Household Products used as Functioning Devices - AKA Sponsor Product Placement

[Dan 1038]

So, after an experience at IRI which reminded me of some inginuity I have seen during my day job (automotive manufacturing engineering and maintenance), I pose the following question to the group with our team's example from IRI as exhibit A.

Question - What functional parts have you put on your robot which have absolutely no business acting in the manner of which you elected to use them for...? Bonus points will be assessed if the product is manufactured by a sponsor.

Exhibit A - Team 1038's ball detect limit switch arm snapped in our second to last seeding match this weekend at IRI 2008. The switch is used to ensure a ball is present when the arms are closed, to help center the ball correctly. The switch can be seen in the picture below attached to the right arm...



Without the switch, accuracy of acquiring the ball goes down... So, we scoured the pits and initially determined that we did not have a suitable replacement (didn't want to use metal, due to the chance of popping the ball). A second look through the tool box, however, led us to an ideal solution:



This was a brush we used for cleaning those "hard to reach places", as a bonus Crest is manufactured by our primary sponsor P&G - had it been a Colgate brush we found in the box, we would most likely still be looking for a suitable switch arm!

Your examples, please!

[Herodotus]

Unfortunately we do not get the bonus points, but we did use a household item on our robot this year. Our triggering mechanism for our launcher this year needed to be flexible enough to bend and also strong, and we were in a rush to finish putting the whole trigger assembly together. We couldn't find ANY aluminum rod in the shop at all, and then I picked up an umbrella and was just messing around with it when i noticed the aluminum rods that held the cloth stiff. A few snips later, and we had our trigger device.

[Dan 1038]

Mary Poppins would be proud of you guys, Herodotus!

[Joe J.]

Our 2005 robot Carlson X used an old garage door lift screw, nut, caseing and disengage to provide the vertical motion of the arm.




Our 2006 robot Icarus used legos, drill bits, and a Laffy Taffy container.

[Dan 1038]

Joe,

If only Laffy Taffy was made by a sponsor, that would be MONEY in this little competition! Thanks for sharing your team's ingenuity!

[Joe G.]

One time we ran out of time fixing something on our robot, but still needed to hold one area of the part down. So literally, as we were carrying the robot out onto the field, a team member reached into their pocket, pulled out an allen wrench, and wedged it into the hole. It Held!

Sorry, no pictures

[vivek16]

We used garage rail too for our lift mechanism. You can search CD-media for pictures of it. We actually kept the curve in the rail.

-Vivek

[acdcfan259]

Not really product placement, but we used a frisbee to launch the ball over the overpass. It was from a team 226 (maybe). How we got it is a mystery to me because they're in Michigan and we're in Mass. And we haven't attended Nats. since 2005.

[hallk]

No product placement here.
We used teflon cookie sheets to prevent us from driving over the balls in the FIRST Frenzy game. Don't ask why we had those laying around the shop.
This is more of a garage item then a household product...but we found that upside down small round parts bins worked wonders for holding multiple tetras.

[AndyB]

269 used 2 plastic flower pots with fan inserts to cool the two Fischer Price motors that ran our elevator in 2005.

[Kyle A]

On our 2006 robot we used clothes hampers for our ball hopper.We were running out of time and need something that would work until we build something more suitable, and we had a hamper laying around so we used it. Then in Pittsburgh we ended up rebuilding our robot and still found a use for the hampers. Also for the longest time we also used a lego as a spacer for the drive sprocket on or gear boxes.

[Alan Anderson]

About midway through IRI, the curved lexan sheet acting as a wire guard on a vulnerable motor went missing. It was replaced with the bottom part of a Gatorade bottle. I think someone dubbed it the "Gator guard".