[jman4747]

Originally Posted by techhelpbb

I think someone would have to demonstrate to FIRST headquarters that: your stepper motor control was cost effective, open-source and meets the safety requirements to get started down this path.

As noted previously then they might need to donate a bunch to FIRST to evaluate.

Good news is thanks to RepRap printers there is a big DIY community for NEMA17/23 steppers and the parts needed to control them. Thing is the end product will probably have to be FIRST specific or have FIRST specific options.

So yes someone could drive this change: but there's some costs and some lobbying involved that will probably take this into late next year at the very earliest - if they even agree to consider it.

Also I've picked that NEMA size stepper for a better reason than merely the availability of cheap control parts.
You want steppers that will work within reason at the battery voltages of the robot.
CNC controls for steppers often use more than 24V even more than 48V for the stepper power supplies.
So realistically we should consider the practical limitations: FIRST is not likely to start letting you add whole batteries.

That assumes we use the same rule that only specific controllers are allowed. A 12v to 24v step up converter isn't necessarily all that hard to find. I Don't however know about the required current capacity for a typical size stepper you could likely see on an FRC robot.