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Unread 07-06-2006, 11:00
tacman1123 tacman1123 is offline
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Re: Well, I went out and bought a Kit.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr.Bot

3. If you build the robot as shown the wheels will fall off.


4. I can't figure out the antenna holder. The parts I got don't match the diagrams, and don't appear to work as designed.

5. All the screws and nuts come in plastic bags with a number on them, but there is no reference to that number in the documentation. Instead of putting 1, 2, 3 doesn't it make more sense to put 8-3/8" 6-3/4" on the bags?
Although you posted this a year ago, I echo these concerns, and found the exact same situation. The bag labelling is particularly dumb, it would be trivial to either label the bags with the sizes or at a minimum provide some sort of description in the documentation.

The wheels falling off is stupid, too -- they need one more instruction to add collars.

My biggest complaint, having spent several hours with the hardware now, is that unlike the Mindstorm kit, which you can try new things very quickly, it's really somewhat slow to just "try this" or "try that". You point out the gear size problem. Suppose you wanted to try a different ratio, see how it affected speed and accelleration (and move it higher from the floor)? You practically have to disassemble the entire squarebot to change one gear!

If the vision of FIRST is realized, that kids start out in elementary schools using Mindstorm then "move up" to Vex, I think the kids are going to be somewhat suprised how how many more limitations there are in Vex. No worm gear, very few angle brackets to allow you to attach parts and motors in ways that feel intuitive but are difficult to do.

We'll see what VexLabs comes up with now that Vex under US FIRST rather than Radio Shack, but I hope they put some resources into general improvements to give the Vex some real flexibility. I'm a big believer that high school students should be using the Vex a lot more before diving into the FRC.

Tac
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