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Originally Posted by camtunkpa
What if Outback just makes the assembly and leaves it up to teams to get their own belts. The belts from Brecoflex still have a 2-3 week lead time. With that said it's a shame to see Outback, who's trying to give teams an excellent choice for drivetrain, being severely scrutinized. Let's show this company some GP for what they are trying to bring to the table rather then possibly scaring them away from offering any products for FRC teams.
I apologize for the length of this post, but I wanted to do my post justice. Good Luck to everyone in the upcoming season!
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Thanks for your thoughts. I want to emphasize that the modified transmissions will be available singly, but that the belt standardization is an effort to maximize the quality of the integrated system while reducing the lead time and easing the process for teams and for Breco-Flex.
Traditionally, they've had to do from 3 to 7 track runs for FIRST teams, and the ordering has been a madhouse. Last year, 753 could only get belts which were a bit longer than we wanted and had to modify our design, and the belts didn't arrive until an entire month into the season. Other teams ended up tearing belts from loose mounting or building elaborate and breakage-prone tensioners.
This time, we should be able to deliver a single, standardized size, so teams can get replacement belts if one breaks and so the system can work and work well without tensioners.
Outback has no problem producing components at top speed; they have machines that can spit out flawless bogey wheels like gumdrops, completely automatically. That's what they do. But integrating third-party components like the tracks, which are completely legal for other applications in FIRST, causes delay.
Ari.