Beware of Charge Station Deterioration

FIRST General Forum
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As we go further into the season and reuse charge stations at events, be ready to adapt your approach.

At our current event (sundome) there seems to reports in addition to our experience of really inconsistent charge stations. This seems to be a result of the charge stations taking a beating from multiple events, meaning that it’s difficult to drive up the charge station as it shifts the “wrong” way in addition to being harder to push down.

As a result, it has messed up a lot of balances in autos and made driving up the ramp a lot more inconsistent. (Some teams report red charge station being broken, others report blue being broken and red fine)

Hopefully FIRST releases a solution to make these a lot more consistent as it’s very frustrating at our event as there’s a ton of failed balance autos, but for now, teams need to figure out a solution to adapt for inconsistencies.

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2

I think 1323 solved it with their intake. Teams may need to think of how to incorporate a bar that pushes down on the ramp enough before the bumper hits.

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We might test driving up with our intake out tomorrow, will report results.

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Two words: battering ram.

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Can vaguely confirm this is happening at Humber in Ontario. Volunteers were switching out the panels last minute and we noticed they felt way stiffer here.

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