USA Science and Engineering Festival - 2010

[JesseK]

6 FRC teams had hundreds of little kids driving their robots. I'm sure our robot got more field time there than all of our previous robots combined .

The teams were
7 (MD)
341 (PA)
623 (VA)
1389 (MD)
1885 (VA)
2068 (VA)

Total drive time on the field was about 2 hours per robot. Talk about lessons in quality! There were some great nuances that came from it too:
- Children will tell you exactly how complicated your 'simple' controls are. Even kids who play Halo are not necessarily more inclined to like halo-style controls for a live robot.
- Long endurance usage of Mecanum drive is not recommended due to excessive maintenance
- Jaguars do not mix with dust & humidity
- Use locktite if you use the tapped end of an AndyMark transmission shaft to keep your sprockets/hubs on the transmission, especially if the transmission powers the drive wheels
- AndyMark Toughbox Nano's are beastly so long as they're kept clean. Throw in some dust and carpet lint and they'll start grinding down down just like any other transmission. Keep them clean and they won't give any problems, even if the wheels are cantilevered directly onto the output shafts (assuming the wheel is as close to the transmission as practical)
- After coming off of the field: a cold motor is burned out; a warm motor is good; a hot Window Motor makes a very unhappy student or mentor.