I am out of line and will not have the thread closed. I do find it difficult to sit back and not input more. I will however bow to the wishes of others.
As for the KOP transmissions, ask how many needed replacement at the events. Teams were blowing them during practice rounds.
What I have understood, and may be wrong, is that people would rather that the playing field be more on the level side rather than teams "learn" their way up the ladder. The team I am on in 2003 built their first 3 motor shifting transmission. It took forever to get the parts from PIC and so we did not have much time to complete. With less than a week till ship we had to totally redo and build a gearbox instead. That put us at a big disadvantage for the first regional. I have to admit that it became the year that we won our first regional but we barely made it through. This year we redesigned (thanks Tristan) and again had problems getting parts. After blowing out the aluminum gears and copper gears we finally got our final gears the day before ship. The robot was finally moving at about 3 am of ship day. Not much time for practice.
Now I am not a gearbox or transmission expert but I believe that we could not order parts until we knew the motors and specs. I also know that the gears were very expensive. Now if a transmission is designed and built before season starts, would the builders not have to know what motors and what specs that they were? Would the price not be excessive unless shipped as piece parts and not assembled as one item. Even as a kit that contained all of the parts the single price , I would think, would be high. I ramble on unable to put my thoughts into words so I will stop for now. I apologize for my outbursts but my passion clouds my eyes sometimes (and my brain).
Please, let the discussions continue.
