So this year my builds were kinda ehhh, and i was wondering if anyone has any tips on how to get better build quality. I’ve heard some things from here and there about it, and i’ve heard about space boxing i think if that’s what it’s called. I’m not like a terrible builder either, but i just wanna improve from where i am rn.
Practice building random things, spend a lot of time making one thing perfect. build a bot for fun and make it super feature-packed and compact.
Find all the problems, identify robots that don’t have those problems, and explore why.
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I mean it depends on what you feel is lacking in your build because there are a lot of places you can go wrong. Generally, basic stuff like using nylocks instead of keps nuts wherever you can, testing the friction on your drive and other motorized mechanisms, and making sure not to use any bent parts like axles and channels go a long way. Making sure that everything is on the grid, as in keeping the distance between channels as real hole spacings, allows you to more easily brace your bot and add parts in a more efficient matter. As well, having very clear distinctions between prototypes and your final build and not just shoving ‘something that works’ on your bot helps a lot. Your first design of something is rarely perfect, always strive to improve it before making it part of your final bot. That’s the stuff that has helped me personally at least.
just building a lot helps improve the quality of building. my builder builds random things like battery holders and a tool kit for field side maintenance.
Also learning different joints and mechanisms and familiarizing yourself with different ways to make sure everything is square (especially your base) is always a good idea.
Spacers
Spacers don’t only need to go on shafts, I use them to bolt on more C channel and mechanisms.
Additionally you could get familiar with CAD software to be able to plan builds out
Use a CAD program to model all your prototypes and ideas, there are lots of free CAD softwares such as Onshape (Cloud Based) and Protobot (Which is designed specifically for VEX) that can help you improve the build quality of your robot without using up costly resources. I would also recommend making simple base CAD (H or holonomic) and then iterating it until it is a structurally stable and robust as possible. The more iterations you make, the more robust your robot normally is.
There are a lot of ways to improve build quality, but the best ways to improve are as follows: ensure that everything is well supported and aligned, try to simplify subsystems and components as much as possible, and observe how good teams implement their design.
Alignment:
Alignment is arguably the end-all-be-all solution to friction issues because vex bearing flats are more than capable of (almost) eliminating friction on moving parts. Thus, make sure that all of your bearing flats are flush with your metal and also ensure that the structure that houses any moving parts are as straight as possible. Misalignment is the main culprit to friction on rotating mediums, and it’s best to do this while you’re building certain subsystems as opposed to trying to friction tune on a fully built robot.
Support and structural integrity:
This is one of the most important aspects of build quality because even if everything is properly aligned when you initially build your robot, things may not stay that way across the span of an entire season. That being said, everything has to be supported well to ensure a high level of performance despite the abuse your robot will experience.
Learning:
If you think something on your robot could have been executed better, try to see how good teams implement their designs. There’s a lot you can learn by evaluating teams’ design language and looking for the potential benefits and drawbacks, and feel free to ask questions. For example, we noticed that Freedom Gladiators drilled through high strength axels for support at speedway during Tipping Point. Although we were initially skeptical of the idea, we gave it a try and we were surprised to find that it was incredibly strong and super compact. Case in point, the more build techniques you know, the better you can execute your design.
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