Quote:
Originally Posted by Cory
At a few points we have considered moving away from a 7/16" hex on the wheel side of the shafts and a 1/2" hex on the sprocket side in favor of using hex bearings and a straight hex shaft all the way through. Every time we've shot it down because it makes everything we've made since 2006 incompatible with any future parts.
Having that supply of parts that has remained functionally (if not perfectly) identical and interchangeable since 2006 allowed us the flexibility to throw together an entire drivebase in under a day and test something critical to the design of our robot. This offers a huge advantage if you have the foresight to keep families of parts common.
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This is an incredibly huge insight for anyone that it's new to. This is typically how industry moves. Why did XYZ make that inane decision in their latest iteration of product instead of using a blanket 'best practice'? In any complex integrated system (robot, submarine, satellite, cars) it's usually for backwards-compatibility.