[gblake]

Originally Posted by gdo

Just to make this clear, nothing had been decided on that offically, we did voice our opinion on that while we were there. Things might change because we knew how much people wanted to still be able to use the Vex gears. I didn't want to lose the parts that we had waited for years to get, only to go back to the first kit, basic gears, metal, and parts. We will see where this goes, at game release we will find out what has changed from now.

GDO - it sounds like you were saying/recommending the right things.

Other folks - Communicate with the FTC honcho at FIRST HQ and with your APs - Give them your suggestions. Posting suggestions in a CD forum is interesting but it is not the same thing as directly communicating with the people who want to hear (directly) from you.

About reusing the Vex Gears. I agree that their current diversity is a good thing. However, off the top of my head, I'm not visualizing any simple way to connect them to the shafts and other mounting points of the new FTC kits.

Absent posessing a magical interface adapter; now that the drop-Vex die has been cast, I'm thinking that FTC would be better off just designing and creating a similarly diverse set of parts from scratch (no matter how much money teams have put into buying the Vex gears). An adapter is likely to be very dissatisfying.

So, I don't recommend betting on being able to integrate Vex gears or many other Vex parts into the new FTC kits.

Blake
PS: On the surface, spec'ing and producing crown/bevel gears, worm gears/wheels, etc. sounds pretty darn easy. By now, doesn't the world have a few centuries of experience at doing that??? As a naive customer I'm a little perplexed by the time it took IFI/Vex to offer them, and by FIRST not even announcing plans to supply them at some specific future date. Maybe someone can fill us in on what would stand in the way, other than business red tape and one-time start-up delays.