Is a shifting transmission really necessary?

[Gdeaver]

Making a gear box shifting or single speed requires precission machining. If a team doesn't have acess to the equipment and mentors with the Knoledge to use them a team before 2005 was at a major disadvantage. To go out and buy the part requires lots of funding. Our team had neither. All we had where hand tools. If the KOP trans had not been in the kit this year, we probably would have used the Fisher price solution and it would have been a marginal solution. I know because we used it before and it"s limitations probably would have put us at the middle bottom of the heap at the regional. The KOP trans this year allowed us to inovate in other areas. Our arm was made out of composits. Pulltrustions, Cabon fiber lay up, and epoxy chopped fiber cast parts. All done with hand tools. OUr arm weighed 23 pounds with motors, the same design in aluminum would have weighed 44 pounds. So there was some major inovation on our team. The Kop trans is a competition leveler. The point of my post was that teams need to realize this and may be pay more attention to where they allocate there resources in the future.