[archiver]

Posted by PAUL GIANNOSA at 03/09/2001 11:09 PM EST


Engineer on team #27, TEAM RUSH, from OSMTECH and TEXTRON AUTOMOTIVE CO..


In Reply to: Time for new rules!
Posted by James Jones on 03/09/2001 11:57 AM EST:



: I really thought FIRST was headed in the right direction last year by opening up the material list. I was extremely dissapointed to see that they reversed direction this year. This is my fourth year designing robots on a FIRST team. I've done it on 2 different teams and in most years I lead the design effort. Quite frankly, I'm sick and tired of these rules. They don't make things more fair. They hurt poor teams, they hurt rich teams, they make everybody's robot less robust and less reliable. FIRST robots have outgrown SPI. Each year the task gets more complex yet the parts to choose from stays the same. I could rant about this for pages, let's see if I can lay out my objections succinctly.

: 1. Material limits make the design cycle longer resulting in shorter practice and debug time. This hurts everybody. What is inspiring about engineering is when you build something that works. Robots that don't work no matter how much work you put into them are frustrating, not inspiring. I can honestly say that the first 2 years I did this many of our robot problems were caused by the pathetic choices of materials we had to make them out of. The design cycle is also lengthenned because industry standard parts and solutions are not available to you. You may have a concept to accomplish some task that you could design in one evening, instead you spend one whole evening just trying to figure out how you can make it with legal material then another evening to design it. That is one less day you have to test that mechanism, then the parts you ordered to make it are back ordered from SPI for a week! This hurts everybody.

: 2. The rules discourage new participation. People's time is valuable, if you want people to give up their precious time to participate in this, you can't have them wasting time to make a part out of some stupid but legal stock size or spending hours upon hours first trying to figure out the rules (which interpretation may change with the next update) then figure out what materials are available and then design the mechanism.

: 3. The rules waste teams' money. They can't use material they have from last year, they can't buy material from the cheapest vendor, they can't even get non additional hardware stuff donated. They can't buy non SPI gears or sprockets they have to pay somebody to make them. They can't even buy gear or timing pulley stock to throw on a lathe, they have to WIRE EDM it! Tell me how that is fair or cheap.

: 4. The rules create tension within the teams. I can't tell you how much time and energy I have expended every year trying make sure we are legal. Quite frankly I'm convinced there is not a single robot that is 100.000% legal. Somebody used some stock they had laying around, somebody used some parts from last year, somebody made some parts outside the window. I've designed parts, bought SPI stock, took it to the machinist with the print and said make it out of this. I come back later and there are my parts and there is my SPI stock still in the wrapper. It was easier to make the parts out of another stock size and since the machinist is donating his time or is tying up a company machine he chose to make it the fastest way possible. What an I supposed to do? Tell him to stay late again tonite and remake it?

: 5. The rules don't make things fairer. Everybody can get gears within a week from Rush Gears. Everybody can get stuff next day from McMaster. Everybody can get stuff from SPI, Berg, Stock Drive, Grainger, Alro etc. etc. It's stupid to think that rookie teams can't figure what where to get parts and material fast. Anybody can and sometime much cheaper and faster than SPI.

: 6. Openning up the rules won't significantly change the robots. If you told me I could have any gears, Titanium, Carbon Fiber composites or any other expensive, high tech part or material, I would probably still use the gear transmissions, aluminum and lexan.

: 7. The rules waste FIRST resources. How much time does Eric and others spend writting, interpreting and explaining the rules every year? Maybe if they were simpler it would free them up for other things (like getting the field print right the first time, well maybe second, shoot even third would be better than this year).

: Sorry if I sound a little bitter. I'm just tired of having to decide between designing something that fits the rules and seeing my kids for a few minutes before they go to sleep for the first two months of every year. Why don't we ask if poor teams feel protected by the rules? I know I never have.

As a 2nd year FIRST'r with no life from JAN to MAR, i can say life with the limited mtl's list is challenging yes, but part of the fun. It would be nice to goto a supplier and use off the shelf stuff, like giant erector sets. Sure would take the load off of me as the team machinst/welder/jack of all trades guy but then whrer is the fun in that? I like to pull my hair out at nite trying to deall with the wonderful restrictions laid before me. This is fun! Sure i can design a robust system with supplies not on the list, but then i wouldn't have the fun repairing a jimmyrigged setup that i crammed together in hopes it stays together for a season of "field testing" in between rounds of competition. I really crave that stresss!! Builds character. puts hair on your chest. Makes you stay up nites trying to design a complex system to do an impossible task in way to little time to come up with something that acctually makes a multi million dollar inventor impressed! Kinda makes you feel like a robo bad dude when you accomplish the goals you set out to achieve on Jan 8. PMGRACER