Our school “took away” our room for our vex field, and lets us put in the corner of a cafeteria annex, but we need to take it apart for every event. Basically, we’d be assembling and disassembling our field every week. Does anyone have any tips for quick field assembly? We have about 10-12 people available, but it took us almost 2.5 hours to assembly the field.
Start with getting a cordless drill or two. Do you have to break down all the way to 4’ sections? If not, then either keep the sides together and only break the field at the corners (12’ long pieces), or break it into four 8’ by 4’ “L” pieces. The “L” will allow this year’s corner-located goals to stay in place, just have to remove 1 screw from the starting bar bracket. You’ll probably want to drill holes in the polycarbonate for the goal bar screws (if you haven’t already) so you don’t have to slide out the panels at each assembly.
If you have to go full breakdown with 4’ pieces, then you can get a system together and should be able to assemble in 10-20 minutes tops. Divide your people into 4 crews, each with a power driver and the brackets/screws they need. Label the pieces, and leave on the corner brackets and goal brackets. Each crew assembles a side, then the four crews join the 4 corners. All work together to place the tiles (this year, leave the “high goal” attached to a 4’ x 4’ section of tile mats).
With coordination and practice, it should be easy: in 2.5 hours, our team sets up an entire tournament (4 fields, TM and displays).