Hmm. An interesting point.
But what if there were pricing restrictions that put a limit on the total you could spend - and that total was a combination of purchased parts and "cost of production" of parts made from raw materials (which could be calculated by the amount of time required to produce, multiplied by some pre-defined $xx dollars/hour figure for machinist's time).
If that were done, then the advantages enjoyed by teams with full machine shops would be reduced to a more level playing field (and it would probably drive certain very-well equipped teams nuts!
).
But on the other hand, do we really care all that much if some teams have more production capability or access to more machinists or more mentors or more students than other teams? Do we really need to go to extraordinary lengths to level the playing field completely and make the competition "totally fair?" One of the (many) purposes of FIRST is to expose students to some of the real-world practices to professional engineering. In the real world, companies virtually always have certain capabilities that are not shared by their competitors, which they exploit to their advantage. Why should this competition be any different? (as Momma Lavery always told me when I was a young 'un, "no one ever said that life was fair.")
-dave
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Y = AX^2 + BX + C