I’ve seen some talk about this in a few other threads but nothing too specific. For teams that attended week 4 events (and the week 3 events where these were tested), how were the new springs with the conduit? From watching live streams it looks like gears falling isn’t anywhere near as common. But did it hurt anyone’s strategy? Was it confirmation bias that I think that it was holding gears better?
To be clear the only “experience” that I have with these new pegs is observing them in live streams.
The difference is insane. I don’t think 229 dropped a single gear all weekend at Montreal. You could have gears all the way on the end not fall off. This was a really positive change by FIRST.
It seems like the peg is better at holding gears in the middle and back of the peg and just as bad/marginally worse for gears at the tip of the peg. I see that as an improvement.
This could be specific to the robot designs at HVR and not universal, but I also noticed that adding the conduit made it much more likely for a team to shove a peg into the center hole of the gear or through the plastic (making a new hole).
I was told that the new design was in use at the Wisconsin Regional and it felt far worse than what we were familiar with at the St. Louis Regional week 2. It is possible that the springs just saw more wear and tear with more robots attempting to place gears than in week 2 but it also appeared that the spring assembly would sag an additional maybe 5 degrees within the carriage possibly due to the additional weight of the conduit.
We used the “old” springs at Utah in Week 2 and the “new” springs at Colorado in Week 4.
After personally inspecting all springs prior to the start of all of our matches at both events, I can say that the “new” springs are a good upgrade over the “old” ones. The primary 2 issues I saw this past weekend with the “new” springs were:
Weakness right at the clamping collar that secures the base of the spring to the lift mechanism (allowing the stiff, straight spring to sag right from that clamping collar). I’m not sure if this was caused by the internal conduit terminating too far from the attachment point on the lift but there was no easy fix for this. Colorado officials were very good about replacing springs when we felt they were out of spec.
Springs were getting kinked about 2 inches in from the barb (presumably at the end of the internal conduit). For moderate cases of this issue, the quick “fix” was rotating the spring and barb in such a way as to put the “kink angle” at an advantageous position (usually that meant pointing the “kink” upward). Note: We got approval from the FTA/Official to rotate the springs/barbs instead of replacing them.
While this “new” spring isn’t perfect, it definitely seems way better than the “old” one AND I have a hard time imagining a gear delivery mechanism that would be LESS effective now than it would have been before. Whatever loss of effectiveness you might experience delivering gears onto these “new” springs would surely be more than offset by the improved efficiency in the lift/unload process these “new” springs offer.
It’s amazing how different our reports can still be even after this change. I’ll offer an hypothesis as to why. The vast majority of the conduit-springs at Smoky Mountains were considerably better than the old South Florida and Pittsburgh springs. Fewer got bent, and more of the bent ones could be bent back. (I also felt like the field crew was much more responsive to our concerns and changing them; my conjecture being because they needed to do it less often–other airship components also broke less–and they had more spares.)
However, later in elims, one of the springs that was properly switched out (it’s been severely deformed at the collar) was replaced with a radically different peg. It was much, much less stiff, bending more easily and vibrating more. We didn’t play on it much (it was late in elims–my conjecture is they may have been out of the others), but even then it began sagging. It was so different that the coaches and pilots all agreed it must be a different part number (spring and/or conduit).
We know there are now 2 spring part numbers that have reportedly different characteristics as early as in build season. I wonder if this accounts for some of the discrepancy, or how much of it is different assembly, match play, conduit, etc.
I saw that happen twice at Glacier Peak this weekend. Both times the pilot ended up pulling the whole carriage into the airship and bracing his foot against it to try to yank the gear loose. The first time it happened both pilots got involved in trying to free the gear, putting on a great show for the spectators!
We experienced more annoyances with pegs in Week 4 than Weeks 1 and 3, with no recourse for pegs that were damaged during a match from normal play. Perhaps the improvements helped, but if the field isn’t maintained properly then there are certainly still some issues.
The pegs were fine. The plastic loops to hold the string and handles, however, were AWFUL. Every single time you lifted a gear, these plastic rings of death forced you to either:
A) Reach outside the airship to grab the gear, resulting in a yellow card.
B) Grab the rope below the loop, allowing the string above the loop and the handle to droop down and tangle up the gear.
Forcing pilots to avoid the handles that you would assume are there to grab is just backwards. The plastic rings have been nothing but a nuisance, and I hope that they’re gone for week 5.
After competing in Week 2 (St. Joseph IN) and Week 4 (West Michigan) as the pilot for our team, I can say that the new springs are much better. The conduit helps the spring to keep its form, meaning fewer dropped gears. I think it was a much needed improvement.
We didn’t find a difference between Weeks 1 and 3 and were happy with both, but in Week 4 we had several instances of peg failures that seemed related to poor maintenance of the field. Worth noting: our week 1 and week 4 events used the same field.
My point, and perhaps I should have made this more clear, is that all fields are not equal, nor ins their maintenance. Differences observed by some teams may just be a result of different preparation and maintenance at a different event.
I was told that Bayou had the new springs, however it didn’t seem like it from interacting with them, we had a few pegs that couldn’t hold any gears by the end of the event.
Agreed, Mike. I saw zero dropped gears from any team that were caused by the field elements, rather than caused by the robot itself. Colorado looked like a big improvement.
Late Saturday at our Sat/Sun district event, I had enough with the old springs. Volunteers had enough with complaints about them. I could see the stress on the FTA’s face as he had to fake the ‘tolerance’ of the spring, given the situation with the spares. Spare springs were being saved for elims because they had very few available to being with.
So I stepped in. The FTA and field supervisors were gracious enough to get me a part list, which I then set about finding. I used my mentors, parents and team contacts to seek out parts at local hardware stores. Some of those teams got in touch with their sponsors (384), others (1080, 1731) dug through their pits for various tools & parts. 384’s mentors went to their sponsor to make the specific aluminum parts that extended the stud of the carriage into the conduit. 2363 helped us by digging through the field drawing PDF’s to get dimensions (they weren’t at the event, but were on Slack with me). We got all of the parts together within a few hours, and just in time to make the all-or-none decision at venue close for the upgrade. Apparently the official shipment for the upgrade was still stuck in Memphis, with no ETA.
The difference was HUGE. Everyone’s stress levels were far lower. Frustration on the field was far lower. We actually saw 4-rotor qual matches from a wide variety of alliances on Sunday! The springs really elevated gameplay by giving teams a field element that would at least behave consistently for both alliances in each match. The teams involved felt it was totally worth it for a few of their adults to miss watching their teams’ qual matches late Saturday to make the upgrade happen. Hopefully we set an example for more teams to step up and make things like this happen, rather than simply complain.
I salute you for finding a solution and working it through.
This is the true spirit of FIRST I wish we had more solutions like this.
I do think that the people are there… we can work this through… given the chance
congratulations on being a great role model to the students and to the rest of FIRST