VEXPro - After the season

[IndySam]

We were pleasantly surprised by the offerings from Vex Pro. This was a good year for all FIRST teams by their addition.

Ball Shifter - We had several failures mostly self induced. The fitting on the solenoids are just too fragile and I would like to see them (or even the whole solenoid) changed. We also lost our chance at Boilermaker when the C-clip sheared off the end of the sifting shaft costing us two matches.
I'll be perfectly honest, with FIRST allowing so many good powerful motors to choose from, I doubt we will ever shift again unless the game screams for it. Six or even eight motor non-shifting drives may become the norm for us.

Bag Motor - This motor caused us many headaches this year. We started with four on our robot and ended with zero. I really hope the problems with this motor are solved, it's a nice package and has huge potential

VersaPlanetaries - A real game changer. Easy to use, easy to change and modify, by far the most significant new part to come to us in a long time. These little things took every thing we could throw at them. We used six on our bot from 1:1 to 1:300 with various motors. We abused them and they never let us down.

Gears - These low cost high quality gears enabled us to finally have our dream of a robot without chains. Our completely gear driven drive never gave us a second of trouble. The gears on our practice chassis still look almost brand new after many hours of use.