Quote:
Originally Posted by CraigHickman
The goal of the Kit Bot is to get teams with little to no experience rolling (almost) out of the box. Many teams love this frame, and modify it to meet their needs. Others disregard it entirely. I fall into the second camp, and here's why.
With a competition as high impact as FIRST, I don't feel comfortable using a material that I wouldn't trust my own weight on. In addition to this, I have unintentionally put one of my custom fabricated chassis' corners entirely through the side panel of a properly assembled kit frame. I simply don't trust the kit frame without modifications. Modifications are something that I love for not specialized applications. Mod your toaster? Props to you. FIRST is a highly specialized competition, that requires complete control over as many variables as possible in order to succeed in competition. I would personally rather have control over every single detail of my frame.
What would make me very happy would be FIRST giving teams the option after seeing the game to either order a kit frame, or have box extrusion shipped in for the teams that don't want the kit frame.
As far as an open source chassis, go for it. I did some design work on one in the past, it's in Inventor 11 (I believe). Assuming I can find the CAD, would you like it?
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Craig, I have to disagree on the durability of the kit frame. Having used the kit frame this year I can say that the machine took quite a pounding. It survived plowing at full speed into both the center divider's support pole and the back wall as well as 2 regionals, Championships, Kettering, and WMRI. That frame worked wonderfully out of the box for us.
That being said, the frame has limitations for some teams and I feel that having not one but multiple open source chassis available would be an interesting way of helping out teams.