[Jared]

I agree with others who say that the top CIM isn't mounted well enough. Your gearbox might survive, but adding that extra support for 0.05 lbs gives you a lot more gearbox strength. The heavy CIM motor hanging off the end of the plate will cause the plate to deform, especially when your robot accelerates/decelerates really quickly during a collision.

If you look at many teams' gearbox plates, you'll notice that the plate outlines tend to be completely convex, rather than having little things sticking out. The outline is entirely made up of straight segments, and segments of circles that have their centers inside of the outline of the plate. This also adds a ton of strength, and requires the same size stock to machine from.

The top one is mounted in a weaker configuration because of the orientation of the mounting screws.