Is Bag and Tag Necessary?

[DELurker]

[CYNIC] As has been said, life isn't fair, so why should the competition be? [/CYNIC]

Having said that, let me relate a short story. I once worked for a machine design firm. We delivered a $300,000 machine to a customer on the deadline. We then spent 4 months integrating the machine into their environment.

Is this any different from the Bag-And-Tag versus after situation? Not significantly.

This is the first year 1370 has made a practice robot. It has taken us three years of work to gather up the spare electronics and wheels to do it, but we think it will be worth it. We used a donation of materials and another of services to get two "identical" frames cut and welded so that we could make both bots work. Unfortunately, we didn't get enough weldments made, but the 30 lb witholding is our friend.

The short form is it's not really a cost issue, it's a resources and partnerships issue. We have a metals distributor that sells materials to us at really low prices. We have a mentor who used to teach welding at our school before anything similar to a vocational program got taken away. The total incremental cost for making twice as many frame pieces as strictly needed was a few additional hours of a mentor's time and a longer teaching opportunity for the students. If you have a local welding shop who could donate an employee for a few hours as a mentor, all of this could be yours, too.