Purchase/Prebuild - What's the difference?

[Andy Baker]

Originally Posted by Marc P.

I'll second John's comments about the great discussion in this thread.

I totally agree. This is a great discussion.

Originally Posted by Marc P.

...While it looks like this type of company would fit within the guidlines of the written rules, wouldn't it require a clear seperation between the company personell and a certain team? As a seperate corporate/company entity, the transmissions can be manufactured any time during the year. If there is a team association, the company may be viewed as part of the team, and thus manufacturing would be restricted to the 6 week build period. ... FIRST has volunteers sign conflict of interest papers for positions which can directly affect competition, so I'd hope the same would be true of any parts provider.

So, proceeding with this logic, if there is an engineer from Fastenal who helps with team 5555, then team 5555 cannot use Fastenal screws on their robot. I don't agree with this logic.

Team 5555 should be able to use Fastenal screws on their robot if they are standard, off-the-shelf screws. Now, if Fastenal made custom screws that were not available to the open market (president of Uganda, team 15XX, yada yada), then those screws should only be allowed on team 5555's robot if Fastenal made those custom screws during the build season.

Originally Posted by Marc P.

The other question is in terms of a guarantee/warranty, and liability. With Innovation First, they have reps at every official event, such that in case of any problems or equipment failures, technical advice and spare parts are provided as the need arises. With these transmissions, would they be sold "as is", in that any problems encountered are the responsibility of the teams themselves, or would they come with a warranty in the unlikely event something fails, breaks, bends, shatters/otherwise falls apart. If something does fail in a big shoving match, would the company be held liable for the loss?

Innovation First has a well-deserved monopoly in FIRST. Each team's kit has IFI hardware included. This is not the same as AndyMark components. While we will have some sort of minimal warranty, we cannot afford to replace every component if it breaks under an extreme load. If we were to design to this extreme restriction, then the products will be 5x the price that they need to be in order to be affordable by teams. Currently, the gearbox is designed for a 4x safety factor over the stall torques of two powerful kit motors (from 2004 kit).

Again, I will use the Fastenal comparison. If a Fastenal screw breaks during a FIRST competition, is Fastenal held liable for the loss? Absolutely not. The difference here between IFI and Fastenal is that teams have the option to not put Fastenal screws on their robots. If they think that Fastenal screws are not good (which is wrong, Fastenal is a great company with great products), then it is that team's choice to not use their product.

In the end, if our products are crap, then people will not buy them. This is the risk of doing business, and the foundation of capitalism.

Andy B.