Quote:
Originally Posted by Phil Ross
did they mention at River Rage the lowered cost of building the field this way? I'm curious about the "delta" cost.
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Estimates we have made for the cost of an "official" field range from $9-14K depending on whether you include 3/8" plexiglas, what year it was, and whether purchased from the official source or build-your-own.
The wooden field built by SCRRF to plans from Mark Koors cost approximately $800 for materials. That was for the 2008 season so it would probably be a little more now.
The Delta Field will probably be somewhere in between those two. I would further guess that the cost will be closer to the low end of that range. Say $1-2K. It would probably be affordable by a top flight team.
A note on field designs. Before 2004 the fields were made of individual pieces held together with KeyKlamps and bolts. These older fields were not up to restraining modern robots.
In 2004 a modularized version was created whch greatly simplified set-up, I would call this version "Alpha". Alpha had no bolts, the parts just slip together and are mostly self-locking.
In 2005 we switched to three teams/alliance so the field had to be re-designed. The result was the "Beta" version we have used since then. It has many improved features over Alpha. They are not the sort of things a team would notice, but they sure make the life of the guy putting the field together easier.
"Gamma" is a wood field, originally designed to be used if for some reason a truck was stranded and FIRST could not get a field to a regional. The wood field can be constructed with lumber from your nearest Home Depot or Lowes, in about a day with 6-8 good carpenters who would of course have the proper tools. SCRRF's field would be the Gamma version. It has held up much better than we originlly planned, though minor repairs are needed after almost every use.
Naturally the next stage in field evolution would be "Delta" a design that is supposedly optimized for minimum cost of construction and maximum availability of hardware. I, for one, am anxious to find out how it worked out this weekend and the details of its construction.