Last year during my team’s rookie year we used 4 CIM motors for our elevator, which was meant to lift an arm to place hatch panels. I was on the programming team but from what the mechanical team told me the bars were made of solid aluminum and the robot could barely lift it so we had to scrap the whole lift. When we went to comps everyone thought we were crazy. 
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Are those caster wheels?
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Ok…so maybe using the lead screw to climb was not the only mistake we made 
It turned out to not matter. Since we were so slow at climbing, as soon as the autonomous period ended, we would drive a couple feet and then start climbing.
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It does save weight, maybe too far ahead of its time
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One year, one of our new students (rookie) was trying to thread a 3/8" nut onto a 3/8" bolt. I was watching him and he was almost ready to get a pipe to turn the ratchet. Turns out he was trying to fit a 3/8" fine thread nut onto a 3/8" coarse thread bolt. He got about half way before I intervened. I made a nice keychain, for him, out of the nut as a souvenir.
This isn’t a mistake but a funny story about a rookie team. I was attending the SMR in Knoxville, TN. Rebound Rumble was the game. There was a rookie team there that only had 4 members (Mentor and 3 students). They won the Rookie Inspiration award and while the mentor was crossing the field he tripped on the center ramp support beam. The announcer stated that almost lost a 1/4 of their team. Side note. Does anyone know if this team is still around? The mentor was a teacher with a british accent.
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Was the team you are thinking of the Robo Dragons? Unfortunately, it looks like they haven’t competed since 2014. However, it’s possible they went on to become a different team or moved on to a different competition.
Yes, I think that was the team.
They had a great attitude. Several matches they broke down. When this happened, one of the students would start filming with a video camera. I have a picture of him.
It’s sad that they stopped competing 
I enjoy penumatic fluid
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Gosh I wonder how expensive the solid tubing was.
Our team as well had an elevator. It took us a year to realize brake mode is a thing, we kept stalling our elevator last year to hold it making is very unstable.
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How about a rookie mistake that the team is still paying for 15 years later?
When we started out, we got stock of both 10-32 and 10-28 bolts. Despite cleaning out the shop multiple times (and moving between 3 different rooms and two buildings), we’re still finding 10-24 nuts or bolts, most of the time only after they’re inseparable on the robot!
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Not a rookie mistake, but the brunt of a practical joke.
At the Palmetto Regional, we convinced a freshman/rookie to ask the help desk for a left-handed screwdriver.
On the other side of this story, as a junior, she was our Mechanical Lead - her senior year, she became our Team Captain.
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Please tell me that Judy still exists!
I sympathize with this. A few years ago we had a rookie head mentor who was in charge of making purchases for the team. We asked him to buy us eight 8-32 nuts and sent him the link to where he could purchase them. What he didn’t realize was that they came in boxes of 100. Even years later, I’m pretty sure they still have a healthy supply of them.
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The way the robot climbs is similar to 254. Except they used a PTO on their drivetrain, and IIRC, that means 6 cims powered it up.
So, 1382 has being going downhill and in that process she was scrapped for parts together with 2004’s robot aka crtec-1
But we plan on bringing her back, but now in green 
If you don’t have a thread checker, you’re still making a rookie mistake.
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We do… using it, on the other hand…
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I’m curious how many lines this file was for it to completely fill a rio’s memory
Wow, 186 lbs! Luckily you caught it before you got to the competition. We had a similar situation our second year (2013). We took our time going to get inspected on the Thursday of the competition because we felt pretty confident it would pass quickly. Around 2:00 PM we roll our robot to get its weight and frame perimeter checked. To our horror we discovered that our perimeter was 2" over! We had measured each length of the four sides of our rectangular frame, how could we be that much over? Well, even though each sided added up was within size restrictions, we forgot to account for the thickness of the 1" bars when you assemble them together. It’s in moments like those that you find out what your team is made of, and our students and mentors did not disappoint. No one pointed any fingers. We just rolled our robot back to the pit, got out the hack saw, and got to work. Half of us worked on cutting the robot down, the other half worked on redoing the bumpers. We probably got a full season’s worth of problem solving in those few hours, but by the end of the day, we had passed inspection, and were a stronger team for having gone through the experience.
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