Hello all.
We are about to head out to our first regional, I am curious what do you guys usually do with your pits/booths?
For our pit, we have a ‘kiosk’ with a table surface and about six draws, which we use to hold papers, buttons, welcome packets, and other items such as that. We also have a new tower that goes in the front corner of the pit, which has its own containers velcro-ed to it for storage, as well as a monitor to present scouting data, 6 laptop charging draws, a printer, a storage ‘closet’, and our iconic spinning sunburst on top.
In the back of the pit, we have our workbench, which has a vice grip mounted on top, with our work crates put on its shelves and a flat work surface on top. Behind all this and on the open side we have our new pit wall, which displays four blue banners via velcro. In a spare corner we also place our new battery cart as well.
Hopefully I’ll find a picture to upload to show you, since we just went to the New Jersey Regional and are going to practice setting it up more efficiently for Virginia.
If you need any help or advice, i’m always here! ::rtm::
Our team built a wall panel system. It has 2 layers of panels on 3 sides. The insides of the panels are made from a bulliten board like material so we can hang safety posters and other posters. We have a table that we can work on and under the table we store bins of tools, spare parts, safety and scouting supplies, and other stuff. The floor is made out of the rubber matting used in the VEX games. That’s where we work on the robot. We also have a cahin that we put across the front while working on our robot so no-one comes in and causes and accident. We also have a fire extinguisher and an eyewash station for safety reasons. This pit has lasted us 5 years now and it is really nice to have it very organized.
We try to keep it clean and well organized. Nothing fancy.
Oh, and don’t foget to follow the 5S principle. If you don’t know what they are, I’ll list them.
Sort: Sort all bolts and tools etc. and get rid of clutter.
Straighten: Put the sorted items in their proper place to gain organization.
Shine: Vacuum, sweep, and wipe down all surfaces to achieve cleanliness
Standardize: Have a pit inspection form to fill out that makes sure all things are in their places and everything is clean.
Sustain: Make sure ALL team members know the 5S’s and follow them.
Use these not only in the pit but when working at you team’s meeting place too!
Unfortunately, this was the best photo of our pit I could find (for now…)
If you have any questions, feel free to ask!
This one? those img tags sure are pesky…they only work with a URL that ends with an image file type, such as .jpg
Ah, there we go. Thanks for that 
…how do i fix it in my post above? =P
Let me explain what you’re seeing. To the left is the ‘tower’, a vertical box (2-piece) about 16" square and 7’ tall, with a Pioneers logo on top. Behind it forming the left wall of the pit is a countertop and cabinet with a couple of drawers in it. It goes back maybe a total of 6 feet (counter plus tower).
Between the back of the counter and the back of the pit is where we put our battery cart, think “shelving unit on a hand truck”.
Along the back is a workbench, about 6 feet long. Crates fit underneath and atop the shelf on the bottom. Against the back wall is a fold-out (trade-show type) ‘wall’ on which we hang banners. To the far right of the workbench we store more crates and miscellania, and there’s another of the black ‘walls’. Behind the wall at back our tubes of raw aluminum are stored.
Our pit cart is also our toolbox.
All this allows us to fit in as small as 8 x 8, although we prefer 10 x 10 just for the extra space. This year NJ had 9 x 9 pits.
Couldn’t have said it better myself, Don. Well, I tried to in my first post, but it wasn’t really descriptive enough…:rolleyes:
Hopefully I’ll be able to upload a picture of our pit without all of the extra clutter in the way soon, as we’ll be practicing setting it up for Virginia.
Our pit grows out of our crate, but as the Bag and Tag Idea spreads across the country, we have to rethink our pit by the Virginia Regional (B&T). We’ll be at Chesapeake taking pictures of pits just as much as robots, so don’t be weirded out if we are taking notes in front of an empty pit.
Well, 166’s pit is basically a miniature workshop - our crate opens up into a small section, a main section, and another small section. In the middle, we have a flip-up shelf with a vice on it, and a shelf for toolboxes and batteries underneath. Above it are some little cubbyholes that hold safety stuff, zip-ties, band-aids, etc. If it’s hyphenated, we have it there. In the right side compartment, we have a list of our matches and the results, as well as hooks for tools and a stress reduction kit. On the left side, we have hooks for wrenches as well as a large toolbox with most of our tools. We store some coats behind the toolbox. All the crate’s corners have pool noodles on them so nobody gets hurt.
In addition, on one side of our pits we set up a table. Stacking milk crates and plywood gives us room for plenty of things, including our USB printer and a monitor for displaying pictures, our safety glasses, the driver station and control board, our “silly argument of the year” (brownie edges vs center this year, center won, voted by visitors!), programming laptops, giveaways…and below it we store the KOP totes with even more tools and spare parts. Ironically, every time I can think of that we build this “wall”, we end up helping the team behind it, and it makes it annoying to get from one pit to the other.
Basically, our pit’s BA, easy to navigate, and wicked helpful. With all this stuff, we still have a wide area - I’d say maybe 6 ft^2 - to stand and work on the robot in.
You can kinda see it here from last year at Atlanta. (177 was using it at the time)
It sounds like our pit is more cluttered than most. There is a toolbox in the back center, with a stand above it to hold flags and awards. To its left is our battery and on the right is usually bumper storage. On 1 side of the pits, we have 2 boxes with extra fasteners, one on each side with the provided table on top. We have a table top drill press and band saw on this table, with more room for programmers to one side. Under this table are some extra totes for spare parts and an electrical toolbox. In the front of this table are some shelves with our buttons, presentations, etc. on it. We try to leave room on the other side as extra work room, but it ends up as seating for the pit crew. We are trying to change our layout though, when we have more funding. Any ideas on making this simpler to function would be greatly appreciated.