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 From what I've been told, it's BASIC. Just BASIC. Basic BASIC. Basically BASIC. To be basic, it's BASIC. - Aignam [more] |
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| From what I've been told, it's BASIC. Just BASIC. Basic BASIC. Basically BASIC. To be basic, it's BASIC. - Aignam [more] |
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#1
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Re: Opinion Poll: Proliferation of Prefbricated Parts
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How about the game pieces? Think about it. Historically things were often put into the KOP to insure a more even playing field. There's nothing very fair about the tires not being in there. If the goal of COTS was to bring the lowest teams up, then AndyMark would have to service the teams with the least ability to make tires first. He has no such control in place now. So he sold out. If I wanted I could have bought all of Andy's tires. Then what? I cornered the market and blocked all the teams that had good reason to buy them. Now I have tires and the shop at FRC11/193 might not need those tires. Effectively blocking all the low resource teams. I wouldn't do that but I could do that and I bet many teams bought more tires than they need so, in a way, they did do that. I could have held that stock past the end of the build season then used it for my stuff for the handicapped or just liquidated it. Keep in mind my stuff runs commodity trading for the Earth. I know how to play a market. I learned from the experts. If profit overrides ethics you can bet you might not like what happens. Quote:
Making it another guys problem usually means it is still someone's problem. COTS is the finest example of that - you make the problem to fabricate and do the logistics for it that of a professional. Now I want to settle this - Mount Olive is very supportive of FRC11/193 and the requirements of the competitive aspect of FIRST these days. The COTS issue runs the risk that eventually the shop requirement will no longer be a requirement at all. Having seen this I have undertaken 2 actions. One I am collecting resources to run a shop separate from this program in the event they abandon supporting their own shops. This means a shop separate from my own shop and portable. Two I am considering from the advice of someone here on ChiefDelphi offering an award from those that fabricate and learn how to fabricate what they could have bought COTS. So even if the professionals eventually make it hard for those with the spirit to fabricate to do so and potentially win - their efforts are acknowledged. So cause and effect. Last edited by techhelpbb : 27-01-2016 at 12:11. 
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#2
27-01-2016, 12:41
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Re: Opinion Poll: Proliferation of Prefbricated Parts
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Secondly, pneumatic wheels are not impossible to find. Just because it isn't available at the time by our common vendors such as WCP, Vex, or AndyMark doesn't mean it is unobtainable. If you were to buy all the stock of something from AndyMark that's fine but people will either find a similar product somewhere else or a company will step up to meet demand such as Tank Chain for tread.
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#3
27-01-2016, 13:00
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Re: Opinion Poll: Proliferation of Prefbricated Parts
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2. This time. The topic is general COTS. What if the next time it's something you can't just run off and get anywhere? The more complex the COTS item the more likely it's expensive and stock is limited. 3. Well aware of Tank Chain. Glad to see they were able to step up more there was a little while they weren't sure they could meet demand either. Still have to make the deliveries as well. Had a great conversation with a student where they lamented that more people found out about Tank Chain and buried that supply line as well. People are literally fishing for second and third choices because COTS leads people to think in the comfortable COTS box. Great till they can't get the comfortable COTS box. A little courtesy reminder - I am the grumpy old man with an opinion here. Someone want to take it up with me - take it up with me not Team 11 or 193. I am almost 40 years old well past the point where I need permission from them to speak for myself. I am also the only remaining active member of Team 8 which became Team 11 and that's even before Ernie. Last edited by techhelpbb : 27-01-2016 at 13:34.
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#4
27-01-2016, 14:05
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Re: Opinion Poll: Proliferation of Prefbricated Parts
There is a bigger picture than any one-dimensional aspect of this topic.
