Quote:
Originally posted by ChrisH
there was a halfway reasonable chance of actually getting something worked on at an "official" event machine shop.
Our first year I personally waited for several hours at Nationals for a fifteen minute job to be done. It seems the team that got there ahead of me needed their entire frame rewelded. We missed a practice session as a result. Fortunately that was all we missed. This was at the best shop I ever saw at a competition.
I don't know about other venues but here in LA you can expect to NOT have ANY machine shop availability UNLESS there are some drastic changes from last year. Fortunately we didn't need shop services, but there are some pretty ugly stories from those who did.
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This is exactly the reason why I suggest FIRST modify the rules... I do not believe all the teams will be able to do the necessary repair or manufacture the replacement parts on site at competition. It is one thing to have to share the shop between 10 teams... It is totally different if we are sharing the shop with 40 other teams.
No, I don't believe teams will be going around trying to damage robots... But Yes, I do believe accidents will happen due to the nature of this year's game. Especially rookies and second year team.
As I said: It is unfortunate that teams will be penalized just because they didn't know better about building a really strong robot for competition, and have no chance to learn about that at the actual competition and fix it...
Also, Learning to repair your robot, and improve it after watching the competition and other robots, is a really valuable learning experience. A lot of teams have benefit from that by going to competition, experience the matches, talk to other teams, and learn whatever they can from all the people around. I don't see that happening if teams are waiting 4 hours a day to get in the machine shop, and the rest of the team sitting in the pit waiting with a damaged robot.
My main reason for asking a modification is this. With this year's rule and on-site machine shop capabilities, FIRST seems to be saying to teams: "So your robot is broken. If the machine shop can't fix it, well, too bad. Your robot will have to remain broken all the way to the end." I think teams deserve a bigger chance than this, especially rookie and second year teams.
I hope FIRST will be able to change a little bit of the rule... Even if it's only allowing teams to go back to their headquarters during the three day of regionals to make spare parts. At least that will shorten the waiting line at on-site machine shop for teams who can't get back to their headquarter.