2009 Palmetto Regional

[rfolea]

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OTTO SUFFERS "CRUSHING" DEFEAT

SCORE: FedEx: 1 OTTO: 0

Sorry I haven't been around guys .. we found out Thursday evening
that FedEx dropped a 1/4 ton skid of 2ft diameter, 4"thick steel
sprockets on Otto.

The skid was on top of a taller crate behind ours in the truck.
While in transit the skid came loose, crashed through the top
of our crate and smashed our robot.

The impact actually pressed the robot through the bottom of the crate.

Destroyed the right side of the robot, smashed the cRio, destroyed
the drive train, etc ...

FedEx, Show Ready Events and FIRST have been marvelous in helping
us try to recover. They have given us a few days to do CPR and apply
as many bandages as possible ....

You can see the large sprockets in the attached pictures ...

[rfolea]

Border Wars MC

Geezz ... I didn't know we had so many MC's available.

I was assuming I would have to do it (not pretty ..)

Barry, if you are available we would love to have you.

Otherwise, Gene and I will muddle through it ...


Trophy is designed - we just have to find time to fab it (we're a little distracted at the moment ..)


Now .. If we can just get PEACHTREE to do the same thing we could turn this into an annual spectacle. I'm working on it (like you had to ask ...<grin>).

[martin417]

Rick,

Do you need any help resurrecting Otto? 1771 is available! If you would like, I will call around and get some of our guys to drive over this morning and lend aid / perform CPR. I know you guys are quite capable, but if you need more hands, I am sure we have several willing to jump in.

Also, do you need parts? We may have some extra KOP items we aren't using. Let us know.

Martin

[team1102a]

Originally Posted by rfolea

Border Wars MC

Geezz ... I didn't know we had so many MC's available.

I was assuming I would have to do it (not pretty ..)

Barry, if you are available we would love to have you.

Otherwise, Gene and I will muddle through it ...

..<grin>).

With this much action, we'll need two Announcers and MCs. I would even encourage a team mamber to try their hand at either position.

[Josh Drake]

If there is anything we can do to help, holler. We've had shipping problems in the past, but nothing this bad

[rfolea]

Thanks guys, I think we are in good shape. Just have a few long days ahead of us. We have to re-manufacture a LOT of custom parts to replace the damaged components. Very time consuming ...

We expect Otto to make a full recovery (although, somewhat untested ..).

May have some loose ends to tie off on Thursday, but otherwise should be ok.

Keep your fingers crossed.

- Rick

[ttldomination]

That's nice to hear. None the less, if you ever need anything, please give either Tanner or someone else on 1261 an email or holler and we'll surely find someway to help out.

[Graham Donaldson]

Originally Posted by rfolea

\*********************************************
\************** NEWS FLASH *******************
\*********************************************

OTTO SUFFERS "CRUSHING" DEFEAT

SCORE: FedEx: 1 OTTO: 0

Sorry I haven't been around guys .. we found out Thursday evening
that FedEx dropped a 1/4 ton skid of 2ft diameter, 4"thick steel
sprockets on Otto.

The skid was on top of a taller crate behind ours in the truck.
While in transit the skid came loose, crashed through the top
of our crate and smashed our robot.

The impact actually pressed the robot through the bottom of the crate.
...
You can see the large sprockets in the attached pictures ...

Ok, 3 things:

1. Wow, that really stinks- having to rebuild that in a week cannot be too fun.
2. I'm happy for you that FIRST is being considerate with this- do you have the robot back at your shop, and how's it getting to Palmetto?
3. Who uses SOLID STEEL SPROCKETS that are that big?!?!?!

Good luck guys- hope to see you in fighting form on Thursday.

[santosh]

You probably should have built a better crate... haha just kidding.
You know that if you need anything we have you covered. Just give me or Andrew a call or Mr. Rosen or Dr. Bennet. We have a solid number of left over parts.
And If there isnt any room in your trailer to bring Otto up, we have our trailer which will more than likely have room for your robot. This way you wont have to sacrifice bringing anything else up

[rfolea]

Originally Posted by santosh

And If there isnt any room in your trailer to bring Otto up, we have our trailer which will more than likely have room for your robot. This way you wont have to sacrifice bringing anything else up

We can't bring Otto up in our trailer.

We have about 3 days to get this done, then it has to be on the FedEx truck for shipping.

We're being REAL careful to stay within the rules and guidelines so no one can claim we had an unfair advantage. (I'm still trying to find the rules about unfair DIS-Advantage ...)

How's THAT for irony ... <grin>

- Rick

[ttldomination]

Honestly, I wouldn't care if you guys bought a whole nother robot up to regionals, but I'm pretty sure others would. .

Couldn't you guys take the parts off your copy-bot and then simply replace the damaged ones instead making whole new parts..?

[hipsterjr]

Everone else has already offered, but I would still like to offer 342's assistance in anyway. We will send every student we can to help otto get back to prime proforming condition (so you can most likely come back and beat us ).

[rfolea]

Originally Posted by ttldomination

Couldn't you guys take the parts off your copy-bot and then simply replace the damaged ones instead making whole new parts..?

Actually, while they look similar, the two were built differently. It would actually be more work to take 09-B apart, modify the parts and adapt them to 09-A.

Also, we weren't sure about the legality of using those parts, so to keep everything simple and clean we are just fabing replacement parts from scratch.

We're doing pretty well, the mechanical guys have almost finished, now we have to reconstruct the electronics. We might even get to power it up today!

Then we find out what else is broken ...

Thanks again to everyone for the support!


We are very fortunate - in a morbid sort of way - that this happened to us. We have the resources and ability to re-build. I'm just glad it didn't happen to a rookie team or someone that is less able to cope....

[DonRotolo]

The ultimate show of engineering expertise would be if you could incorporate the offending sprockets into the design in some way... (Might be hard to make weight, though).

Good luck, I am excited to get to see Otto 09-A/2 in person.

[martin417]

My biggest question is, what possible use could there be for 4" thick, 24" diameter sprockets? Is someone building a mine train? I would hate to have to deal with those things! A rough calculation says they weigh around 255 Lb. each. It's easy to see why they caused so much damage.