A Funeral for Mr. Clamps

Our competition robot for last year's FIRST season was designed to zip about grabbing boxes with a pneumatically powered claw, which it then delivered to targets ranging from ground level to seven feet up.  It was a nice design and a lot of fun to watch.

The team named him "Mr. Clamps", a moniker both descriptive and a bit of homage to a minor character from the Futurama cartoon series.  

Francis X. Clampazzo was of course a much less endearing figure!

As the next season is only a few weeks away we find ourselves with a sad but necessary duty.  We have to reuse some of the parts of Mr. Clamps and so he must be taken apart.

Prior to the build team taking wrenches to him we held a brief ceremony.  It went something like this:

"Dearly beloved we are gathered here today to say farewell to a worthy robot.  Mr. Clamps was a happy machine, almost like a big enthusiastic robot dog whose great joy in life was grabbing things and speeding off with them."

"Mr. Clamps brought happiness to so very many carbon based organisms. From the yellow capped judges who marveled at his pneumatic air brake to the dozens of Lego League tykes who only a few days ago got their first chance to drive a big robot."

"Yet even as we celebrate the life of Mr. Clamps we are here today to end it."

"A sad occasion, but shed no tears for Clamps.  For he will live on not only in our memories but in the dismantled components that will be Resurrected in The Robots to Come."

"Made in part from scraps from the recycle bin we now speak over him the traditional words of robot parting".

"Bolts to bolts.  Widgets to Widgets.  From the Dumpster he came and to the Dumpster he returns.  Amen."
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A couple of final notes.  

We've had some tough deaths in our community recently.  Our having a little fun celebrating what talented young people can do is not meant in any way to be disrespectful to families that have suffered tragedy.

Also, the afternoon work session was not even half over before the first of Mr. Clamp's recycled parts were put back into service.  The steel support for his elevator shaft is now a much improved handle for our robot transport cart.