What was there before AndyMark?

[jwfoss]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

There's no essentially. Justin Foss often brags that 558's robots (which won 2 districts this year) are made almost exclusively from COTS parts. There's a reason any time I need to find something on McMaster that's who I ask first.

I wouldn't jump straight to brag, but we are proud of what we are able to accomplish within our resources. FRC558 works from a decent sized build area with only a hand tools, drill press, band saw, belt sander, and drum sander. Building within a teams real resources is one of the hardest things for a team to learn to do. We operate under a couple of mottos on the design side of the team:

"Steal from the best, design the rest" (draw inspiration from what you've seen work and integrate with your design)
"Why build what you can buy?" (within reason)

There is plenty of innovation to be had with COTS parts. Part integration and using products for things they were not originally intended are found on machines every year, if you just take the time to look and talk to teams about it.