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Originally Posted by nikkibajbaj
If you really consider it, buying stock parts or having other people machine your parts are simply a matter of economics. The teams simply made a decision that to pay for the cost of professional, precision machining would be worth the time and design effort they would save. Is it unfair? Not at all. If they have machining time donated, that should appear on their BOM.
There are many types of mechanical design--selection design, when you look for pre-made or pre-fabricated parts to accomplish things so you won't have to design your own--is an incredibly important one. To deny that it exists is entirely unrealistic, and a team that buys a pre-made assembly and adapts it to their robot has succeeded in design. In certain circumstances, it may even be a wiser decision in terms of effort. If we had bought pre-made gearboxes last year it would have saved us three weeks of design and hundreds of man-hours and dozens of headaches, and had that manpower been focused instead on our arm and manipulator systems, we could have done better.
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I agree that it is very beneficial to the competition to utilize the skill of professionals to machine parts for the robot. But all the headaches was hopefully well worth it because the students gained valuable first hand experience in the manufacture of such parts. Now they have encountered the inherent problems with each design and when the time comes for them to join the engineering community they will have the benefit of experience rather than going at it cold in the professional world.
If a professional comes to where ever your team works or you take a sort of field trip to the professional to be taught then you are getting the "Ohh..." factor as you so well put.
On the other hand if the design is made by the students with mentors then their design is sent to be created that is good too as long as the students see what makes a working part.
As i said before a desirable relationship must be found where the students and mentors have a chance to voice there opinions on design and on fabrication. So the students learn why their ideas may or may not work.
O ya, The tin can syndrome is a nickname the teacher gave the actors voices during Mic. check one day when they sounded very metallic. (sounded Mic.ed)
we have since adopted it for regular use whenever the voices sound like that. It's kinda a running joke, like when the actor is saying his lines and we modify the lines to make the daunting task of balancing the EQ more light hearted. Like say the line was a preacher during his sermon "And the lord said why..." we would change the line to "And the lord said why... do i sound like i am in a tin can!"
You might need to be there... it was the best example i can think of a the moment, but there are better ones.