Is powder coating and annodizing worthwhile?

[JVN]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

Our scouts will track teams via data watching the matches, but myself, the pit crew, and some of the scouts will also make note of our perception of team's build quality, battery setup, tool setup, pit organization, etc. as we walk around the pits.

Strangely enough... we've found bumper quality to be an almost 1:1 indicator of robot quality. This year it seemed like whenever we scouted a robot we didn't know much about we could guess how they'd perform during the pre-match just based on how well their bumpers were put together.

Professional tight bumpers = the robot will probably perform well this match.
Shoddy loose bumpers = the robot probably won'r even link up.

I wish I had kept stats on this, but it was a surprisingly accurate indicator (with a few notable exceptions in both directions).

-John