Cannibalizing robots

[David Dawson]

Question. Do you think its ok to take apart robots of the past for parts. If so would you only take a piece or the the whole drive train. My team is currently debating if we want to keep our 2009 robot. And I need excuses to save its life .

[viperred396]

Originally Posted by David Dawson

Question. Do you think its ok to take apart robots of the past for parts. If so would you only take a piece or the the whole drive train. My team is currently debating if we want to keep our 2009 robot. And I need excuses to save its life .

we really don't like to take them apart but sometimes we have to. Just say that you need to keep them so that you have show them off when ever you need to

[Chris is me]

I would prefer to keep robots in tact, and that's what 1714 does, but 2791's 2009 robot is completely disassembled. Most of the robot's parts were used either in prototyping or on the competition robot, and we saved a few hundred dollars that way.

[davidthefat]

We just play around with the old robots, we sometimes pull off unnessary things then have the bare minimum

[Basel A]

Having old robots that work is pretty useful when you need to do demonstrations to younger students or to show off to prospective sponsors, etc. And then there's the emotional reason, when you ahve a personal connection to the robot. Heh.

[davidthefat]

Make the noob programmers program on the old robots to practice

[LLogan]

We kept our '09 bot until we absolutely had to gut it during the build season (week two). However, we kept it for almost a year. It survived (and won!) an off-season competition and two demonstrations.

It had lots of structural components as well gearboxes that we needed for our '10 bot.

[OZ_341]

Well if it was up to me, i would keep every last one.

But unfortunately my team is a bunch of salivating cannibals that only cares about this year's robot! If you care about your machines at all, don't ever park them near the shop during build season. Its starts small with things like PWMs, then all of a sudden a bearing is missing, then a wheel..... It will never end.

But seriously, old robots are very valuable as instruments of inspiration, prototyping tools, and rookie training. We still have our 2006 twins intact and they have been everywhere. I would keep at least one around.

[Radical Pi]

With the new control system being mostly reused every year, I have little hope for our 2010 bot. Unless of course we can get our team to spring for a new cRIO and a new set of jags...

We still have a few IFI bots though...offseason T-shirt launcher any1?

[Armonious]

I obviously see the value in keeping at least 1 robot intact. Usually, we cannibalize the previous years robot about a month before build season starts, as some of the parts generally get used to save on budget. We usually have something at least able to be driven around, though it is usually an off-season project using the old IFI system and not the cRIO (we only have 1).

[vivek16]

Granted we are only in our 4th year, we keep the good robots. Our rookie bot is totally gone, even the frame. 2008 is in pieces with no drivetrain and missing wiring. 2009 is completely intact since it is a good one for show (and a beast of a bot). We shall see about this year.

-Vivek

[JewishDan18]

We keep the basic robot (frame and drive train) together, but we take off the other parts as we need them.

[Al3+]

For the two years I've been on (and evidently in years past too, since we don't have older bots lying around), we've completely disassembled our bot into scrap metal and parts after attending CalGames with it in October. Usually however we keep around a practice bot that is just basic kit chassis + control system, so we can test things on and practice driving and whatnot. We also had a demo/PR bot in years past, but we disassembled it.

I hope we're keeping our Breakaway bot, since it makes a good demo bot (more so than in past years) to replace our old one with. Unfortunately it's not up to me, also if we don't get a new cRIO we'll have to rip it out for 2011.

[BJT]

Since 2005 we have been mostly keeping our robots intact. I can tell you that I really regret that we completely dismantled 2002-2004. It's interesting to see where you've come from in terms of design etc.

[dtengineering]

Year 1: We finally got it working! There's no way we're taking this robot apart.

Year 2: Well, we need a few parts off last year's robot, and it really wasn't all that good, so maybe we'll just take a few things off it. It still looks like a moon buggy, and thats kind of cool.

Year 3: You know, that first robot doesn't work at all since we took the parts off of it last year. Let's take the control system and motors off, too, and build a practice robot this year.

Year 4: Lets take the motors off the practice robot we built last year to save some money on this year's machine, and we don't really have time to order new pneumatic parts, so let's grab them off the year 2 'bot.

Year 5: Okay, this is getting silly. We've got nowhere to put this year's robot. That old practice robot isn't working at all, so lets strip all the good stuff off of it. And that first year's robot... if we took the wheels off of it then we could store them under a table and... well... let's just take the whole chassis apart, but hang a fancy bit from the wall as a souvenir. And the third year's robot... well, it doesn't really need four CIMs in its drive train any more... it hasn't been in a pushing match for years now.

Year 6: Let's cut up the old chassis from the third year's practice robot and use that as spare aluminum to practice welding. And that second year robot... lets save its arm... that was a cool arm, but everything else can go in storage in a back room.

Year 7: Well, if we're building a practice robot this year we'll need the solenoid valves off of all our old robots, and the wheels... don't forget the wheels... let's recycle some of them. And we can pull the cRio off last year's machine... and lets take the Jags, too... we can replace them with an IFI control system later. And that Overdrive machine... we can re-use it's motors, too... may as well since we're pulling the solenoid valves off the launcher.

So... now we have one working Breakaway robot on its way back to us. One non-working breakaway practice robot awaiting an IFI control system and a replacement AM wheel (we broke one getting air off a bump in Seattle). One non-working Lunacy robot awaiting an IFI control system. One non-working Overdrive robot in need of CIMs and solenoids. One working Rack'n'Roll machine that we're all afraid to do too much to because we have misplaced the the source code to run PID mecanum wheels on all four corners off of interrupts, and none of us remember exactly how it all works, but think mecanum is just too cool to dismantle. One mostly working Aim High robot, with a fully operational pan and tilt nerf ball shooting turret that is just wayyy too cool to dismantle (some might argue whether Aim High was the best game ever, but it sure made for the best demo robots ever), and a collection of parts from the robots from our first two years.

I like to have one or two robots ready to go for a demonstration at all times... three is even nicer if they show off different abilities... but aside from that I think it makes sense to recycle parts and reduce storage space.

But I try to wait until the kids who built them are gone... or at least until they've fallen in love with a new machine.

Jason