Quote:
Originally Posted by Don Rotolo
There's a fine line here that needs to be delineated. Coming up with a half dozen design studies for drivetrains, manipulators and subsections of manipulators (such as end effectors, arm joints, swivel bases, etc) is a good thing, and this can be very useful to teams struggling to engineer systems. Too much detail is not a good thing.
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Don, I understand your point of view, but I think there's 2 big issues here that this rule creates.
1) I want to use an Andymark Shifter, and I want to make it from Andy's prints. I'm supposed to take his premade drawings, and sit there with them in my lap, and redraw them in my CAD program of choice? That's totally ridiculous. It's a total waste of everyone's time, and plain old disheartening.
2) I have parts on my robot that stay the same every year. (wheels, frame members, etc). I'm supposed to redraw these components from scratch, just so I can conform with this rule? It's not like you designed a robot prior to the build...you designed the component during a previous build cycle.
It seems to me this punishes teams who 1) prototype in the offseason 2) have continuity between robot designs. It's my understanding that the rule is intended to keep teams from designing an entire robot in the offseason to "level the playing field" for everyone. The only thing I see it doing is causing a major headache for anyone who meets the above criteria. It's mindless and useless busy work.
The above focuses on the robot, and as we all know "it's not about the robots". This has repercussions on how the students are taught about the engineering process. FIRST strives for innovation and creativity. Much of that innovation comes from iterative design, which has to take place year round. Without teams prototyping during the offseason, where would some of FRC's legendary designs be right now? Probably nowhere near their current level.
In the real world engineering isn't a 6 week process. If you rest on your laurels because what you have works "well enough" and you don't make it stronger, lighter, cheaper, or more efficient, progress passes you by and you're left sitting on the curb. The way for us to teach these lessons in FRC is by working during the offseason to make improvements to current designs, try new ones that may be better, etc. This is why the rule seems so absurd to me, as written. It seems to directly contradict the things that FIRST wants to pass on to students, and make it harder and more tedious for teams who are trying to go above and beyond the 6 weeks.
IMO, the message it sends to the students is that the team that prototypes/innovates and trains in the offseason is being punished and has to redo all their work for no tangible reason.