Drive Train design roadblocks

[dlavery]

Let's go off on a slight tangent while I throw a cautionary note in here.

Everyone is all in favor of team that use the summer and fall to develop prototype robot system, and design assemblies for their team (as training exercises, demonstration units, design practice, etc.). However, your messages seem to indicate that you are well into the final designs of your competition robot for the 2005 season, and you are seeking to tweak out the last few percentage points of efficiency and power for your designs. This is a rather risky practice at this point in time. Remember, you don't even know what the game is yet! As you "finalize plans for this year's bot" you are running a chance of spending a lot of time designing a system that could be completely inappropriate for the 2005 game.

If that happens, most teams historically fall into one of the classic engineering traps. Having invested a lot of time and effort in a specific design, most engineers are loathe to throw it away and start over with a clean sheet of paper - even when that is the most appropriate thing to do. Instead, they will try to modify their existing design and try to make it do something that it was never intended to do. Sometimes this works, but it is almost always at a cost in terms of lost efficiency, kludged design compromises, or brittle performance characteristics.

During this last week before the kick-off, you might be better served by either letting your designs be a little "loose" and leave the determination of the fifth digit of precision for later on, or - better yet - just kicking back and relaxing while you can (because you won't be able to for the six weeks that follow!).

-dave