Quote:
Originally Posted by sdcantrell56
I do agree that IF a team has the machining resources, and the people to design a better drivetrain, then sure a custom drivetrain will be lighter and stronger than a kit frame, and potentially easy to work on, but that is a big IF that a lot of teams in FIRST should not be attempting. Many teams should just build the kit frame and devote there resources to a great manipulator
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What kind of machining resources do you think are actually needed for a good custom chassis? I'm under the impression that any team can build a very competitive robot with just a hacksaw and a drill, the main problem they face is lack of experience or confidence in doing such things.
The experience problem is one that we can try to remedy by building up a bank of knowledge for teams to use. Open source designs would help tremendously with this. As an example, I got to be on the drivetrain design team during our rookie year. Having never built anything like this before, we were all lost as to how everything should go together. We spent at least a week designing an overly complex wheel attachment method before we discovered the simple way (see pic). If we had been able to browse past designs from other teams before hand, we would have had good knowledge about how such things work and wouldn't have wasted a week on our crazy contraption.
I also mentioned an issue with a team's confidence in itself, which I think is a huge problem for rookie teams. (It probably doesn't help that they always read comments like "...well, you're a rookie team, so I would suggest sticking to the basics"). The assumption that rookie teams aren't as capable led to what I think was our teams worst strategic decision: In our rookie year (2006) we decided that shooting into the high goal was something that only the hardcore veteran teams could accomplish. We immediately shot it down and decided to be a low-goal scorer. Looking back I realize that it was a massive missed opportunity, and we could have pulled off a decent high goal shooter.
I guess the whole point I'm trying to get across is: many teams are only held back because of a lack of experience or knowledge in FIRST robots. Posting past designs and open-source designs would be a huge benefit for them.