FIRST Choice 2015 Window Open

[scca229]

Originally Posted by snoman

a crimping tool that cost more than $200can anybody tell me why that's a good deal

That is a very high quality (think industry quality...mine has put on several thousand connectors from 1ga to 6ga in telecom sites over the years) ratcheting crimping tool that is the correct one for use on the 6ga Panduit power lugs that have come in the KoP in recent years. This tool makes very quick work with these lugs onto the 6ga power wire with a connection that will not come apart. Many teams do not use the provided lugs because they could never crimp them correctly, causing failures, and blaming the lug when it was the tool used. I believe that having the correct crimper available is great and an even bigger bonus that it is a real one and not a cheap one.

[Monochron]

Does anyone have experience with the CUI encoders in FIRST Choice that they are willing to share?

I notice that they are much cheaper than the Grayhills that are usually recommended and wondered about the CUI's quality/durability/precision/ease of assemby/maintainabiltiy/etc. Our team was planning on buying a couple of Grayhills this week before build season, but if these can do the trick then I would much rather spend credits than money

[Michael Hill]

I just found an archived copy of the 2014 FIRST Choice and was a little disappointed to find that nearly everything was either the same "price" or "cheaper" last year. I've added 2014 credit prices to the spreadsheet I made available earlier. Some things are a rather drastic increase. For example, the Classmate went from 100 credits to 200, lead screw from 5 to 20, slewing ring from 5 to 100. The only thing, I believe, that is "cheaper" is the 4-slot cRio, dropping from 100 to 40.

[Tom Line]

Originally Posted by Michael Hill

I just found an archived copy of the 2014 FIRST Choice and was a little disappointed to find that nearly everything was either the same "price" or "cheaper" last year. I've added 2014 credit prices to the spreadsheet I made available earlier. Some things are a rather drastic increase. For example, the Classmate went from 100 credits to 200, lead screw from 5 to 20, slewing ring from 5 to 100. The only thing, I believe, that is "cheaper" is the 4-slot cRio, dropping from 100 to 40.

Yes, but the objective wasn't to make things fewer points - it was to normalize them so that their rough value was equatable to their point value. The last couple years, you could have loaded up on fluke multimeters and sold them for a big profit - much like the video card this year.

The values seem fairly accurate except for a couple exceptions this year, and there's a lot of worthwhile stuff in there. We can always use more pneumatic tube, hoses, batteries, spikes, etc.