Some very important changes that have been made this year that I noticed after reading all the pdf’s in full detail. Many teams have started discussion on bots including mine (710) and have gone unaware of these changes, and started CAD’ing there bots to the wrong specs.
Important changes that were not highlighted:
Weight has dropped to 120, but the battery including connector will not be weighed in during inspection
2. Robot size has dropped 2 inches in width but grown 2 inches in length. New size is 28x38x60
During finals there will no longer be Alternates. A standby team will be chosen from the top ranking seeds and will replace the team that is inoperable. The team that was replaced cannot rejoin any of the following matches but will still be “in” the alliance. An alliance can only have one standby team.
No Drill motors will be provided this year, but there is an addition of a new mabuchi motor
Field size is 27 ft. wide and 54 ft. long (2 feet wider and 4 feet longer)
Heres to Makita, Milwaukee, Bosch…you powered drive trains I’ll always remember…the likes of Atlas and Hexcalibur, tank drives both. You pushed freshman around the cafe on team information night. You gave your all, stripped a few gears, and blew a few clutches. You powered many a team to Victor(y). So long old friends…
I know that they’ve pretty much been replaced by globe motors as the favorite for drive systems, but being so old school it is sad to see the drill motors go. They’ve been a staple of the FIRST kit of parts since, well probably not the begining but darn close I’d imagine. One more thing that I can bring out at a compention to get weird looks from rookies in a few years
Good luck to all teams this year…should be a fun game,
That’s good about the weight… You actually have more weight to work with… The battery is 13 pounds… So technically you have 3 extra pounds to work with… WOOT!
I think the fact that alternates have been eliminated is extremely significant.
On the upside, an alliance won’t be left stranded in the case of a mechanical malfunction. Since strategy is paramount it will be important to have as many functioning robots available as possible. Also, this will give teams that were balanced on the edge a chance to make it into finals when they may not otherwise get that chance. I’m sorry if I missed this part, but how exactly would these alternates be picked?
On the downside, a team won’t be able to reenter competition even if they fix themselves. This puts a lot of stress in the alliance. So if the standby team breaks, they’re essentially stuck again. I wonder if there will be any team updates on this subject?
Even though the field is bigger I think it still a little bit small for 6 robots. :ahh:
And last but not least the 3 extra pounds may not seem like much, but it is nice. I remember being less than a pound over weight, and the extra 3 pounds would have been really nice there.
Trust me, come competition time, you will still be at least 1 pound over weight even though you have an extra 3 pounds to work with.
Luckily, this is not a problem, because it is very possible to remove as much as 4 pounds from your robot by drilling holes in non-structural components. This is probably the coolest part of the project, carefully swiss cheesing your bot. :yikes:
Lol, yeah, i am sure it will still be a bit over weight. However the robot that I was talking about was already “swiss cheesed”. Yes drilling holes is fun, however I think that goes into the “freshman job field” right beside filing.
