[=Martin=Taylor=]

This is what I like to see.

Well laid out, simple without many custom parts. Its clearly strong and probably pretty light considering the use of tough boxes, KOP wheels, ABS and belts.

When I go to FRC competitions I love to look at robots like this; robots that were built smart without a lot of silly features and shiny custom parts. Just how great of an advantage are two speed shifters over single speed? When was the last time 71 had two speed transmissions? Or FRC 25? Think on that....

I guarantee you that if the greatest teams in FIRST all built robots like this THEY WOULD DO EQUALLY AS WELL IF NOT BETTER. You can save ridiculous amounts of time building your robot if you just make it simple. There are so many off the shelf robot parts nowadays that you really don't need to make transmissions, wheels, or even a drive train if you're really pushing it.

Oh but your sponsors make all those parts for you! You don't pay anything for their work so why not go crazy! Idk about other teams but I feel bad about making machine shops make parts for us instead of their paying customers. The shop that works for us loses several hundred dollars each time they work on our stuff.

But custom parts are more pretty!

Wrong. Practicing, programming, testing, and winning competitions is more pretty.

Pretty much my design creed.