I don’t know about other teams, but whenever we go to an offseason event, the robot always seems to break after every match. I was wondering, first, if other teams have this problem as well and, second, if people think that this is because of wear on the robot, or lax in refereeing.
NOTE: This is not to degrade any referee at an off-season. I think that everyone works hard to make an off-season run and I want to thank all of the referees for the entire season and off-season.
I’m willing to be it is a problem with robustness. I don’t think the refereeing has anything to do with it. Some robots just aren’t built to last the number of matches people run.
We learned this lesson the hard way…
Our 2004 Robot (rookie year):
After 2 Regionals and the Championship Event (~ 30 matches in total) + 4 off-season events (~42 matches in total, a lot of them against team 25) + countless hours of driver practice/accidents/testing = one beat up rookie robot.
I cannot tell you how many drill motors we went through that season. The robot just naturally got worn down to a point where if we tried to disassemble something, it was so warped that we couldn’t put it back together. If your robot breaks a lot during the off-season, you are on the same boat as the rest of us. Think of it this way, anything that breaks is a great learning experience for the new guys.