Building Practice Field

[robotrobot2]

I know that on the FIRST website there is a set of instructions for building a practice playing field. However, the instructions aren't very complete and are hard to understand. Has any team built a playing field already or have suggestions about how to do so?

[Shelbo]

You won't find everything you want to know all listed on one page as if you were sketching it out yourself. Spend a little bit of time with the blueprints and sketch it out on one paper so you have the dimensions in a shorthand that is easy for you to reference.

We're only building the overpass portion and marking the rest out on the floor. Using the blueprints for the team field drawing,
Overpass: pages 8, 9, and 11 tell you the lengths to cut the pvc to make the overpass sections. We modified it a little bit so that we used two more of #18 and did not use part #20 and #22.
Bases: pages 4 and 5 tell you the dimensions that the lumber needs to be cut for the base. We made two of these outside bases rather than following the prints for an inside base (because we were not making the lane dividers)
Ladder part of the overpass: we are only using part #23 found on page 12.

Don't glue anything until you have it all laid out.

Send me a private message if you need more details.

[Andy L]

we just made one lane of the overpass for testing our robot on hurdling and such. We used only 1 1/4 PVC it sagged quite a bit, we glued it all and it works fine with a little bit of sag. We plan on running a 1" iron bar straight through the PVC the holds the balls.

[Asiatique296]

umm, team 296 really cheated on this. We bought 1 1/2 inch pvc pipes and only built 1/4 of the overpass. every thing else will be marked out by cones. boy, don't we loveeeee cones. Their so orange and bright and throwable !!!!
Although, won't do us much good after we busted our yoga ball.

[Fab.Master]

I thought in Canada they were pylons not cones

[StephLee]

We've built a full overpass and lane divider, sans the clear plastic in the lane divider. Feel free to PM me if you want pictures or have any specific questions.

[MasterRobot]

ya we just went to home depot and bought some 1" and 1/2" PVC piping....
if you put some hard effort into it, you can kinda get an idea of the lengths you need. i hafta admit though, it was hard to get all the lengths right. The instructions weren't made for people building with PVC.

it isn't rocket science... but it can be confusing

[robotrobot2]

So people are using a lot of PVC pipe to simulate the metal overpass?

[fabalafae]

In essence, yes. It's cheaper and easier to work with.

[StephLee]

Originally Posted by robotrobot2

So people are using a lot of PVC pipe to simulate the metal overpass?

We used iron inside PVC, I believe. Works pretty well, but if it gets hit with a ball the whole thing makes a pretty sweet approximation of a sine wave...

[Jeff Waegelin]

We recycled a bunch of steel pipe and Kee Klamp fittings from old practice fields to build our Overpass. FIRST used to love the stuff for field structures, so we've got several years' worth of it lying around in our building.

[MasterRobot]

a little update on PVC...
we used 1" PVC, and it isn't very strong...
it can barley keep up its own weight, the iron inside sounds good, but we don't have the money. Instead we're going to try putting some sort of rope/cord through the PVC to make it stronger, making it have a high tension to strengthen the PVC