We have less of a box and momore of a wall - this is the “wall of shame”, and it has since grown to approximately triple this size. We keep anything we want to remember, either as a positive lesson or cautionary tale. We have bent intake plates, bent bolts, like 6 broken taps, failed 3d prints, broken and dissected motor controllers, shattered plastic, cracked wheels, and crushed tubing, among many other beautiful and horrific (but mostly horrific) artifacts. Before we left for the Corona break, I also inexplicably found 5818’s match schedule from Chezy Champs, which is my favorite addition.
13 Likes
2012: I wasn’t officially with the team and there was so much so wrong. Wait - it would have to be “Ninja Katana” - a fiberglass bar driven by a window motor on a 12"+ moment arm to push down the bridge. As I heard it later, the window motor “exploded”, though I suspect that “disintegrated” is the more proper term.
2013: That bit of aluminum bar I formed by hand (including cutting it through metal fatigue) as a proof of concept that a pneumatic cylinder could push the frisbees into the shooter wheels. Against my protests, it went to competition, and jammed up utterly around our sixth match.
2014: Mjollnir. In 2014, we built a wooden prototype chassis “Woody” where we ignored a few frame perimeter and other rules, but used the dimensions to build an aluminum version inevitably named “Buzz”. We did high goal shots using a hammer driven by two CIMs and a Toughbox Mini. The metal version on Buzz, “Mjollnir”, never did do as well as “Mallet”, the version made of 2x4s on Woodie., but the head coach didn’t want any wood on the robot after our rookie year. [OBTW, Mjollnir is somehow in my garage.]
2015: Our spring-cushioned pickup. It was both our greatest strength and our greatest weakness. A strength in that it could pick up one tote on the long side, two totes on the short sides, or an RC, and a weakness because our ability to move a stack of totes was worse-than-inverse-proportional to the height of the stack.
2016: Our chain runs. Or more precisely, our attempts to use inch pitch chain on hardware designed for millimeter belts against the worst terrain of the decade (at least). Though we built our defenses more robust than the team plans (we used three 2x planks laminated with screws for our rock wall rather than a wooden tube), the steel proved to be far more damaging.
2017: The code.
2018: During build season, we tried to do everything (against my advice, but I didn’t push hard enough); it’s hard to pick one thing. To break the tie, I’m going to pick the one where I am most to blame: hefty solenoids moving the intake arms; I should have known better. The first iteration of our off-season robot used pneumatics, the second had flexible (made of polycarb tubing) arms but no articulation, and (at four or possibly five degrees of freedom if you count the “spinout” I don’t think we ever used) was IMO the best robot 3946 has ever brought to a competition; it was certainly the only time 3946 has ever been an alliance captain.
2019: After 2018, I’ve been a volunteer. My “Memory Box” item from 2019 would have to be from one of the three rookie teams I inspected at Arkansas Rock City. Yup, I got it. I don’t have anything physical to remember it by, but it was during inspection of the Brazilian Team 7459. Taubatexas Robotics. I had 30 year old high school Spanish classes, supplemented by a few stories by my mother who had traveled to Portugal and Angola when my father was mortally injured BEFORE my Spanish classes to get to Portuguese. They had one mentor and one student who could speak a useful amount of English. At one point, we were trying to do a robot test. The robot was not enabled, and it had to be for the test. I looked directly at their lead programmer (not an English speaker), and once I got return eye contact, I put my hand above their RSL and opened and closed my hand at the appropriate frequency. Three seconds later, he enabled the robot and we did the HATCH PANEL launch test, which they passed.
This year, (2020) I did get to Arkansas Regional, but my memory box item would have to be alcohol-based hand sanitizer; I scrupulously applied it between every pair of inspections, which is still way more than I’ve ever used it in any other 48 hours, because while my day job is not a good candidate for telework, it doesn’t require nearly as much person-to-person face-to-face interaction as robot inspector.
6 Likes
The pieces of metal (usually box tubing or custom sheet metal) that have inspection stickers on them
1 Like
I never thought I would find a team that 2014’s shooter was a hammer like ours, funnily we also had a metal hammer that was replaced with a wooden one that worked better
about six 20 inch stroke bent pistons
We turned one of them into our flag
1 Like
Excuse me but how
(And what bore?)
i think 3/4 or 1 inch, we had 4 of them on our robot last year to get to HAB 3. They worked most of the time, only really broke them during practice and the first comp cuz you had to activate the front set then back set at the right times, never got it to be a programmed thing
Do you have a photo of the setup? Seems like alot of damage even for rough practice
1 Like
Fair enough, I appreciate the rear drivetrain drop
A yellow hat autographed by Woodie Flowers. For 2882, a rope from the 2017 game also autographed by Woodie.
A couple of 3d printed pieces and a piece of cable chain from the 3 seperate times I have broken an elevator (i have a reputation lol)
Maybe one of the pieces of polycarb and 3d print we melted together by accident.
Can I print code and put it in here? I’d add all those times the code worked until we read what it was actually doing.
1 Like
Drill bit i broke in the stupidest way as a freshmen. failed 3dp pulleys, skinned power cell and our 2019 bumpers
We bought four spares of those pistons last year assuming they would break, but the original set somehow lasted through all seven events we attended. Now we have like $300 in enormous pistons and nothing to use them for.
1 Like
This isn’t exactly the same case, but our team somehow has a collection of I think 4 absolutely massive pistons (3" bore) that would be completely illegal on an FRC bot - on the off-chance they fit within the frame perimeter, they operate at 120 psi anyways. Pictured here is one of them. I have no idea where or why we got them, and they have to be really expensive, but they’re fun to play with.
1 Like
Probably an old Bimba donation. They’d be legal if you could fit them in the size constraints.
Actually… wanna bet someone got them in 2013 for pyramid climbing?
2 Likes
With an estimated stroke of 24" and the mentioned 3" bore, Bimba has those listed as $250 each.
3777 used a cylinder similar to that one to climb in 2018.
Our team has a “Meme Wall” where we collect these kinds of treasured memories. We’ve got a 10-32 bolt that was forced into being a 10-24 bolt, a broken drill bit, an old bag-and-tag zip tie, and a copy of the College Board’s Text Opt-In Policy that someone brought in after the PSAT. There’s more, but those are the highlights.
Most of our memories, are unfortunately, thrown away, because our lab is eternally cluttered. Shattered omni wheels, 4 HTD drivetrain belts that were literally shredded by a Bunnybot, the swerve modules for another Bunnybot that only drove in a single match, all lost to the sands of time.
Our most treasured memory has now been lost (recycled), but I’ll tell the story anyway. In the distant past, 2017 if memory serves me right, one of the fabrication students on our team was cutting out a bunch of brackets on our CNC router. Somehow, he forgot to turn the key that allows the bit to actually spin, so the router just rammed the bit through the aluminum, creating all kinds of spiky shards sticking up. Miraculously, the bit got through a fair portion of the cut, and no one noticed anything was wrong until we went to check on it and saw the carnage. For years, the plate hung on our wall, a reminder to students never to be so foolish again, emblazoned with the phrase “Thanks, David!”
3 Likes
That would end up almost end up being a memory room for us
1 Like
Hmmm this would take a while to compile completely, but a couple off the top of my head: A sword made by the mighty Chrisco that we bent in half because he scared us… Chrisco’s Paul bunion ax… Chrisco’s button cape… Chrisco’s button vest… Those collapsible VR headsets we won at worlds for no reason… Chrisco’s fishing hook (part of 2018 climber)… there are MANY more but I am too tired to remember them all