Team Update 14 (2016)

[AllenGregoryIV]

Originally Posted by Paul Richardson

Here's one data point for this clone debate: In 2014, team 1477 worked on a design that would have converted the robot into a "254 clone". Building that design was well within their capabilities, but the team decided not to use it, considering that the existing robot wasn't too bad and it would be a lot of effort for something that wasn't guaranteed to work. Just like Cory and Adam said:

Actually this is a good idea, what other teams have attempted clones in the off-season? I remember Wave brought a robot to IRI in 2013 that was similar to 254's 2013 robot. AusTin Cans had a robot in 2013 off-season that took it's cues from the Holy Cows, Killer Bees, and other robots of that archetype. I've never seen a cloned FRC robot that works even remotely as well as the original. I'm pretty sure if teams tried to clone most designs just from CAD they would have a lot of trouble as well.

Our gearbox this year is based on 1114's gearbox from 2014. It met a lot of our design needs and we didn't want to reinvent the wheel. Even just building that part of the robot with a CAD file in hand took some reverse engineering and thought.