But the idea of making everyone account for their fair market costs IS a way or leveling the field.
Heck, you still have the ACTUAL savings...and god knows you can make 50 revisions of each part because the time and labor is FREE.....so they still have a fantastic advantage.
The problem is that I think FIRST caved in to the Sponsors by allowing their labor to be free. I think FIRST is smart, knowing that without the big sponsors, FIRST would be nothing. (that's why I hate politics....it sometimes gets in the way of what is right)
-Quentin
Quote:
Originally posted by JamesJones
I'm guess I'm not making my point.
1. I'm still going to build the same robot, you just better get a good magazine when we go on stage because our name is going to contain our sponsor + five machine shops....hence free labor.
2. It is unfortunate that some teams don't have alot of machine shop resources....believe me I have been there. It is also unfortunate that some football teams don't have good quarterbacks. I think we should make the good quarterbacks sit out to give the lousy ones a chance.
3. Let me give an example. I worked at Motorola for two years and was on their team (267). Motorola had a model shop that did half or more of the machining on the robot. We built some pretty nice robots that would would have been very expensive had we paid fair market value. None of that labor would have counted toward the $3500 limit because motorola was the main sponsor, motorola did the machining so I could have spent $100000 on labor and it wouldn't matter. Now I'm on a team whose sponsor gives money but not machining. Now I can only bring a $3500 robot while Motorola (if they still exist) can bring a $100,000 robot. That's FIRST fairness?
4. Labor should not be tracked at all period. It's a hassle to the mentors and volunteers that adds no value to the experience or goals of FIRST. It does not make the game more fair it makes it more unfair. The teams with no machining resources have no machining resources. The game will always be stacked against them. It's part of building their team to go out and get those resources. Now FIRST has taken teams that might have parity in manufacturing capability and hamstrung the teams whose main sponsor doesn't have a machine shop.
James
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