Whats wrong with the FTC KoP

[LLogan]

The octagonal bolting pattern is a lot less intuitive than Vex's bolting pattern. Nothing ever "matched up" like it does in Vex. At least, not for us.

The mating of Lego with Tetrix is absolutely awful. Maybe they've changed things in two years (we discontinued working with Tetrix after its inaugural year and switched to VRC), but I remember there was never a REAL Lego motor mounting bracket onto the Tetrix parts.

The motors burn out very easily. They are not user-serviceable like Vex Motors (usually Vex motor failure is caused by the internal gears only, we can just swap those out without problems and we have a working motor again.) The little clip mounts for the motors snap off very easily. There is no way to put it back on without soldering it, and that's against the rules.

The servo mounting brackets were terrible. I think two or three of our FTC servos are unusable only because the mounting screw on the bracket is stripped and because there is no way to get it off.

Everything is expensive. A single 80 tooth gear is 20 dollars. A Vex gear kit with 2x 84tooth, 4x 60tooth, 4x 36tooth, and 4x 12tooth is 13 dollars. Of course, they are aluminum versus plastic gears... but in such small applications, metal gears are not always warranted or necessary.

Anyways, I could really go on. And on. And on and on. But you get the point.