Our first match of the 2013 season…
BX 1023 Crash
How bad was the damage?
JESUS! That thing bounced! Also one of the faster 30 pt climbers. What happened after that?
What was creating the magic smoke?
They missed 2 matches and fried a sidecar and some wires, but eventually made it back out onto the field and 30pt climbed.
We were out 2 matches… sidecar was fried, wires fried… so we had to completely rewire it… then we worked on untwisting and unbending parts… thanks to the machine shop for getting a weld that broke for us (yes, we had to take our bot to the garage) 
Worked on the shooter first… got that working and then went to work on our climb again…
The problem… we don’t put our final lock on top level because we have to “manually” remove the bot. We did not have a way to powder coat our practice pyramid. We welded our practice pyramid and these are very flimsy (sorry, but they are, but it is our fault for “overbuilding” our pyramid). So… we never had this problem on our home field…
Now we are putting our full lock on it, and found a way around the removal. We made a successful 30 point climb. … Had to fix a stuck dumper… thought we were going for 50 again finally, but something went wrong with our controls and it stopped recognizing our climb controller, (totally unrelated to fall obviously) so we were stuck at 10 point climb.
Tomorrow, we will be trying for 50 points, and hoping to get picked!
By the way… to all the teams at Detroit today… BX1023 thanks all of you that stopped by to ask if we needed parts, help, etc… and to offer your “condolences” for our fall! We greatly appreciated all of the support you showed us! I am so proud of my team for getting it back up the pyramid! We’ll see how tomorrow goes!
702 in la 2011 that sucker caught on fire! Luckily they were able to get their pdb flopped before the next match but it was still an awesome sight
That’s impressive to come back from that kind of fall at all. Many robots wouldn’t score again after that kind of tumble!
You don’t know how scared, depressed, and hopeful this video makes me…Our team is planning on doing something similar. Our original climber idea will not work out, but we are using our withholding allowance to get something working which is pretty similar to what you guys did. I am so scared that our robot is going to fall off the pyramid!
I am hopeful because your team was able to come back after that fall, and because your design is so similar to ours and seams to work! I wish you all the best of luck tomorrow!
Edoga
Debbie,
I feel so bad for you guys. Climbing is so scary!
We actually just experienced that same situation earlier this week. Our robot looked almost identical in how it fell and how it “flipped” and “bounced” off the tower.
Luckily ours was the practice robot. Frame was twisted and we blew the digital side car. We’ll see if anything else happened today.
Good luck! Keep going forward, I’m sure you guys will have everything locked down and ready to go for eliminations
-Adam
Just to explain the extent of our damge, when someone asked what didnt break, the best reply was, what didnt break?.
But seriously. Our hopper and dumper arm and basket were smashed, the shooter tray was bent pretty bad, the uprights that hold our dumper welds broke, the shafts to hold the dumper bent, the fingers on the claw sheered off, as said before the sidecar shorted, and all the pwms completely melted, and an internal climbing component bent.
Hope that answers some future questions:)
So glad to see you back in business. This is the nightmare scenario for all of us who are packing a climber but can’t decide whether or not to use it.
Thanks for sharing the video and the updates. Hope to see you at MSC.
We thought for a second about not climbing anymore. But, we had invested too much time into the design, and we had not had that problem on our practice field. In hindsight, the danger of not being able to latch tightly so that you can undo it mechanically, may have changed our idea on our design, but we did find a way to put our main lock on the top level and still get it off in a relatively decent amount of time. It was definitely sickening to see weeks and weeks of hard work destroyed in seconds. But it was also a growth moment for my team because they immediately decided we would climb again. Too much residual damage though to get it securely climbing. Our last regular match, we had decided to not risk it, and ruin a shot of getting picked. We went out to shoot and do a 20 point climb, but we got jammed under the pyramid. Good luck your team! I hope you make it! Let me know how it goes!
