Super Shifters out of stock

[Tom Line]

Originally Posted by JesseK

IMO, IFI's ball shifters are unproven. Slight manufacturing defects that cause debilitating failures on parts made in China have MUCH longer lead times* for fixes than parts made in the USA. Slight manufacturing defects WILL occur (they occur in every mass-produced product manufactured anywhere, to some extent), so it's a matter of simplicity in design & choice of manufacturing supply chain. This is the high-risk high-reward issue with IFI's ball shifter, IMO.

More factually, the IFI ball shifters will not ship until just prior to kickoff, just like an out-of-stock super shifter.

Or perhaps the OP doesn't know about IFI's offerings.

Yet given that SuperShifters are part of AndyMark's flagship offerings, I doubt they'll be out of stock for long. It's more likely that one piece of the supershifter is out of stock, and it's somewhat easy to get the smaller pieces

*admittedly, a generalization

You bring a very salient point to light. We're among those who will simply not put it on the robot until it's proven. So we've got one on order to test. The real question then becomes - if we test it for a couple of days and then try to order one, can we get another?

The quality, lead time, and quantity-in-stock for VexPRO is still a very large unknown. If you team has ever had to deal with this sort of thing (banebots and the high-power fisher price motors being the most recent that come to mind) you'll be very gun-shy when making design decisions.

Edit: I don't expect any problems with VexPRO. However, no engineer would bet on an untested component without due diligence.