Like the elephant in the famous fable, that the several blind men declared was like a tree, a wall, a leaf, a snake, a stick, a ...; FIRST FRC is no one single method of *inspiration*. It is not all about winning tournaments. Arguments that focus almost exclusively on winning tournament matches are very weak. It is not all about learning to write code. Arguments that focus almost solely on code development are very weak. It is not all about learning to become a machinist or CAD user. Arguments that focus almost exclusively on part/system design and fabrication are very weak. Et cetera. FIRST FRC (IMO) *is* about encouraging students to recognize that any of the zillions of multi-dimensional STEM pursuits that exist can be what they choose for a career. The topics I listed above involve only a few of the tools a FIRST team/mentor can use to accomplish that. They certainly aren't the only tools; and they certainly don't have to be mastered, or even tried, by participants. If those topics are simply noticed in a positive setting, FIRST's job is nearly done. IMO, I haven't seen anyone come up with a cogent argument about why great, heaping, helpings of COTS parts, software, and/or strategic advice, prevents anyone from helping their team and individual students choose sensible goals, and then proudly achieve them during FIRST's annual rhythm. I have seen complaints about each of the three topics that I listed above, and about a few more, but I haven't seen anyone convincingly write that they are unable to open the eyes of students to the STEM world of possibilities. Market forces are going to continue to drive vendors to supply what customers want. If FRC continues to grow, greater numbers of teams are going to translate into more vendors supplying what those teams want to buy. But... Do market forces that result in useful FRC COTS items stop anyone from helping students become interested in anything? Nah, they don't. We can stop ourselves, if we get stuck in ruts; but that is something each person among us can easily fix, if we each care to fix it. Blake Last edited by gblake : 27-01-2016 at 14:07.
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#6
27-01-2016, 14:23
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Re: Opinion Poll: Proliferation of Prefbricated Parts
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The best part of this discussion has been the self reflection it has warranted. Seeing, reading, and digesting the passion, commitment, and thoughts of others has been eye opening. You are dead on. For review, I went back and read the mission statement. Here is the mission statement of FIRST. The advancement in COTS doesn't change the mission......... Mission The mission of FIRST is to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders, by engaging them in exciting Mentor-based programs that build science, engineering, and technology skills, that inspire innovation, and that foster well-rounded life capabilities including self-confidence, communication, and leadership. Vision "To transform our culture by creating a world where science and technology are celebrated and where young people dream of becoming science and technology leaders." Dean Kamen, Founder Methodology Engage kids in kindergarten through high school in exciting, Mentor-based, research and robotics programs that help them become science and technology leaders, as well as well-rounded contributors to society. Last edited by Sunshine : 27-01-2016 at 18:48.
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#7
28-01-2016, 00:38
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Re: Opinion Poll: Proliferation of Prefbricated Parts
Takes a deep breath and blows the dust off this article
That article is older than a lot of you students. No - COTS won't stop anyone from teaching shop skills if they want to teach them and if the students want to learn them. However if your shop skills education is only being supported because you can't get everything you need for FIRST without it - then eventually COTS on the scale of whole professionally engineered systems and robots will make that not necessary and support for those shops will be lost. We are not at that point but when we get there (notice I didn't write -if- we get there) it is very likely we will level out more than the dynamics of the field. So in a world where your schools don't have shops <- where do your students get inspired to work with their hands? Read the article and remember Dean doesn't have that stuff in his house because he runs a mere museum. This is kind of dusty as well: https://web.archive.org/web/19961125...ws/960905.html Last edited by techhelpbb : 28-01-2016 at 00:53.
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#8
30-01-2016, 15:01
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Re: Opinion Poll: Proliferation of Prefbricated Parts
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As I have argued earlier, the teams that already have decent shop capabilities aren't reducing the amount of custom design and building they have to do by replacing it with COTS, they're maintaining the same level of custom work, shifting that energy to other non-COTS mechanisms and using COTS parts to free up the time to complete them. I fundamentally disagree that COTS parts will ever get to a point where a team could be compelled to buy a kit and not do anything to it before taking it to competition. The only teams that would be noticeably decreasing the amount of work they do themselves are the teams that could make a robot to effectively complete every objective in the game with no COTS parts at all. Those aren't the teams we need to be worried about.
