Quote:
Originally Posted by Adrian Clark
My apologies for being so blunt, and as much as I hate to be the pessimist of this thread, I think your team is going about this all wrong.
A drivetrain, or any robot subsystem, on either an off-season project or on a competition robot should not be designed by one person. And if you do decide to go down the route of comparing multiple designs each designed by an individual the best way to decide between them would be to outline what qualities you want/don't want in your drivetrain and compare each one with a weighted design table.
I recommend that you outline what features and strengths you want your drivetrain to have as a team prior to any design. Then when it comes to the actual design, have design work done by experienced students who know what they're doing and can teach new members in the process. If your drivetrain is designed by someone who doesn't have a lot of experience then your safest approach is to stick to proven concepts and simple drivetrains, unlike your current designs. There's no shame in copying another teams drivetrain, as long as your copying something good. You're a pretty new team, you're not in a position where it would pay off to build some crazy drivetrain (from what I saw, the designs you're trying to decide between are pretty crazy), because the results probably wouldn't be as favorable as copying another teams simpler and proven drivetrain.
Just my 2 cents. Sorry if I come off as bashing you, just a little constructive criticism.
Best of luck for 2013!
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I fully agree with everything you said. Thing is, this is a practice robot. We are building it to become more experienced; and I see no reason why we shouldn't experiment. We would NEVER use a system like this in a situation like build season. There was a pre-determined list of requirements that we came up with as a team before we individually started designing. These are all robots that we feel we could fabricate easily, quickly, and cost-effectively.
Best case scenario - we perfect an awesome drivetrain that we can hopefully utilize in the competition season, while teaching our new students about design, fabrication, etc.
Worst case scenario - Robot fails miserably and the new kids (and the old ones) learn what not to do.
I appreciate the feedback, as does the team.
Mac