FIRST's goal is to inspire people to pursue careers in science and engineering.


It's mechanism is to create an environment in which Engineers are recognized as role models.

FIRST creates an avenue where young people are exposed to Engineers in daily life. If you think about it, there are no TV programs glorifying the world of engineering. There are very few outreach activities which put engineers directly into contact with the community.

So, if you take the Engineers out of FIRST, what do you have left?

Although Engineers are extremely competitive, we all need to realize that FIRST is -not- about winning the competition. The only reason to have the reaction "Those lousy engineers out-designed me" is because you are too focussed on winning.

The best part of the competition (for me) is to go around the pits on practice day (usually after the crowds have left) and check out all the great designs that people have put together.

Some of the most talented people in the world are designing robots in FIRST. If that were taken away, all of us would be poorer for it.

Perhaps your post would have been fitting elsewhere. But you picked out one of the most (if not the most) respected teams in FIRST.

I see you are sincere in your regression, and I'll back down now too. The issue here is now dead, please, if you want to start a debate, or continue a debate of the subject.. find the approprioate sub-forum and/or thread.

:) Smiles :)

The issue is now dead, and I wish that I never brought it up it was a stupid comment that was very immature and unprofesional of me to say what I did.

NO dddriveman, your right. My team 522 has 0 engineers. But ya know what feels good.? When you get against a team with 5 million to spend and engineers build their bots and you win. Yes I agree with what some people were saying, if you go to any of the Delphi teams they will know the robot in and out, there drilled and tested and told what to say to a judge, what to do and when to do it. As some of the TEAMS not the engineers it feels great to show them down. Knowing that an engineers 100 hrs + of work just didn't make it through your 10 hrs of work. Sometimes its not all equations its just trial and error and common sense.

Joe.. please see my post.. with the following:

So.. you represent your team and say now that it's more important to win against an Engineer Built team than to learn from them. By pointing out your team number, you are calling yourself the opinionator of the team.
Honestly though, I think if your team had the opportunity to have engineers, you wouldn't turn them down.

As I said before:

It's not fair to close this thread, because people may actually want to talk about 45's transmission in the future. So, I am asking that any more 'engineer built' comments be put into their own thread, preferably one that already exists. Yeah, I'm asking you to go do some research before posting. I know it sounds hard and you've got stuff you just have to say, but you may learn something. You may also see that the exact words you are going to write have actually been posted 10 times before, argued to death, and everybody agreed to disagree.

Thanks.

I have a quick post about the transmission. I've seen it up close at the Indiana FIRST workshop and talked with team members about it (a student explained it to me). When I first saw the video showing the robot changing gears in motion I was quite amazed. I couldn't imagine how to design something to do that so effectively and as it turned out, the solution was simple, reliable, and cool. Nice job. If only we could build 'em like that :D .

P.S. Thanks for always sharing your designs!

Generalbrando,

Don't sell yourself short, you can build them just like that. We took the design and modified it to use off the shelf gears from Martin Gears. The only parts that took time to machine were the hex driveshaft and dog/mates. These could be easily farmed out to a local machineshop as we did for a very, very low fee when the shop was told what they were for. The tranny has proved to be robust, and reliable. The 2003 modifications make it even smaller and lighter. There are also some other designs in the white pages for shifters

LOL

Sorry to give the impression that we just couldn't duplicate their designs. It was actually a joke. During competition we redesigned our drive train over 7 times (no joke), putting us on the field with a new attempt each and every time. Note to self and all listening: never use bicycle sprockets! It wasn't my idea and there's no need to point fingers, so I'll leave it at that.

As for creating something like this drive train for our robot, we didn't have the tools or money needed, not to mention the fact that we decided not to use gears (next year may be very different). I know that seems odd, but the reason is simply that we couldn't contruct something that we were confident enough in to think it wouldn't get twisted and mess up the gears or gear boxes. We had trouble keeping our sprockets in relative alignment :).

Anyway, thanks for your tip on getting something like this made cheap and easy.

How low of a fee was it? Any numbers? We usually do our own machining so I have no idea how much anything like that would cost.

Matt,

We had trouble with "throwing chains" also. Can you elaborate on your automatic chain guides?

Doug,

I will get a picture but what we did after Buckeye was take off the sprockets and make some delrin (Actually it was my kitchen cutting board, some kind of plastic) rings that were bolted to each side of the sprocket, they had a steep chamfer at the top that pretty much forced the chain to ride back into the teeth on the sprocket. Unless the chain broke there was no way possible for the chain to derail. Worked perfectly for GLR (We Won!) and at Nationals. This proved to be the most reliable and easy solution to using chains yet. Even better than a tensioner.

The fees for the parts jobbed out were on the order of $40 per dog mates, and about $80 for the main dog or hex drive shaft. These are on the cheap side, but like I said make it clear to the shop what they are for, especially if they are light on work

Matt,
What size chain did you use? I know 980 used #25. We used #35 with a four motor drive with less than perfect alignment. We threw a chain only once when we rammed a wall at full speed. (Oops! :D)

Our sprockets and chains took up a lot of weight this year. Would it be worthwhile downsizing to #25?

Sanddrag, we used the smaller #25. We never had any problems as far as strength, only throwing the chains. I wouldn't use #35 for drive anymore, #25 was adequate and we had a ton of power this year in low gear with tank treads. By using the chain guides there were no drawbacks to #25 chains