What COTS parts would you like to see?

[OccamzRazor]

I second what Sperkowsky said about the metal versaplanetary adapter and gussets. If it was metal it could be a lot smaller.

I would also like to see the versaplanetary encoder housing be made out of the same metal as the gearboxes because we had two of the plastic ones create a failure where once the encoder cracked and failed the entire gearbox would fall to pieces in our robot. The bolts failed in double shear and we had three pieces of each bolt every time this happened on two different gearboxes. I will attach photos to show the failure. I think we already sent this to Vex but I will check on that. I think vibration was the cause of the failure and not overloading based on our applications.

I also strongly agree with what Marshall said and will add a little on to that. If the AndyMark kit came with bumper instructions and sheet metal hardware for next year I feel like some of the teams with fewer resources in NC would actually arrive to competition with bumpers and I would not have to help them build the bumpers before inspection! It would be nice to have something sort of like an "add plywood, noodle, and cloth kit" and you have a robot ready for inspection.