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#9
05-02-2016, 14:09
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Re: Opinion Poll: Proliferation of Prefbricated Parts
I have only a few comments to add. Most of the arguments have been well made and I don't want to repeat (too much). In short, it's a slippery slope:
Highly modified components off the shelf can arguably go too far, but may be necessary for those teams that do not have the fabrication tools or the sponsors to do their machining. I can also see them necessary if a team finds out, very late in the season, that their original plan for a certain part has utterly failed, and their season is in jeopardy.Whether these COTS go too far can only be determined on a case by case basis. Fuzzy-fuzzy line. An entire Robot Off The Shelf is absolutely over the line, in my opinion. This is the "absurd conclusion" of the slippery slope fallacy itself. Many good and great teams had to go through a season or two (or in our case, four) with machines that barely moved (if at all) in the first match. I consider it one of the best things I have done with my life just to be part of this team that went from watching the elims (for years) from the bleachers to finally bringing home a banner (I like parentheses!). What we needed to learn was the process of prototyping and fabrication in the early weeks of build. That's part of the game and part of growing your team. I remember being inspired by the whole process, watching the the other respectable teams at the regionals and thinking: "we're gonna be like THOSE teams one day." Buying a ROTS designed with the specific purpose of getting the purchasing team into a winning alliance is skipping so many steps of the process and completely bypassing the purpose of the competition. Veteran mentors: you KNOW what Dean and Woodie have to say about that. My final input, which may have already been proposed: Even if the ROTS , or a game-specific COTS, is sold as a "kit" of individual components, no more than a combined total of $400 of those components that are part of the said kit should be allowed per team. If that's not satisfactory, then FIRST and we need to iron out the parameters of "fairness" in COTS, and new limits should be set. All ROTS should be banned outright from competition. This is my opinion, and does not represent the opinions of others on this team. Last edited by Chi Meson : 05-02-2016 at 14:56.
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#10
05-02-2016, 14:51
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Re: Opinion Poll: Proliferation of Prefbricated Parts
I believe P4 was designed and is very useful for rookie, poorly funded, and/or struggling teams. It isn't like you purchase a ROTS and then compete. You still have to do work in terms of getting it working and what not. You still have to do some work to see what COTS parts work best for your design.
As those rookie/poorly funded/struggling/all of the above teams start getting more and more experience I think that they'll naturally advance to fabricating their own parts, maybe using the COTS parts as a reference or and idea but designing and fabricating something unique to their team. They'll realize that these COTS parts are designed for more general use, and they'll want to create something specific to the game. I also think this will naturally happen because many will agree that designing and building something by yourself is much more satisfying and fun than buying a kit and putting it together  tl;dr P4 is for starting/struggling teams and those teams will naturally progress to fabrication from scratch as they get more experience. Last edited by xXhunter47Xx : 05-02-2016 at 14:55.
