pressing my finger in an arbor press while broaching a keyway :rolleyes:
Yeah, I do. But I might mentor somewhere during my college years, because FIRST Robotics is just one of the experiences that inspired me during my high school years. If I can’t mentor, I’ll just simply go to one of the regionals circa the time I’m on Spring Break.
EDIT: Worst decision during the Build Season was to put up that “Team Sweetie” picture on the front of our robot. So many people were calling either us “Team Sweetie” or the robot “Sweetie”/“Team Sweetie”.
Our teacher, mentor, coach decided to wire our shooter motor directly to the battery for some testing, a we thought we might have pinched the casing of the motor as we mounted it. the large CIM Fisher Price, after about 5 secounds of it spooling up, the wires melted, fused together, and put out a large cloud of blue smoke, needless to say the motor never worked again. lol :ahh:
my friend left had his month old laptop open and someone dodged a ball infront of it which caused the ball to hit the laptop and destroy the screen.
Hmm…Mike forgot team 11’s other mistake:
Our dongle was rewired at some point (I don’t know how or why) and when the programmers plugged it into the OI, something happened that shouldn’t have, and now it’s just a very expensive peice of metal and plastic.
Always check your wiring. Luckily, we have other OIs.
Forgetting to put up chain guards until 11 PM day before ship date and knowing that the robot will be picked up at around noon the next day. :rolleyes:
-Team 1852
hmm…im not too sure i think there’s too many
Here’s a few:
- eating too much pizza
- drinking too much pop
- going to the scrimmage too early with nothing to do for 3 hours!!!
I didn’t mention the programmers plugging the camera in upside down in a rush right before our rollout 
… they had to manually aim the shooter… so it wasn’t as impressive. and now you know why we blame the programmers for everything… cuz they plug stuff in wrong and break our OIs. Silly programmers (btw, i program on my spare time, but not for the team, so i am allowed to say stuff about programmers 
It happened four weeks ago but… Looking down at a piece of 80/20 while yanking it upward, upward into my face.
When I was stripping a wire for affixing to a speed controller when the board was in our robot already. I really should have taken the board out, but it is wedged in so tight, that’s really hard (I’m actually worried a bit about victor airflow, not a lot, but a bit). Anyway, I was really pulling hard to get the insulation off, so when it came free suddenly, my arm flew into one of our Victors. Not good… but it still worked fine!
i love the mention of magic smoke … i heard about it through a mentor of mine, and thought it was of is own incarnation, but it seems many people know of it…
read carefully “BACKSIDE SOLDIER CUP VIEW” for wiring competition port … DOH! (last year)
runaway robot w/ laptop on top? you think thats bad… we started up a 2003 RC board on our practice bot, it was donated and had no clue that the default autom code was full power forward… .we plug it in and had autom switch on (accidentially), and it pulled the labtop off the desk, hitting the floor, and the robot lunging forward into a heavyduty drafting desk almost knocking it over, and almost pinching me in between.
but this week… lets seee… running around in the auto shop nextdoor, a student ran into a vehicle lift post… ouch… <not me
we put our hopper together with corrugated cardboard and hot glue at the last minute.
one of our worst desicions was allowin one of the kids to be incharge or a task when we all knew he would struggle and probably mess it up… it really isn’t his fault i just like to mess with him…lol
We did two things that combined are rather dangerous, though we quickly rectified it
- We built around the battery (how was this not noticed…)
- The battery lacked proper electrical taping
So, come time to change the battery, it is in the absolute tighest possible space. Just in the path of the battery is a piece of 80/20. So, when initially removing the battery, the electrodes made contact with the 80/20 and made some rather ominous fireworks. We were, however, able to remove the battery safely, and designed a better removal path.
I’d say one of my worst descisions was to make a mock up of our camera mount, and then go home for the night. I came in the next day, and it hadn’t been remade, so it looks a little ummmm… messy (to say the least). Our camera still works good.
Heh. I cut the pieces for part of our control panel (the student involved hadn’t been trained on the saw), and left them on a work table. I forgot about them for a while and went on the teaching some students how to solder. When I remembered the panel parts and went to get them, I couldn’t find them. Eventually, they turned up in the scrap bin.
Thanks a lot Zoheb! I didn’t screw up anything important (I think). The worst decision I made this year was head-butting a prototype elevator. I had a scar on my lip for the next few days, but the elevator was structually sound.
My worst decision this year: trying to solder a metal gear to a plastic servo shaft…
We tried using paperclips, but found out it destroyed and was pushing the sockets out the back towards the controller. :ahh:
We tried to MacGyver together two severed wires in a serial cable with a set of keys, tape, and spit (we were at a demo). It worked out for a few seconds, the radio modem it was connected to powered up and started transmitting, but then it died again. So we just had to resort to a new cable.