Raul posted a similar idea years ago, and I really like it.
Allowing 20 lbs of custom items to be reused year to year won't make good teams any better, but it will really help the rest of the teams substantially.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wayne TenBrink
I would go one step further and argue that some amount of unregulated (predesigned and/or prefabricated) components/mechanisms should be allowed. Perhaps 10 or 20 lb (analagous to the withholding allowance) and only on the condition that you share the design and declare the items on the BOM.
Teams would still need to build a new robot every year, but at least they would benefit from the same advantages you get with buying a COTS mechanism. With all the FRC-specific COTS items on the market today, why invest time and money into building something that you can only use once, when you can buy a comparable unit and re-use it? Examples include gearboxes, swerve mechanisms, and now even entire drive modules.
In many cases, using a pre-designed or pre-fabricated mechanism would be more of a detriment than a benefit, because it would involve compromising function for convenience.
The current rules made more sense when every team had to make every mechanism because nobody could buy them. That isn't so true any more, and the FRC-COTS market is likely to grow. This might reduce the artificial exercise of lawyering our way around rules that are not and cannot be uniformly enforced in the first place.
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