Quote:
Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik
I suspect Andymark had some idea what motors would be legal this year, since there are a pair of AM only motors specifically listed in the rules. And I think we should give them credit for being clever enough to know that things like the CIM-sim and that CIM-interface dual FP planetary will be wildly popular pretty much every FRC season.
So I have an alternative explanation. Andy Baker said they had about $1 million in inventory coming into the season. Has it occurred to anyone that they probably simply couldn't afford to have any more stock on hand than that? All their inventory costs money to produce, so they have to stop stocking things when they run out of money. (Or nearly. Having a buffer is a pretty good idea.)
I have a feeling that even if AndyMark knew more details about the game, it simply couldn't afford to keep any additional inventory in stock without taking out a loan, which would be a ridiculous way of doing business. So the only real answer would be for FIRST to tip teams ahead of kickoff as to what kinds of motors and gearboxes they should stock up on.
I think that's a little pointless since that's unlikely to give you much more direction than you already have. You already know a dual FP gearbox is a useful thing. Especially if it has a CIM-like output. There's quite a selection of modular gearboxes available from AM and Banebots as well that let you have a pretty large selection of ratios from a relatively small amount of inventory. Really, I think older teams should be looking at building up a small inventory of parts to pull from before kickoff. There's nothing on Andymark that ships quicker than a gearbox that's on your shelf.
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This is kind of what I was thinking after hearing about their $1 million inventory. And, who knows, maybe banebots is in the same situation, they simply don't have the capital to put forward to be prepared for the build season. There's only so far the suppliers can go to have enough in stock, so the best we can do is make our plans sooner and give ourselves time for shipping and/or fallbacks. And I still hold that a lot of teams still won't take much action before build season starts even if given information ahead of time, and even for the ones that do, you kind of want to get an idea of what your design calls for before blowing several hundred dollars on gearboxes (not that it's not a worthwhile investment, but teams have the same limitations on capital as businesses).