Quote:
Originally Posted by dsmoker
Wow. Harsh. We asked one specific question to confirm some of our preliminary calculations. The students never asked for anyone's complete minibot design, nor do I anticipate that their final design will be "heavily inspired" by any one particular minibot that they saw perform at WPI. They simply felt that, after seeing all of the minibots in action, they wanted to try their hand at a direct-drive system to avoid the mechanical loss that naturally occurs through gearing. The drive train is but one aspect, obviously, of minibot design. As for the output diameter, the students have been experimenting with diameters ranging from 1/4" to 3/8". They simply wanted to hear what others' experiences had been in order to confirm or dispel their own conclusions. I posted their question for them because I thought that that's exactly what this forum was for.
For those who offered constructive advice on this thread, thank you!  |
Let's try to assume John was not intentionally implying anything negative in the way he responded. After all, he works for a robotics company that wants everyone to use their products- so why would he ever imply anything negative about any of his customers? I'll have to assume we must be misreading anything negative.
I offer thoughts and encouragements in order to get teams to try things. Anyone who has tried to build a direct drive minibot knows that significant amounts of trials and experimentation are necessary to be successful.
Does every team need to reinvent the physics description on their own?
I think the minibot challenge this year dramatically increased the amount of time and energy that teams would spend on engineering.
I know that is true for our team. So overall, it is good for the primary goal of FIRST. It causes the most innovative teams to lose some of their advantage over the "incrementing" teams as the season wears on.
But to me, it's a no-brainer which has better impact on getting more students working on engineering problems for longer periods of time.