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Unread 19-01-2014, 22:03
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Greg Needel Greg Needel is offline
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FRC #2848 (All-sparks)
Team Role: Engineer
 
Join Date: Jan 2002
Rookie Year: 2002
Location: Dallas, TX
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Re: VEXPro Out of Stock

Quote:
Originally Posted by BrendanB View Post
A lot of the products in the line up have been catering towards teams who just don't have the resources to machine similar parts. Wouldn't be surprised if some teams who used to make their own parts in the past haven't been looking at Vexpro saying "Why are we making these, let's buy them!"
It is actually a standard engineering practice to do a Make vs Buy analysis, based on resources (both hard and soft) to make this decision.

7-8 years ago when commercial parts were much less common my teams would design custom transmissions every year. Now that there are so many ratios and configurations available from numerous suppliers it does not make sense to design our own unless we need something very custom.

In fact a few years ago when I looked at prices of gear stock, bearings, and materials it was basically a wash on cost. The only difference is ordering them I could have them in 2 days vs 1 week making them ourselves.

That being said I am in full support of teams building their own parts if they have the resources (time, money and machines) as it is an absolutely essential skill for every engineer to get some hands on experience; you can't design parts if you don't understand the manufacturing process on how they will be made. Each team needs to make the call based on your individual resources and there is no one absolute answer.
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Greg Needel│www.robogreg.com
Co-founder REV Robotics LLC www.REVrobotics.com
2014 FRC World Champions with 254, 469, & 74
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