This year you must have bumpers that go completely around the your robot, do you suggest using reversible since they will be harder to take off?
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What my team does is we have 2 bumpers, front and back that border together.
Example: my team’s robot from rapid react
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Don’t do a full square. It’ll be a PITA. Do two U-shaped or 4 corners. Just leave very little gap.
If you do reversible,.make sure you have enough ground clearance even if they come undone.
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That also means only one set of bumpers for your entire season. Are you prepared to build a second set of bumpers, should your first set end up not holding up?
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We’ve done reversible for years and won’t go back. We do 4 straight sections, one for each face. Makes them easy to flip in about 30 seconds.
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I would love to see a photo of yours. We are a 2nd year team and did corner bumpers last year.
Reversible bumpers could work, but I would not recommend them. In 2022, my robot was disabled for the remainder of a match after one of the bumper flaps fell, revealing the wrong bumper color.
This year, we are using [ shaped bumpers similar to what @Dylan336 has pictured. 1/4" Quick Release pins work well for fast bumper removal.
Additionally, consider the height of your bumpers. I notice that the bumper height significantly impacts how robots interact with Notes in 2024.
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We’ve also done reversible bumpers for years and they worked really well, especially in playoffs when you only have a few minutes to change bumper color between matches. They also impress teams when you change the color in queue.
Would love to see a photo of your bumpers if willing
What we did is have our hook velcro on the top and bottom then on the flap we have loop velcro on the flap. To make sure we didn’t stick to the carpet we have a strip of loop velcro along the bottom when we are blue.
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We’ve made instructions for them. I’ll see if I can get them and post them. Here are some pictures of our previous bots that kinda show the bumpers. There is a middle flap that goes up or down and snaps into place. The lower half is one color and the upper is the other. So snapping it up makes the whole bumper the bottom color and vis versa.
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It would be so awesome if you could find them and post them
Reversible Bumper instructions.
Construction of FIRST Robotics Reversible Bumper Covers.pdf (1.2 MB)
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Reversible are waayyyyy better. We have our blue one as the main fabric that’s stapled then have the red fabric over it Velcro’d on.
You can see here we would just peel off the red if we were blue and vise versa.
My team, 4186, has used reversibles since 2013. We also taught 1351 our method the years I worked with them, I don’t think they still do it though.
We do full perimeter bumpers the last few years, though we have done U shaped bumpers in the past. We find the full bumpers easier for us to implement with our method of doing them. We use super wide elastic in the corners to keep everything right and tight, and it also helps with the floppy flap problem… We lost a match our first year doing reversibles because a flap came detached and we swore NEVER AGAIN and that we would perfect them if it killed us 
We’ve been meaning to release a guide for years, we’ve been very happy with the latest version of the design and get tons of compliments from inspectors, judges, and other teams, AND we don’t ever have to worry about what color we are. It’s great! It takes a lot of stress off of the pit crew.
Hopefully you can kinda see how we construct them, and if anyone has questions I am totally happy to try and answer!
Here’s some photos:
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I wouldn’t consider them way better. They work well for some teams, but they require significantly more expertise for what can be somewhat limited gains. Separate bumpers don’t have to take much longer if any longer to swap. The past couple years we were sometimes switching bumpers while the cart was moving to the field. We also would’ve needed significantly more sewing expertise. Reversibles work great for the people that have mastered them, but there’s definitely more potential for failure.
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It’s important to remember that R404 still applies to reversible bumpers. It does not negate the need for easy installation and removal
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What is PITA?
Pain in the Butt
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Reversible bumpers are trash. I will die on this hill after having done both.
No more context, I’ve answered why in previous versions of this thread.
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