http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...3&page=3&pp=15
theirs a poll and a lot of discusion on the matter..
team 1596 built our robot .. but it looked a little like a rookie bot (half way thru ish) .. so we took off the first legal parts.. and built a second robot (competition).. and once we knew we had enuf time we also worked on our first robot and fisnihed off the small things..(doing both at once, so all our members were very busy

) and we finished the practice bot under 1week after ship date.... this way our build team had a lot of practice and it turned out a lot better..and not to mention the practice driving and troubleshooting.. we realized that a corner on our boom gets tetras stuck.. so at competition we filled off the edge.. (i should post a picture of our practice bot.. ahaha).. .
to get the parts you say? ..hmmm.. .
www.ifirobotics.com haha.. we spent over a grand there .. . EEK! .. . yea.. and we also had to buy a whole second set of the robot chasis kit.. yea... our team put in hundreds of hours each.. and our mentors / teachers / engineers.. double that .. hahah.. we had some great help, one of our mentors is the machine shop teacher at Soo high in sault michigan, so he was able to quickly show a lot of students how to machine parts etc.. . and our computers in Sault ontario were a lot more effective for our award winning site, and our ... . .. animation .. . hah.a.. yea.. (we are the international team)
.. the only hard parts to find.. . the taigine, and the nippon denso .. ERR!! . we managed to find a half equivalent motor at a junkyard.. . but our boom telescopes slower on our practice bot.. and it can only hold 1 tetra. . instead of 3 . .. not enuf power
for money.. hmm.. .we have AMAZING sponsership by a lot of companies.. we have a WHOLE parent comitee constantly working on that . . . and they are very busy atm, atlanta is only 12 days away.. and we only have 20/25k... woot they just got 5k this week .. . gota work fast!.. we have convergence giving us 10k for 3 years.. so for the next two.. at least we start with some money.. but from what im hearing that its gona get harder each year.. hmm. .. i dont know.. i think we have a little more umph to get sponsering, due to our internationalism.. and to top that off we have had media converage like mad lately! at first it was very difficult.. but once we placed well at GLR.. its been all the time!
also having a second practice bot to do demos to the public *we held a funraiser at the local mall asking for donations, letting kids drive ! <even a couple 6 yos

<kill switch in hand believe me . .

... helps a lot ! we got 2 media stations to come, and lots of Pr, and 1.5k donations. .so it works ..
ok.. sorry taht turned into a REALLY long meessage
