Quote:
Originally Posted by bbradf44
I have heard about teams who use the off season to perfect things like swerve drive and other mechanisms. I'm trying to get my mentors to approve off season prototyping but they keep quoting the rule that says whatever you build in the off season cant be used on the competition bot. How do teams work on things like swerve without being in violation of that rule? Surly you cant build a whole new swerve drive in the 6 weeks?
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Our team has a current rev of our swerve drive project (it still needs some more revs before we produce it). If our team wanted to make a swerve drive during the 2014 build season we would completely start from scratch using what we learned from our fall project to help us design it. We aren't taking files, we are taking knowledge from a previous system, finding how we can improve/refine it, and making a new one.
The reason this helps is because 6 weeks isn't enough time to design, test, and refine our
first swerve drive. Its something we need to practice like programming, machining, and electrical training in the fall. Making complicated projects in the fall gives you the opportunity to really learn and dive into a projects giving different stages more time and thought you wouldn't have time for during the build season making it a better learning experience.
Your mentors are correct though, whatever you design/make before kickoff can't be used on your competition robot but you will have learned so much about making a swerve drive that making another will be very, very easy.
This rule is in place so teams don't spend 8 months of the previous year building a ton of simple and complex parts they could potentially use on their next robot or once the season starts they send out CAD files of parts they have been working on in the off-season.
New season, start over.