[dtengineering]

The $100 was just for "consumables" for the vehicle. Wheels, wood, sprockets, chains, slides, steel, aluminum... they had to fit all that into the $100. They provided the labour... the shop time was part of their studies. They had every Wednesday for four months (plus a bit extra) and had to follow a documented design process. They had access to some pretty nice shops, and had spent most of the previous year and a half learning how to use the shop tools efficiently.

They were given the basics of an FRC drive train... two batteries, main breaker, 40A breakers, four victors, four cims, two AM toughboxes (14:1, choice of short or long shaft), and an Arduino to control it all. They etched and soldered their own breakout shield for the Arduino to connect the PWM cables, designed their own joysticks/controllers and wrote their own code.

We did something similar a couple years ago with just two CIMs and one battery, and we made the teams build their own gearboxes. Last year we used 5HP engines and raced on a go kart track. Next year... well... we've got some ideas for next year!

Jason