Has anybody altered their wall yet and made an effort to determine what effect exactly is incurred by the change?
Rock Wall will be 5.25 wide because of manufacturing limitations per Frank’s blog. Height per drawing. 4.5?
Please refer to Page 148 of the 2016FieldComponents.pdf
The Rock Wall is 4.625" tall overall relative to the platform, it is 4.50" if you are not counting the thickness of the material that makes up the base flanges.
So it will be 4.625" Tall and 5.25" Wide at Competition.
I was going off the game manual dimensions which shows 4.5. I agree the detail drawing would make it 4.63" Assuming the part was made to the drawing which apparently it wasn’t. The same drawing shows the material to be 5 gauge Aluminum which is .182 thick which will make it 4.68. I guess we will same what it really is on game day. Sort of reminds my of the British & Italian sports cars of the 60s which where made out of whatever was in the parts bin that day. :]
I’m trying to temper my frustrations by knowing that this probably doesn’t ruin my team’s robot or anything like that, and that FIRST didn’t seem to have any good options here. They’re doing what they can do now to fix it. But it’s just such an amateurish mistake to make.
Does FIRST just not inspect their parts? Surely when someone got the part and measured it, they were comparing the measurement to a number written on some kind of drawing somewhere. They just don’t verify dimensions against prints? Or they released the wrong print? What gives?
And the geometry of a 4.5" wide hat section isn’t exactly rocket science for a supplier to make either. Dozens of teams have made their own without incident.
I guess I’m just venting. There’s nothing else that can be done.
While you’re probably right, it was also “obviously” 4.5 inches wide too…
I’ll agree on that. It’s not like it’s different from the 4" hat sections for 2012. I could probably walk out to our shop and have the fab guys knock them out in a few hours. Heck, there’s enough fabricating resources in all of FRC that HQ could probably put out a request and get the parts donated to them by a team or teams in less time than going through their current supplier.
Hey mistakes happen, especially in the manufacturing and design industry (quite often in fact). But I’m glad to see they released their rationale and the behind the scenes decisions that led to their choice. Luckily tho this change I can’t really see hurting any team at all, cause if anything its much easier to not get stuck on the rock wall now.
Please look at the updated version of the 2016FieldComponents.pdf, they have the drawing with the dimensions as you will see at competition.
In the context of the entire field it’s pretty safe to assume the drawing is right in this regard. You can’t weld aluminum to steel and every baseplate for every defense is steel.
You would bring that process up… That’s my day job. (OK, I don’t deal with welding aluminum to steel, period. But we do deal with lots of aluminum.)
That being said, I do believe I’ve seen some PLASTIC welded to steel by the same process.
“We’ve pulled back this response because we need to re-evaluate. We commit to a response by Friday, 01/22/2016. Please accept our apologies.” Hmm… No response…
I think they just forgot to update the Q&A, as they’ve responded via blog post and via Team Update changing drawings.
An actual quote from one of our parent mentors working on field build: “the wood field dimensions are stupid, half of them are completely wrong.” I find it astounding that FIRST could have missed so many blatant mistakes in the field dimensions this year. Already, people are finding out that the dodgeballs vary significantly in mass (the reason for this has yet to be determined) and they aren’t actually 10 inches in diameter. The rough terrain in the team-built field dimensions is completely different from the actual rough terrain. They literally modified a major dimension a third of the way into the season. It seems like the GDC wasn’t quite prepared for this game to actually be released. (and, if we’re pointing fingers, I would say the same thing about last years game… seriously, how did they not think of the noodle agreement?)
That being said, I’d be very surprised if an extra half inch on the rock wall would make or break your drivetrain. Actually, if it somehow does, I’d want to reassess how the drivetrain is designed in the first place.
Explosion welding is my preferred method of welding aluminum to steel.
That is some strong click bait you have deployed there sir!
I was not disappointed.
Here are the TOP 10 ways to weld aluminum to steel. Number 8 will blow your mind!
lets be real here people, how does changing something 1" really effect how your drive train will function. I’m mean really. Any drive train that was meant to go over a variety of obstacles should handle a 1" difference easily. People are making this out to be way more of a big deal than it needs to be.
For those interested in seeing production-size explosion bonding of dissimilar metals, enjoy the following: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eOfxsnBPnQ
Extremely useful process, albeit a teeeensy bit expensive.
(Obligatory Do Not Try This at Home)