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Re: New Ideas for next year's competition
Give a young or small team a game that requires an amazing drive train, and you will get boxes on wheels.
Give a young or small team a usable, simple drivetrain, and you will get some impressive "others".
In the past, we have blown our whole build trying to get a drive system working. As a result, we just tack on some junk for our "other" devices. This year we used the drive that came with the robot. And WOW!!! did that get the students excitied. All of a sudden they could work on REAL robot parts instead of a fancy RC car. You don't need the fancy machining to make an arm, the way you need it to make a fancy 6 motor 9 speed automatic crab surfing drive train.
That drive system was the single best item that has ever come in the kit of parts for my team. We got so many more people involved. I'd say it at least DOUBBLED our ablity to spread the word of FIRST on our team.
I say go with simple drive, and the teams that CAN do a fancy drive will.
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Brian Graham
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