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#11
05-02-2016, 15:41
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Re: Opinion Poll: Proliferation of Prefbricated Parts
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When there are superstar teams that leave everyone else in the dust year after year: it just furthers that point. If your goal is just to teach the non-fabrication skills and you don't care if you are massively competitive someone can join and say 'that's good enough'. Worse if you have a shop and aren't always a superstar team anyway the school may decide the fabrication work isn't worth the cost. Maybe arguing the'll just send it all out for fabrication. The more your school as a whole is detached from actively supporting FIRST the worse the risk. A few teams have had to leave schools for a variety of reasons. It is not easy to detach from, at the minimum, a convenient roof over a team's head. One of the things you loose is a place for the shop. It is, after all, very similar to the argument schools use to close shop programs: it's the very expensive program serving a minority of the students and it's not getting us anything. If the quality of ROTS continues to rise beyond a certain point the quality of 6 weeks of school student conducted fabrication will not compete. High school shops were extremely common place for a very long time in the United States. Over time the arguments that protected them slowly eroded because there wasn't a way to protect something like this when: most people involved in the decision decided that there weren't great jobs locally that could compete with the items filling the shelves of Walmart in a global economy. I also frequently heard colleges did not require them to teach these fabrication skills. US FIRST (which became FIRST) provided a counter argument (intentionally or otherwise). It specifically encouraged some schools to revive programs they were abandoning with these shops because it supported the competition, which was like a sport. It turned the shops into cost equivalent of sporting fields. Once you don't need to develop your skills to play a sport why wouldn't you reduce the number of schools maintaining these fields? Why not use the one at the park or someone's grassy lot? If you asked the students in a school loosing the shops if they were happy about it - I bet they were not. However it takes a community to keep a commitment of resources like that and the more opportunities you give the detractors to the cost the more likely the resource is at risk. The COTS/ROTS argument is a strong argument. It allows more competition in FIRST. It allows FIRST to go to places that *might* be willing to eventually have shops. It is an inclusive argument but not carefully managed it seeks ever cheaper and more complex goods. The cheaper the goods the more likely they are made elsewhere removing the need for the skills locally. The less fabrication skills you need locally to support FIRST the less fabrication skills you need to teach and if the quality of the COTS/ROTS reaches a point you can't compete. We in America have lived this cycle. It in part created US FIRST. It was a big selling point way back at the start. I don't see any control actively in place, and the $400 control is often manipulated, that will prevent this outcome and personally I feel that it is therefore inevitable. I mean we teach students to work like this in FLL/FTC with each passing year: why would those students not wish to continue to buy systems with parts fabricated for them eliminating their effort during the 6 week season? As long as we assume it's actually a 6 week season. The competitive aspect is at best a temporary control. I seriously doubt 20+ years ago if I had walked into the room and you told me the goal was to sell lots of parts and play a game I would have hung around for this long. I know people, by the way, that are no longer around for this reason as mentors. Why fight a situation that looks like you want to exclude people from the game on the surface? I deeply applaud all of you that continue to teach the fabrication skills but if the manufacturing power of America couldn't avoid this outcome it is highly unlikely FIRST can either. By 1996 US FIRST had already switched to FIRST. Sooner or later design will be more important than fabrication because on the scale of America we still hold leads for intellectual property. You'll just be buying the parts for that work from some place else doing some short run prototypes and best hope the logistics work out from whatever global source you selected. Based on the rate of transformation currently it will be before I die. It will be great to teach engineering in a global age but with each generation that doesn't get fabrication skills it will ignore what every old manufacturer in America I know tells me - it's a cycle - the guy over there looks great for now but just you wait till they don't get the work to you in time or there is a problem. It only needs a few generation gap in available fabrication skill knowledge for a really unpleasant issue to develop in which the guy 'over there' can dictate what you can actually accomplish. If you doubt the reality of that argument - stop buying 3D printers that promise to let you make plastic parts in your home. I mean you could just fulfill your interests by buying that from somewhere else. I figure that won't happen so some element of what I am saying here hits the mark. Last edited by techhelpbb : 05-02-2016 at 16:35.
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#12
05-02-2016, 17:48
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Re: Opinion Poll: Proliferation of Prefbricated Parts
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It's rather impressive how far COTS components have gone over the last few years and how many options are currently available. I see this continued advancment as doing wonders for the lower resource and lower to mid-tier teams. So many people talk about wanting to "Raise the floor" of FRC. In my mind, this is arguably the easiest way to do it. As long as resources are available teaching teams how to properly design for and implement these resources, COTS components have a very significant capacity to "Inspire" more students. Having working subsystems and a functional robot that allow a team to play the game is inspiring. Not every team has access to an engineering mentor. COTS components and knowledge on how to use them allow these teams to close the gap. Last edited by Navid Shafa : 05-02-2016 at 17:53.