We were hoping too, and we did make a climb, but a pin fell out of our dumper (more residual damage) and it didn’t dump. The second time we were hit while our first upright knocking us off our climb. The third, we had a problem with our camera, so we couldn’t get a good line up 
Sorry to hear about your practice bot. I was amazed that none of our electronics had to be replaced aside from our sidecar and pwm cables.
It is very scary for sure! I would say it is very important to powdercoat (we didn’t/tried spray paint, but wasn’t the same) your practice pyramid as it is SO slick, and to make sure it is exactly as stable as the real one. We welded ours so it didn’t fall on anyone, and I guess that came back to hurt us when we lifted off the top of the pyramid the first climb. I hope FIRST makes the top of the pyramid more secure, but we did work around that problem. it is just scary that it can be pushed off so easily.
I still cringe each time I watch it. Thank you all for your thoughts. I hope you all continue to climb! But, bring lots of pwm cables all ready to go. Thankfully we have a place at competition that we could fix a weld break. So proud of my team for not giving up. Good luck to all of you!
I hate to be the guy to spoil your success story but your climber may have one fatal flaw, when you grab the level one bar to pull yourself up are you making contact with the angled pole while still on the ground, if you are then you have constructed one of the most amazing illegal climbers I have seen to date. Just a heads up so it’s not a surprise if it gets called at one of your other events. On a side note, that was an amazing recovery to rejoin the competition within two matches.
We don’t make contact with the vertical pole. Thanks for the head’s up though.
Here is our first match of Saturday morning. Still a few hicups from damage done, but still we were happy to see it! Bedford Saturday
I was expecting at least a few videos like this one for Ultimate Ascent, but I didn’t expect it to be your team, Debbie! I’m glad you were able to recover, and I hope you earn enough points at the Bedford District to make it to MSC. You know it won’t be the same without you!
That said, I had to show this video to the young men in my 5th period class today, because I’ve been recruiting them for my robotics team. Now all five of them are determined to bring their grades up, so they can join next year, because they thought it was a “crazy” fall.
Inspiration by enduring disaster is still inspiration!
I don’t remember if we won that match, but it was scary! Team 2620 was on your alliance, personally I was driving!
As devastating as that fall was, it really was a team building thing for my team. I saw the true depth of my team, and the positive attitude of the team members made us able to really laugh it off. We were laughing in the pits (maybe to cover the tears), but it was contagious and it helped the rebuild.
We have examined what went wrong, and pieced a lot together this week. We withheld our shooter and dumper because they were too unstable to consistently preform after the crash(es) and we want to rebuild them. I firmly believe the practice match fall pinched a part of our undercarriage which caused the subsequent fall and problems. There were a lot of little things that continued to surface throughout the event.
I am confident (yet scared) that we will be able to get our shooting back to the 3 point level, and secure our climb by Bedford. Maybe we took it for granted and diminished the possibility of a fall because we never fell at our practice field. The flexibility of the field does scare me. I wish it were more solid. But, I still am confident in the team. We will climb again. (Hopefully without the fall this time.) We never got our climb perfected enough to score some discs between auto. and climbing, but hopefully we will be able to try that at Bedford.
I’m glad you shared it with your class. It’s a strong message. Any good that can come out of it, whether a needed laugh or some inspiration, helps forget the bad. I shared it with all of my 7th graders, as we talk a lot about overcoming obstacles and not giving up. We are going to make a little motivational clip on it. I’ll share it with you when we finish it.
We earned 28 points for states. So, states is still within our reach. Plus we have a shot with Chairman’s. So, we aren’t giving up yet. I hope we make it! But, we will be there, with or without our robot. So, I will still see you either way!
No, we lost by 3. Did you see the picture Dan Ernst took of our drivers? Priceless. I’m sure there were many other similar faces in the stands. Driver Reaction to the Fall
That picture is priceless!
We we’re having similar issues with our practice robot doing backflips off of the pyramid, and we decided last week to settle for the 10pt hang. Wish we we’re climbing corners and dumping, but I don’t think our bot would survive that type of fall as well as yours did!
Good luck at your next competition!
-Mike