Build challenges, and some advice (maybe)

[CloakAndDagger]

So, as everybody knows, this years challenge was extremely tough on robots. As a result, many teams suffered breakages throughout the year.

Lucky for us, we didn't suffer many match-affecting failures that we could have prevented(usually faulty parts), and as such, I thought that it might not be a bad idea to share our experiences with other teams.

I'll kick the thread off with our main problem: we are a scaling bot, and our scaler worked excellently throughout the season. However, when we scaled, we weren't always above the low goal(the arm went up and pulled itself along, but the base was still touching the ground) so we used the motor driving the arm to rotate the rest of the robot up, so that we would score. However, this puts tremendous strain upon our hex-shaft axle, and it twists about 80° every 12 matches or so. It doesn't effect how we operate, but we would rather not replace a shaft every 12 matches. Any solutions?

For reference, we use a 300:1 rs550 as our motor and gearbox, and a 3/4" water-hardened steel hex-shaft

P.S. Should this be moved to technical discussion?