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#13
06-02-2016, 00:06
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Re: Opinion Poll: Proliferation of Prefbricated Parts
My school recently invested $1 million in a new facility that includes a reasonable machine shop, a suite of 3D printers, and other things that make custom fabrication a major focus. We are hardly unique, or even in the forefront; I've seen many other schools and districts around the country moving in this direction. I guess I don't see the trend being that learning to build things in school is going away. We use COTS stuff extensively, like most of you, but so what? FRC is hardly becoming a "buy stuff and play a game" program. I'll bet you an ice cream sundae that I won't see three robots that look or perform the same at any of the regionals I attend this year.
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#14
06-02-2016, 01:11
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Re: Opinion Poll: Proliferation of Prefbricated Parts
I also want to respond to the idea that shop programs at schools were closed because goods have been manufactured in such a way (overseas) that jobs disappeared which required training in shop class.
I've been a shop teacher for 15 years, and I've seen many programs shut down in my city and region. My honest assessment as to why this has happened puts the blame on three things: 1) Short sightedness among administration. This could come from following the latest buzz in educationese (ironically, this cycle it's "STEM" and "STEAM" that everyone is saying), or from seeing that mouth-wateringly large space the shop occupies and imagining other uses for it. Whatever the reason, I've seen shops turned into weight rooms and student lounges as well as being subdivided into several classrooms, and I've seen hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment effectively thrown away. 2) Liability. Getting sued is a real and heavy concern for schools, teachers, and districts, and these types of classes sure look more dangerous than Lit or Math. 3) Lack of vision on the part of teachers. When we talk about these classes "serving a limited population", we're saying there are 10 students in a class. I've known teachers who were quite happy with that arrangement, and milked it. When shop class means "easy", and supervisors don't see much other than bird houses being built by the six students who show up, what else are they going to do other than assume it's a waste of resources? This is where I lay most of the blame. Shop classes have the opportunity to link academic disciplines through a new form of learning; they can provide kids with scholarships, travel opportunities, and community service challenges. Programs like FRC are one of the key ways shop programs can and should link up to real and valuable academic gains for our students. TL/DR: if teachers make the shop programs valuable to the school and community, they will grow, not shrink. Just my opinion, of course.
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#15
06-02-2016, 01:27
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Re: Opinion Poll: Proliferation of Prefbricated Parts
To me, it's a slight bit "Chief-delphi-ish" to stroll through this thread and see all the team numbers; a good 50-60% in the <1000's.
5511 is a mildly successful team, rookies in 2015. We had the opportunity to go to champs last year and it really opened our eyes to the possibilities and abilities of some of the greatest FRC teams. Like many other teams, we had to make brackets for our lift - and ended up using stepper bits and whatever steel plates were at Home Depot. Garage-built, low resource, student-run team down in NC. We have the RTP right next door but hadn't tapped into that until this year. The only COTS we had was the KOP because we didn't have the money or know-how to make our own. A few of the other teams in our area have also had the chance to go to champs and see what some of the "champs-achieving" teams do. Their take-away was very different than ours: COTS COTS COTS. 3 CIM dogshifters with PTO from WCP puts you quite a bit close to that $400 limit. All vex bearing blocks with tensioners and versatubing. While these are great resources, they personally feel like overkill for a COTS part. Our take-away from champs was different. We purchased the cheapest CNC router on the market (X-Carve at around $1100; took lots of convincing) and are relatively happy with the results. Getting the machine to breeze through aluminum was a challenge, but I can personally vouch for the learning process inspiring the other students. Getting into CAD, CAM, and all of the aspects of CNC machining for our freshman has been incredibly value - but they don't realize it yet. We could have just bought versatube for the rails and the crazy selection of gussets in order to be very competitive very quickly. Now, however, our students have skills applicable in jobs later on in life. They have learned design that isn't simply 'slap it together.' Your opinion on the matter is your own, but just keep in mind that there are ways to achieve similar results with very low resources and some dedicated learners.
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