Congratulations to the rookies of Zone Zeal!
You guys did a great job comming into this competition with varied levels of preparedness.
What I was wondering was what you feel is the biggest lession you learned this year that will change something you do next year.
A lession learned by engineer Meech a few years ago.
A 12V battery charger does not charge the the 9V batteries faster.
Wetzel
And he calls himself an EE....What I learned is that a team working together can get so much done, such as putting a robot together in the last days of the building period. 
Building the robot is the easy part. Managing the people, the transportation, the money and the other logistical things are by far the harder part.
“If I want anything to get done, I have to do it myself.”
But I didn’t do it all myself… I did nothing really.
I guess it’s to be expected with a team made up mostly of first years.
*Originally posted by Wetzel *
What I was wondering was what you feel is the biggest lession you learned this year that will change something you do next year.
We got into trouble on weight. We heard of a team that had to put on extra aluminum last year to bring their robot’s weight up. Unfortunately, we were not in that position. In fact to put our ball basket on, we had to leave off the compressor, our body armor, our mini-me and our black motors and gear boxes, which was disappointing to the people who worked on them.
On a positive note, because our robot chassis was so heavy, we were forced to make our basket very light (it looked like Swiss Cheese) which meant that our robot was not as heavy up top as some ball-getting robots and never came close to tipping.
In any case, next year we will start of by weighing everything and assigning weight budgets for the different parts.
We also had trouble with our gear shift mechanism slipping out of gear and causing grinding. Luckily we never had to replace the transmission, but it caused us worry. At the S. California Summer Classic event, in one match, we were able to coast home in high gear which was great, but then the grinding got so bad, we had to lock the robot in low, and that almost cost us the match in the semi-finals. We will be looking for a more reliable gear shift or gear box.
The other area we have to work harder at is fundraising. Next year, we will get started early in the season.
And last but not least, recruiting. We will be trying to get more people on our team to share the load, and we will also be trying to ensure that the people we do get really are team players, as we found that some people can actually eat up your time instead of helping.