Re: build season needs to be longer.
 

Actually what would be interesting is to compare what teams order compared to what they consume through the build season, and what just goes to waste. For all we know teams could be over ordering parts and then going "wait no we didn't need this many" and things just go to waste.
Mayhaps someone should start a surplus thread where teams post valuable items that for whatever reason they purchased but no longer need.

Re: build season needs to be longer.
 

Please God no.

As the lead build mentor, I can only take so much robot build before I get fired from my day job.

Re: build season needs to be longer.
 

We rescheduled half of our build meetings to the evening for the same reason. That said, I think an open build season would help, rather than hurt. If you can only put in so much time, than you could space it out with shorter meetings over a longer build season. Your boss would thank you.

Re: build season needs to be longer.
 

This. When I was on this team and now when I come back and "mentor" (term used VERY lightly), first semester finals fall directly in the middle of build season. You may think that this is an argument for a longer build season but the fact that finals are in the middle of build season and mid terms come around right after build season (actually I'm not sure about that for this school anymore but MY midterms definitely do... lol ;)) it's fine the way it is. Also, mentors are here for a LONG time. 6 weeks is plenty.

Of course your argument is about supply and demand (basically), and to that I don't have much to say. I just wanted to say that any longer than 6 weeks can cause a commitment issue (hell there's already commitment issues but that's a story for another time) so maybe you are correct and a longer build season can fix that issue but for students you want to keep it at 6 weeks.

Re: build season needs to be longer.
 

Snap forgot about finals...
Yeah I'm not sure a larger period of time is even available. Either way I feel 6 weeks is a good amount of time it applies pressure but is reasonable.

Re: build season needs to be longer.
 

There are so many examples of "leaks" in the non-FRC world that have dramatic consequences for businesses or competitive events. For instance, I play Magic, and nearly every game release there is some major and early leak of cards, which can dramatically impact the bottom line of many businesses. There is no way that FRC could reliably pass on info like that and get away with it; we would soon hear about insider trading situations, with teams whose mentors have access to the info being better prepared in advance for the game. It would ruin FRC. No way.

Re: build season needs to be longer.
 

There used to be CD-Swap for this, but it was not often used so it went dormant and the links for it got removed at some point. You can still read the About page and browse the now empty item list.


To the point of this thread, the run on parts that always happens is a good example of real world issues with timing and availability. At my day job we just had to tell a contractor they will likely have to wait 9 months for install on a job since they missed our downtime window in December. I also agree though that the shenanigans around difficult to obtain game pieces, short order windows, etc. introduces unnecessary costs and headaches that provide more arguments for a school to choose a different program.

We have ~3000 teams right now, I wonder how much faster we will see things go out of stock when we have 15000.

Re: build season needs to be longer.
 

This concept gets lost to people so much and I don't get it. If there was no bag-n-tag you could spend the same amount of hours working but over a larger time period. You can afford to have fewer meetings per week over a longer time and pace your build in a way that best suits your team.

Re: build season needs to be longer.
 

We already know that they do this to some degree. Andymark stocks the gamepieces, builds a kitbot to suit the game, and in the past, has even supplied FIRST-mandated robot components (2009).

In general, I think you'd be surprised at how many people do know the game, or at least have a good picture of it, in advance. Suppliers for game specific elements, the production crew for the kickoff broadcast, the volunteers who set up the official field for Manchester kickoff, all the teams who build field elements for local kickoffs, and so on. To my knowledge, there has only ever been one "leak" of information prior to kickoff, and it was pretty inconsequential. The exact people who would be told "hey by the way, this'll be a big year for pneumatic wheels" already know quite of confidential information about the game. They may know this already; I personally doubt that it's a coincidence that Andymark just happened to release an FRC legal tank tread system, an approach that had been almost universally written off as unreliable and unnecessary in FRC for over a decade, a few weeks before FRC's toughest terrain game ever was released.

Re: build season needs to be longer.
 

1) we aren't running the world out of pneumatic wheels. Pneumatic wheels specifically compatible with andymark/versachassis parts are in short supply because they usually aren't this popular. There is no world shortage of wheels, nor will we ever cause one.
2) not much should be spent on overnighting parts, if you're buying the parts you'll obviously need beforehand (yknow, like bolts and hubs and chain and lexan). Amazon Prime also makes this a lot easier. We do spend some money on priority shipping, but it really isn't frequent.

Yes, the unprecedented demand for pneumatic wheels has been an issue, but that isn't justification for lengthening build season. There's so many other implications of an extended build season that have nothing to do with part shipment that it's hardly logical to conclude that, because people wanted wheels, build season should be longer.

Re: build season needs to be longer.
 

Could you? Yes.

But there is another concept that gets lost to people. Parkinson's Law, to be exact. "Work expands to fill time allotted" is the usual short phrasing. And what that means is that you will invariably think you have more time to spread out... but you'll really use that time to upgrade your robot instead of relaxing.

Re: build season needs to be longer.
 

There are plenty of places to buy Pneumatic tires from. Here are some examples:

http://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=16413401

http://www.northerntool.com/shop/too...y_tires-wheels

http://t.harborfreight.com/catalogse....google.com%2F

It only took me about 5 minutes of googling to find these, if you're having problems finding pneumatic tires, you aren't looking hard enough.

Re: build season needs to be longer.
 

This is my first year with FRC and robotics challenges. Seem the debate hinges around the drive train. Maybe in the fall the game makers could hint to the terrain this years challenge will offer with out giving away the other subsystem that maybe required.

Re: build season needs to be longer.
 

This is 100% true. For our FTC season we seem to manage to do less in FTC than FRC over a period of time that is twice as long.

Re: build season needs to be longer.
 

If you think we're not capable of depleting the North American supply of certain items, I would remind you of the great Moon Rock shortage of 2009. Shortly after kickoff, it was extremely difficult to find those silly balls.

I also don't buy the notion that advance info will completely fix all this. I don't think 3" and 4" banebots wheels were going to be all that popular for ultimate Ascent until Spectrum demoed their small wheeled shooter. Then it rather quickly became difficult to get any of the banebots wheels.

And dear god tetrix motors in 2011. I don't think we depleted the world supply of them, but that's probably just because there was a huge stockpile of them because they hadn't been selling well. Predicting that teams would want them for that game was pretty obvious. But predicting that teams would want dozens of them because they'd be burning them out constantly? Predicting that the only legal motor for a critical subsystem would be a consumable item? How many people saw that coming in week 1?