Something my team had issues with in 2019 and it took us forever to figure out what happened, and I could see other teams experiencing it this year. If the cargo hits your breaker just right it can be enough to reset your robot but not enough to shut down for the rest of the match. It shuts down your robot for like 5 seconds at a time and is very annoying. I don’t know how many other teams have had this issue but I thought I could put it here to get people to think about where they choose to put their breaker.
You should always place your main breaker in such a way that a gamepiece can physically not hit it
6 Likes
You may want to swap breakers. Some are quite touchy - and some aren’t. We’ve seen this behavior in the past and so have other teams.
But, as someone else mentioned - put your breaker where it can never be hit by a ball - or another robot.
2 Likes
The best way to handle the main breaker is to put it behind a panel with an access hole. The panel gives you a great place to share your sponsors and make your robot easily identifiable, and you can cut the hole big enough to fit your entire hand it it while still providing all the protection you need!
3 Likes
3D Printing the 120A breaker shield from AndyMark works great.
2 Likes
yup any slight sign of breaker problem and it goes straight into the trash
Also this. Print it in red and your inspectors will be happy.
1 Like
Yea we have started 3d printing cases for our breakers and putting them behind sponsor panels I just wanted to raise a little awareness for newer teams
Also obvious but not explicitly said so far… put it somewhere that it’s unlikely to be capable of interacting with field elements. In particular 2019 Deep Space with the overhanging “toe clearance” on the hab module caught out at least one team at Ontario DCMP that ended up on the WC winning alliance in Detroit.
A quick and dirty way to mount the breaker safely against most game pieces (including 2022 cargo) is to use a 2" x 1/4" U-bolt. Get two extra 1/4-20 nuts. Put a nut over each of the threaded areas, pass through the mounting holes in the main breaker from above, pass through holes in the chassis, and secure with the third and fourth nuts on the back side. In this case, the guard also helps guide your thumb to the manual cutoff button.
1 Like
It would also be good to not get turned off by some other robot’s intake mechanism.
However, they now get a redcard if they do. Bigger concern is still gamepeices
That is what should happen. The referee has to notice it happening to issue a red card. In 2014, some other robot’s intake hit one of our pneumatic cylinders, denting it so it no longer had the whole stroke. It was several inches inside our frame perimeter. I don’t recall any team getting a foul in that match.
If your robot is the one initiating the contact that opens your breaker, does the robot with the intake deployed still get a red card? Whether they do or not, you would be sitting dead.
This topic was automatically closed 365 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.