Alright. I asked my teacher kindly the other day if i could tear this years robot to shreads so i could recycle the parts and model them on CAD over the summer some more.
I guess i have permission to demolish the child, but other kids are telling me its “sentimental” and should be kept. We kept our first years robot, but i was wondering if it is “unkind” to the robots feelings to do this…please help.
I have a question, why must you tear your robot to pieces when most of the parts are available allready for CAD? I mean there’s www.firstcadlibary.com there’s the Virtual KOP, and you pretty much can model everything else while still keeping your robot intact.
If you have the space, please leave it intact. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve wished we didn’t break down our 2003 and 2002 bots.
You can learn alot from your previous robots. We have over 15 years of robots sitting around our site and you can guess how that helped us immensely. It even was one of the main reasons we got a Motorola Quality award (as read during the presentation). It’s worth your time to keep that robot intact because you can learn alot from it no matter where it finished in the competition.
http://www.firstcadlibrary.com/ <Correct link {thank you Li}
Keeping old robots is a good idea for several reasons: you can learn a lot from them (what went right and what went wrong), they’re great for demonstration, and they’re good to go back and look at years later (“remember in 2001 when we had that giant claw? Something similar would work great for this year - let’s go look at the old one!”)
Perhaps you could compromise. Take off one component at a time and model it, but be sure to replace it before you tear anything else off. That way the robot stays (mostly) intact, and will still be usable in the future.
AHHH!!! DONT DO IT!!! you should really keep it intact for at least 1 yr after the game, its good to teach new members on.
and i like your teams design this past season 
Our team has doesn’t have much room to keep old robots, but we try to keep at least one robot fully intact at all times. If you have the room to keep it, then you should. There’s always stuff you can either learn from it, or do with it.
and one more thing, keep it together and you can compete in the RCCR II in october
We keep all of the team robots. The smaller, older ones decorate the walls of the classroom. The larger FIRST robots are stored safely. Last week the team took extra precautions to raise them off of the floor and cover them in plastic sheeting just in case there is another major roof leak over the summer break. There are so many uses to be had, so many opportunities. One that I can think of is how the new team members like to disassemble and reassemble parts of the robots as a learning process. I do have to admit to being sentimental towards the robots though - absotively posilutely.
We always keep at least the last year’s robot intact. In the last month I think we have had 2 demos for potential sponsors, with another coming up, and they go much better when you have a functional robot. We try to keep them intact longer than that, but they seem to turn into parts for various projects when no one is looking.
Also, our software team usually uses the previous year’s robot as a test bed until we get something working each year.
I understand that you want to improve your CAD skills. May I suggest, however, that you take into account your entire team’s feelings? Perhaps it would be more appropriate to vote on this as a team, and discuss it, rather than letting one person take apart the robot. Though your intentions seem positive, the robot was created by the team, so its future should be decided with the impact of everybody who contributed.
I agree with Katie Reynolds: Do you have to damage it to disassemble it? Just reassemble it when you’re done, and all’s well.
Having a robot for the drive team to play with during the off season is valuable.
Don
If you look at your robot as an engineering prototype, and add up all the time and materials that went into it
then for the average team that prototype machine ‘cost’ around $30,000.
You better have a really good reason for destroying a $30,000 investment.
Its not a question of sentiment or ethics, its a matter of logic and responsibility. There are many things you can use an intact robot for, student science days, demos for grade schools, off season competitions, fundraising…
another vote for the “don’t do it” choice.
Noooo! Don’t do it!
Don’t do it, we still have the 384 wall of fame, and I love it.
I’m sad to say that the only one of our robots that is intact is the 2006 'bot (and rest assured THAT one will be enshrined forever in some kind of trophy case!).
Don’t take it apart, even if you say to yourself that it’s just temporary - you’ll never get the various people required motivated enough to put it back together, should you ever want to do so.
Since it’s this year’s robot, I say don’t take it apart. If you’re short on space, do it in a year or two like we do (it’s actually a nice little fun activity, people hitting pieces with hammers trying to get the robot apart). You need something to show off for recruitment, sponsor visits, and other demonstrations, so at least keep it around until you finish building next year’s.
As a voice for the teammates yet to come, don’t do it. It is truely inspirational to see a teams legacy of older robots. As Ken said, your robot is a serious investment and should be treated well.