Should teams be pushed to make higher quality robots?

[Tyler 783]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

No Dave, see without threaded fasteners you'd have to allow tape again

Anyway, I think a rule that somehow stepped up quality in robots would be a nice thing (the no tape rule is a great start). I am aware that not every team has a 4 axis CNC mill (or any mill) or a Miller TIG welder (or any welder) or a whole tool chest full of nothing but the finest, however I've seen a lot of robots that are just kind of "barely hanging on" in the way of quality. I know almost every team is proud of their robot no matter what it looks like and they have every right to be. But I think outsiders tend to be more impressed with the CNCed, TIGed, water jetted, anodized, and powder coated machines that have been fully designed in CAD first. I'm not saying every robot should be as elaborate as that, but I think some sort of motivation needs to be given to teams to step into the world of professional grade quality fabrication.

There is a slight problem with some how making a rule to make it manditory for the robots to look nice. This is because there are alot of team who can't get the funding they need. I remember last year my team spent 200 man hours looking for sponsors, and 400 man hours doing fund raisers and geting $2500 canadian, and no were to build the robot, we eventualy decided to bring it into someone's basment and build it with hand tools and a drill press. Believe me if I had the time to worry about making it look CnC quality I would have, but when your only saw is a hack saw and your only drill is a $20 special, making a competitive robot that looks pretty is kind of hard. For a rule like you are sugesting fesible FIRST would have to provide fabrication equipment to teams without it. Which would be nice, I could go for a CnC mill in my basement.