[Peter Matteson]

COTS is a really good way to save resources like everyone here says. Who wants to tie up half their season machining a few transmissions when you can get the same done for less by buying a few parts.

Last I checked AndyMark shifters are still cheaper than I can buy the parts to make one on the open market. I built them from Andy's whitepaper the year before he started selling them so I had pretty good info to justify switching my team over.

Another thing a lot of teams do is buy gears from AndyMark and package them in a custom housing to meet their packaging needs. Doing this you can buy gears, pre hex broached even and get the ratios that you want by combining various gears. This is what we have done several years and occasionally we swap in a custom gear that we have to hex broach ourselves.