Opinion Poll: Proliferation of Prefbricated Parts

[Sperkowsky]

My team is a low resource team. I'm sure the op knows us as we have competed with his team for many years. Until last year our team was hesitant to buy these cots parts either because we simply couldn't afford them or because we thought they would take away from the experience. But after 3 years of fielding a robot that was only a drive train we decided to give some of these parts a try. They have changed our team allowing us to build working robots and finally not have to go to competitions fail a million times and come in last place. Our first working robot since 2012 was our offseason robot which took 2nd in a local offseason. The only cots speciality parts we used was the kit bot which we modified to use Mecanum wheels, competition robot parts roller kit, Rev gussets, and a banebots p80 gearbox.

We still had to manufacture a ton of parts and did stuff we never did before like tapping and getting stuff water jet cut. In fact the robot was 100% student designed and built.

Right now progress looks great. We have a articulating shooter that is 80% finished, a working drive train with pneumatic wheels. And CAD for a lifter. And we were just beginning week 3...

We are shooting a documentary right now on our teams journey obviously it's not all thanks to cots parts but they have definitely played a role. Op we are going to premier the film sometime next fall at our school. You and your team should definitely come.