Opinion Poll: Proliferation of Prefbricated Parts

[Ekcrbe]

Originally Posted by techhelpbb

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.

The day a team decides not to fight the closing of their shop because "well, we can get everything we need from COTS components anyway," I'll eat my robot.

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.

[Chi Meson]

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.

[xXhunter47Xx]

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.

[techhelpbb]

Originally Posted by Ekcrbe

The day a team decides not to fight the closing of their shop because "well, we can get everything we need from COTS components anyway," I'll eat my robot.

Assuming you took from my statement that I meant that the team would get that decision. A school may decide that they simply had no reason to have a shop, and won't need to support it any further, just because you can go around it with COTS and still get on the field.

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.

[Navid Shafa]

Originally Posted by Ekcrbe

The day a team decides not to fight the closing of their shop because "well, we can get everything we need from COTS components anyway," I'll eat my robot.

Our rookie team has designed strongly around VexPro and COTS components. While this makes it much easier for a team without access to a permanent shop-space yet easier, we still have our fair share of challenges.

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.

[mrnoble]

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.

[mrnoble]

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.

[jkelleyrtp]

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.

[gblake]

Originally Posted by jkelleyrtp

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. ...

I'm not sure if you meant to convey this, but there is a strong chance you used the phrase "greatest FRC teams." to mostly (only?) refer to teams that did well on-the-field, and not to all the teams that are great at all the many other things an FRC team is asked to do.

If I got the correct impression, and on-the-field did dominate how you were selecting who is great and who isn't, it's certainly understandable that you did; but ... I'll buy a really nice dinner for the person who gives me a magic wand I can use to get that to stop happening throughout FRC (and elsewhere).

An FRC team that exists only to build excellent robots is an FRC team that is dead. An FRC team that exists to help communities and students learn to integrate pursuing, achieving and celebrating STEM things into their lives, is an FRC team that is alive and striving to be great.

My hunch is that if you guys continue what you are doing, without letting yourselves be seduced by the bright lights and dazzle of the elimination matches, you are on your way to being a great team. A great team that uses a robot to accomplish your goals, instead of being your goal. A great team that maybe never gets a blue banner, but becomes an important part of the fabric of your community. A great team that goes beyond just engaging and training the people who are already in love with STEM things. A great team whose accomplishments last much longer than any single season.

If what I have written strikes a chord in you and your teammates, definitely keep learning from great teams whenever and wherever you meet them. And, when you are deciding whether an FRC team is great, remember to look at their robots last (if at all), not first. The robot is one tool. At best it is an *imperfect* reflection of only part of a team's success. The robot is not the team.

Blake