Team 8 has recently been given a new space to add onto the lab to use. Our intentions are to create a practice field for use this offseason and future years. Does anyone who has recent experience with this have any advice as far as building a metal (probably steel) field perimeter?
As I am further researching the different components, I believe we are leaning towards having a metal perimeter with wooden field elements. Any light anyone can shed on this would be very welcome.
More specific questions:
Cost of a custom wooden field vs cost of a custom metal field
Places to buy carpet
Places to buy the wood/metal
Complexity of a custom wooden field vs of a custom metal field
Any potential combination of a wooden and metal field that has worked
Other materials that have been used to build a field perimeter
The field perimeter is a fixed cost. A higher quality build might be more worth it for you folks.
Field elements - I would do a mixture of competition spec vs practice field spec depending on the game itself. There will always be some elements of a field that youâll want the actual field specs for, or at least as close as you can get depending on the price.
Easy way to offset cost - have your field open to other teams based on a schedule, just ask them to contribute a small amount to use it for the season/offseason - especially if theyâd like to help with construction.
By fixed cost, are you referring to the AndyMark field perimeter? After looking into the AndyMark perimeter, we are looking more towards custom built. They have a schematic on their website for building a wooden field, and theoretically, one can make a similar one from steel.
I think this instance of âfixed costâ means that itâs a one-time expense, as opposed to field elements which vary from year to year. The investment into a higher-quality field perimeter is generally worth it in the long run due to lower maintenance expenses.
We built the wooden field based on the Andymark files, I believe the cost was somewhere around $1000 (excluding carpet, which was donated). It held up OK, though some of the stapling failed after repeated hits. Those problem areas were put back together with multiple wood screws and we havenât had a problem since.
We just have the wooden playing elements, no field perimeter. Our field room is an odd shape. Think of it as a triangle with a rectangle on the side. We could fit our driver station, and have a little space behind the airship. With our new carpet, we can move the tables and chairs out of the classroom nextdoor and have around a 2/3 field.
The manufacturing of the field took us about 3 or 4 weeks of fairly consistent meetings, 6:30-9:00 3 times a week and 9:00-5:00 on saturdays. It was done almost entirely by my father, with some assistance being provided by two or three other mentors. This was done as a challenge: Students vs. Mentors, where the Students were building a practice bot (this was after build season) and the Mentors the field.
As for space, most of the cutting was done in the community colleges workshop, but I never entered so I couldnât tell you. Assembly and storage was in the room we met in, which you can sort of preview here. (A bunch of things have been moved around) The field parts were stored next to (not in) the closet, along the wall next to the closet doors.
We then set up the field in the building in the video I linked above, with the addition of some connections which, had they been made earlier, wouldâve prevented easy transport, and some velcro, which we stapled on with a pneumatic stapler.
In case you canât find it, Iâll go ahead and link the design document we followed. The carpet dimensions, which includes space for the drive teams to stand & a couple inches outside the perimeter, is 30â by 12â
The easiest way to ensure that your field is not like a competition field is to build it precisely to the published specifications.
Do what you will, but donât expect sweating the fit/finish/dimension details to be productive, because the people who build the real field and field elements obviously donât.
Weâve been building up our shared field for a couple of years. Started with a half field, then built it out to a full field with all game elements by year 3. Here are some thoughts:
A full field border made with 1/2" ply and 2x4 studs and plates is probably 2 k$ worth of material. Game elements will double that, depending on the game. Thatâs a lot cheaper than an Andymark field, so Iâd recommend it unless you need a portable field, or you donât have the manpower or time to build lumber sections.
Even at a bargain basement cost of < $1/sq ft, a full field worth of carpet costs 1.5 k$. Try to see if you can inherit a used one from a regional. Double sided carpet tape under, and gorilla tape above, makes for rock solid carpet joints.
Overlap the plywood between wall sections, and add a bit of plywood to the back side of the wall too if you can. Robots can pack a punch.
Budget a lot for velcro. A lot. Even with that, expect the side walls to move constantly. Weâre looking at ways to fasten them to the walls / floor permanently
Field construction is an effective and rewarding way to occupy students in the beginning few weeks of the season. That alone is worth having the field built in house.
Lexan for the driver station windows is best, but expensive. Chicken wire is a cheap substitute.
Honestly, thereâs no wrong way to do this. Any type of field is helpful for training.
I have a preliminary budget due in ~24 hours. Any last insights would be greatly appreciated. If anyone has a metal field, or an idea of the pricing for it, that would be great.
I have been on 2 teams lucky enough to have full fields, these were my experiences:
Both fields have had wood perimeters. Team 45 (back in the 2002-2005 (my HS) time) had 4x4" all the way around the bottom, then like 2" pipe for the top half of the walls, with nothing blocking stuff from going out between the bottom and top half. Team 2832 (current) has a full walls with plywood fill. I donât notice a difference between the fields honestly (maybe less fuel would escape this year). Remember the walls are mainly just to mark the playing field and normally are not touched in practice.
For sidewall reinforcement, 2832 uses sandbags put at strategic points of the walls to help keep them in place during robot collisions. (for example, this year was the loading station wall).
Make sure you reinforce the driver station wall to make sure it will not tip either way. 2832 has both stands with sandbags behind the wall and bolted the driver station to the wall itself.
Both fields do not have driver station shields, but have strict rules with anyone on/near the field must have safety glasses.
Carpet is important, but do not depend on it. You might find stuff like the padding underneath the competition field is harder/softer, ridges in the carpet, tape spots all over, etc. Make sure your code is flexible enough to adjust for carpet differences.
Make sure you assess your budget/use cases for a field. Do you need a full field just for yourself to practice on? A lot of the teams in my area build half fields so they can practice everything. A full field only really helps with practicing loading runs, and can give practice with the low visibility the competition fields have (can you see through the airship to the other side?). You will spend a lot more time building 2 sets of competition elements that could have been spent building a robot. 2832 builds a full field because we have multiple teams on it practicing who might not have the space to build one. (there was one weekend we had 4 teams running all at once)
For public record, we had our field made by a local machine shop to FIRSTâs (bad) drawings (which we had to edit significantly to be readable by a typical fab shop). It cost a bit more than the AndyMark field perimeter with local labor & material rates, but given the higher quality (to us) and us not needing the road cases and/or mobility/compact storage of the AM field, the normal FIRST-spec field was preferable (we also saved on freight costs, which covered some of the difference in cost).
Wooden field perimeters are likely fine for most teams. We chose the nicer metal field perimeter option as we typically have 20+ teams visit our field yearly during the season and felt like a wooden field wouldnât stand up to the abuse and really is a short-term solution. We also knew we could more easily integrate new field elements each year that were built-to-spec (not team versions). We were lucky to have the budget for the real thing and will hopefully have it and be able to utilize it for a long time.
The shop procured the material for us. Total cost of the metal-only field perimeter for us was over $25k + tax. The AM one lists for $21.5k](AndyMark FRC Field Perimeter - AndyMark, Inc) plus shipping. We ended up spending another ~$5k for the drivers station acrylic and field border polycarb. A wooden field could be made for practically 10% of these costs.[/quote]