Opinion Poll: Proliferation of Prefbricated Parts

[EricH]

I like it. Of course, that won't really go into why... so here I go.

It brings the bottom up, making our collective product better and more exciting. A rookie team can buy a bunch of parts and get something that works.

But, at the same time, those parts can provide a foundation for "design-your-own". You can, after the season, take them apart and dissect the design. What is better: to buy 4 swerve modules, slap them on a frame, add in programming, and call it a day, or to buy ONE swerve module, take it to pieces and back to learn why it is doing what it's doing, and then design a custom one that better fits the team (or buy the other three later)?


My team likes custom--we do a lot of building. But we don't have a lot of precision equipment in the shop--we're still getting our mill online. Paul and John get quite a few orders from us for gearboxes and similar items--but those go onto custom framing welded together. And we have absolutely no qualms about copying something we've seen someone else, or ourselves, do in the past--though we do tend to do the rework to make it work with whatever we're doing that particular year.