Quote:
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"One of the purposes of the FRC is to provide Team members with the experience of conceiving, designing, and constructing their solution to the annual competition challenge. We want each student to have the experience of creating a new system each year... Solutions that merely bolt together a minimum number of externally-designed COTS subsystems may not offer the students the opportunity to understand the “why” or “how” of an item’s design. Likewise, solutions that are merely minor modifications of a design utilized for a previous competition does not offer the current students complete insight into the full design process"
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Re-reading the FRC manual from last year, what do y'all think of this approach:
- Maintain good design documentation; drawings,, specs, fabrication details...
- Review previous design vs. current game requirements: gear ratio, speed vs. power, agility, etc...
- Keep previous year's design elements if no advantage in changing system
I'm sure each team will add improvements if basic design is retained. I don't see any difference in using AM Mecanums & ToughBoxes from previous year's design. There's plenty of opportunity for the students to experience the engineering process with the other game functions. After years of building clean-rooms, I avoid "reinventing the wheel" whenever possible.
I guess the key is:
Quote:
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"Purchasing optimization and design re-use are both important concepts; however, Teams must be cautious not to over-utilize them to the point that the student’s experience is compromised."
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