What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?

[Michael Corsetto]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

Why is that? Surely you don't work on the robot between the time you bag it on the prescribed date and the time you regain access to it for your first competition. Are you nitpicking the difference between 42 and 45 days? Or are you bagging an unfinished robot and counting on a withholding allowance to let you build the rest of it outside the official build time to bolt on later?

Our robot is built in 16 weeks, not 6. The robot on Einstein was very different than the robot at our first regional. This has been the case for 1678 the past 4 years, just look at our photo albums online.

We build three robots and develop throughout the four month build season. We use withholding allowance to get new parts on the robot. We are not alone.

To say we built our championship robot in 6 weeks/45 days is simply not true.

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

Instead of removing bag & tag, I would very much like to see the withholding rules go back to the "identical spare parts" wording, or even go away entirely.

I do miss the "identical spare parts" wording. That would be very nice for spares.

However, getting rid of withholding means we have to make all of our parts at the regional if we want to upgrade our robot. Don't worry, we would still upgrade our robot between events. CNC router, lathe and drill press in the pit would help make that possible.

Adding more barriers between teams and their robots will make the best teams even better than everyone else. We have the resources to get around every barrier you (or FIRST) can think of. Just stop trying.

-Mike