Opinion Poll: Proliferation of Prefbricated Parts

[Dalas]

Originally Posted by MrJohnston

Moreover, I would suggest that teams who worked hard for six weeks and build a solid robot would be very "uninspired" if beaten by a team that bought the kit and qualified for Champs.

I absolutely agree with this. As student design lead on a very low-resource team (we were reduced to cutting parts for our custom chassis with hacksaws after our only bandsaw broke earlier this build season) I find it very frustrating when we spend time coming up with the perfect design or cutting the perfect parts, only to find that a team with less engineering experience but more money can buy a kit and defeat us easily. I feel it goes against the spirit of FIRST for a team to be more competitive by not building the best robot they can, but buying one instead. Yes, this is the way many things work in the real world, but is it really what FIRST wants to encourage?

Obviously I cannot speak badly about all prefabricated parts and designs. The KOP chassis, prefab gearboxes, and easily available mechanum/omni wheels have always been a huge help to our low-resource team and we could not have built a robot without them. Ri3D teams, as well, are always an inspiration for both concept and specific designs. The difference, in my opinion, is that the KOP and Ri3D give you a basic level of functionality while encouraging teams to continue work to improve. The KOP chassis is, on its own, obviously not a viable design. Ri3D teams give great inspiration, but it is up to your team to fabricate the robot theirself. The MCC, on the other hand, is a functional, competitive robot that requires little-to-no engineering knowledge or design skills to create. The MCC does not even require you to read the robot rules. As a team member, I find it very demoralizing that we could perform better in competition by buying a kit and sleeping in than if we got up early to build our own.