Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew Lawrence
I include veteran teams because of the time saved. You can assemble it in a few hours and never have to worry about your drivetrain again for the rest of the season. Even pro teams here in California spend a few days at minimum on their drivetrain for manufacturing, and that doesn't include maintenance throughout the season. I'd say a veteran team could definitely use the time gained to their advantage.
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The main disadvantage of using a COTS drivetrain as I see it for a vetran team is tying up so much of their BOM budget before they even get to the parts that score points. Given a pro team with machining resources, I still see a custom drive train being the way to go because of the oportunities it creates for spending money elsewhere, where the real design time savings are. It will save designers more time if they have the BOM room to use more versa planataries at $65 a pop instead of having to design custom gearboxes everywhere. The design time in a WCD is trivial for those who have done it before and the assembly time is going to be the same because they all have the same basic components to assemble.
-Travis