LED Panel Durability

[Pierson]

As I have read through many of the thread’s the topic of the new LED panels and their durability keeps coming up.

How many did your team break? Or, how many were broke through normal wear and tear?


I know that one of ours came broken (in the kit), we ordered two extra from IFI right before the competition and we had to get one extra at the competition.

[Ryan M.]

Unless one broke that I wasn't aware of, we had no problems.

[KenWittlief]

they make LOUSY bumpers!

[Matt Adams]

Originally Posted by Peciv

How many did your team break? Or, how many were broke through normal wear and tear?

Quick interesting fact from an aspiring mechanical engineer: Wires, for some reason, seem to get caught around things that spin, such as drive shafts. The wires connecting to the lights were not exempt from this sort of natural law.

Needless to say, we almost lost one.

Use zip ties.

Matt

[dez250]

At the NJ Regional, about 15 were returned to the spare parts table. As i was working with IFI, we were able to test all of them. For some reson about half had a problem that one of the LED's were always one, no matter what. 6 of the 15 were not damaged at all and were used as replacements. Then one other lost half the back (black) plate. We used gaffers tape to fix that one and used that then to test teams RC's that siad there ports werent working for the lights. Moral of the story, they brake and get damaged. Have them in a non-damaging location and if you just brake a cover, ask for a replacment cover and not a whole unit.

[KenWittlief]

back in the day, before the lights, when we had to put our team colors ON the robot with a cardboard square

we never suffered any failures :^)

as complexity increases reliability decreases

[Ryan Albright]

Yes they are not vary durable what works nicely is putting zipties over the cover so you dont lose the cover during matches

[Bduggan04]

We heard that if one of the four lights has a short, it will cause the other three to fail. Actually they may only fail during a match and appear fine when tethered. We had a robot hit one and break it. They should really try to find lights with polycarbonate shields like they were in 2002 and earlier. These stupid acrylic lights just get smashed.

[SlickChicFallen]

Originally Posted by Bduggan04

We heard that if one of the four lights has a short, it will cause the other three to fail. Actually they may only fail during a match and appear fine when tethered. We had a robot hit one and break it. They should really try to find lights with polycarbonate shields like they were in 2002 and earlier. These stupid acrylic lights just get smashed.

Hehehe... last year in particular I think my team broke 3 light covers AT LEAST... it was beautiful

[kristinL356]

Originally Posted by SlickChicFallen

Hehehe... last year in particular I think my team broke 3 light covers AT LEAST... it was beautiful

Last year ours barely survived a couple of matches. It wasn't sitting on the robot it was just being dragged behind by a little slip of velcro. We were cheering it on. "Hold on, little buddy. You can do it!"

[ejthe4th]

ours are fine, we cracked one or two of the clear lenses when whe drilled through them. we didn't want to place them in a compromising position so we drilled holes all the way through them, put a plastic bolt through them (they're lighter than metal) and put them on the INSIDE of our lexan, they haven't failed yet

Originally Posted by The Poll

How Many LED panels has your team broken?

1
2
3
More Than 3

Very funny how you assume that everyone broke at least one (there is no 0 broken in the poll!)!

[Mercutio]

We haven't broken any yet, but during practice rounds at the Detroit regional today I saw someone's light cover pop off and fly across the field.

[Ian W.]

We haven't broken any, but one of ours was HDOA. Half Dead on Arival. The Blue LED wouldn't come on, so we replaced it with the IFI guy's approval. He asked to have the broken one, as IFI apparently never had a half-failed one before.

[Dick Linn]

We had one where the red LED quit. None were broken by impact.