, still works fine
2006-Annie=105% (we added something to her for offseason in 06) still shoots balls great
2007-brigit= 100% ramps still good lol
2008-Miss Ella= ??% lets just say, she's getting upgraded for offseason lol ()=D

yeap.. 522 keeps their robots in shape!

Wow, that is very impressive to keep that many robots in working condition.

My teams 2008 robot had rust on it after sitting in the lab for just 2 weeks after our last competition(it still works though)
Our 2007 robot has been sitting in the lab for over a year and and hasn't got any damage at all.

[Peter Matteson]

The 177 version
95 used as a model for 2008
96 Mostly intact
97 Never recovered from being turned into the 98 prototype
98 Still intact.
99 Still intact
2000 ~80%
2001 Fully functional
2002 Cannibalized and driven from memopy
2003 ~90%
2004 We parked it in a bad neighborhood and when we got back it was a bare frame on blocks. That's the story we tell everyone anyway.
2005 Moded into a pratice bot for 2007 but Mostly there.
2006 We reworked it for Battlecry that year but it's 95% original, maybe missing an AndyMark shifter.
2007 Amazingly still in tact.
2008 Getting "adjusted" for IRI.

We are actually running out of room at this point and need to figure out what to do.

[Racer26]

1075 has major issues with keeping past bots working.

2003 (rookie year [finalists at canadian regional]): almost completely cannibalized... It got largely cannibalized in 2004, but was reassembled in the 2004 offseason, then subsequently re-cannibalized. Would probably take a week or more to put back together.

2004: Was not very good at Canadian Regional, so we replaced the worm gear driven arm with pneumatics and won the Wonderland Invitational with it. It remained in close to running condition until it came to building 2008's bot. Its missing alot of PWM cables now.

2005: didnt compete

2006: Robot was a horrid attempt at a swerve drivetrain. In the offseason it was quickly replaced with a prototype of our tracks that have remained essentially the same in 07 and 08 and likely for 09. The belts broke the day before the Wonderland Invitational (they took like 6 weeks to get here from Germany too) It was promptly cannibalized in 07, and almost nothing remains of even the frame, its been cut up and used for prototyping various mechanisms and so forth.

2007: Mostly functional, the way our drivetrains are built now, they are interchangable from 07 to 08, so it might be sitting on blocks, could be made to be fully functional in a few hours... relegated to a life of demos.

2008: Mostly dismantled, was not effective at all, and we've built almost a complete new robot for the offseason... design is top secret. Structural members have been converted into other uses on the new machine, and whats left of it lives outside. Teams coming to North Brunswick, or Flint in the offseason will see it.

[acdcfan259]

2003: Gone

2004: Arm gone, not sure if it even drives.

2005: Could drive, front wheels gone. Don't think arm works.

2006: Hopper gone. Possibly works.

2007: Ramps gone. Arm gone. Still drives.

2008: Ready to roll.

All except for '08 have been scavenged for parts here and there.

[Triple B]

thanks peter
mike d

[commodoredl]

1997- long gone, we have a few pictures of it
1998- gone
1999- gone
2000- gone
2001- gone
2002- gone
2003- gone, we have a few pictures of it
2004- also gone, more pictures than the other old ones
2005- gone, we have a lot of pictures since that was the start of our more "modern" Blue Lightning
2006- Our star robot, she stayed together for a long time after the season and still functions with her shooter. The pickup isn't programmed right now. One of her axles got bent last year though, so we're not sure if we can drive her in the parades anymore
2007- dismantled for scrap metal, the chain drive and gripper are still lying around a member's house
2008- In perfect condition, and so far making a great demobot.

I kinda wish we knew more about our team's old robots... We won two regionals in 2000 and 2001 but don't know if we were a captain or a first or second pick or whatever. It didn't help that most of the original team members from Kod-Red never stuck around and the first adviser retired.

[Team 135]

We keep our robots in our shop on display. This allows us to use ideas from past years to help design the current year. This year we got the past years robots working all the way back to '03. This was especially neat this year because we could impede our robot on our field and have our driver get closer to real match experience. We have lots of storage space due to great donations of shelving. We also have just about unlimited aluminum thanks to Patrick Metals. If you need some aluminum at a competition come find us.

[flyingcrayons]

i dont think i am as well qualified as the others on my team ( i'm headed into 10th grade)to answer this but i'll give it a shot.

2003,2004- no idea

2005- still functional ( we use it in our town's memorial day parade to hoist our banner)

2006- i think we gave it to a rookie team we mentored so they could modify it and use it for this year. (again, i think, i'll have to check)

2007- intact, i'm pretty sure it still runs, some pieces have been removed to do other things

2008- still in fine working condition

[Ricki E.]

I suggest you use them for recruiting events. I know by seeing an actual robot it gave me that extra push to join the them. There also good for driving practice when your robots being shipped off to competitions or even during off season.

[BT987]

we have the past three years bots still
but we have our rookie bot from 2002 its pretty cool looking

[=Martin=Taylor=]

'95 - '04 COMPLETELY vanished. Most of the parts have vaporized We don't even know what most of these looked like (pictures have been lost too)

'05 - '06 Look carefully and you may find a part or too... But don't count on it...

'07 - '08 Perfect condition. We run both robots all the time.

Sadly, with the exception of '99 and '95 I don't think our old robots were even worth keeping