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Posted by Fran .

Other on team #166, Team Merrimack, from Merrimack High School and Unitrode/R.S. Machines.

Posted on 7/23/99 8:44 PM MST


In Reply to: Re: How long should production time be??? posted by Jon on 7/23/99 12:25 PM MST:



Excellent idea..it's the first one that will keep the teams from just working til the longer deadline makes them ship the robot.
Admittedly this will be a most interesting site to visit.....especially if no one knows the shape of the objects either.
It certainly would give an opportunity to get part of the work out of the way though sometimes it does provide busy
work for those who watch but don't want to work on the robot...there are always some.

Fran


: I think that six weeks is fine as long as it's managed properly...
: If there was more time, i know that it'd just be used to create more stress and possibly waste more money. For those coaches and engineers who have families, it would just pull even more time away from their families so they could supervise properly. (Their efforts and sacrifices are greatly appreciated!)
: Sure for college students/engineers it's not too big of a deal, we're juggling course loads, FIRST, and jobs... but for the most part we're not attached to families just yet and we just suck our friends into the FIRST project anyways, so it's all good.
: Extra time could be useful... get more design time in, fix things just a little before you have to put the bot in the crates... you know, the little things.

: Time on the back end probably wouldn't be a good thing... Time on the front end, on the other hand, has some potential IMHO (in my humble opinion). Here's a WhatIf: What if we got the rules (or a summary) say a week before Kickoff (and the all important kit distribution. That would have to be used as brainstorming/design time because you couldn't build junk... well, you probably could build something... say the playing field or whatever the important doohickey is so that you're not spending manpower on that when it's crunch time...

: OK, I'VE GOT IT!!

: Release the drawings of the playing field a week or two before Kickoff, but nothing else. This place would go crazy as people try to figure out what it means and what the point is, but more importantly, teams could build it before the kits and full rules came back from NH. This would help smaller teams more than big teams because they wouldn't put manpower on the playing field that they could be using on the robot... but the mere existance of the playing field without an explanation would get people thinking about what it could be for. Just random thoughts uninhibited by the Big Book of Rules and Regulations... weird stuff could come of this...