YMTC - Manufacturing

[Billfred]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

I had a similar thought, but I think there is a way.

If the sponsor offered the machined parts for sale only for the purpose of meeting the FIRST requirements (but they knowingly do not expect to sell any) then I would agree, they are severely bending the rules

I agree, but to be legal, you'd have to be ready to make and ship transmissions to all the teams in FIRST in short order. Either you're going to have to have a lot of machining capacity, or you're going to have to build a few hundred transmissions. Neither particularly sounds like it's worth the trouble.

(But hey, if someone wants to go through the trouble of creating a legit business (and the other requirements for a FIRST-legal supplier under the most recent rule set), I don't see the trouble.)

[Andy Baker]

Originally Posted by Billfred

Neither particularly sounds like it's worth the trouble.

(But hey, if someone wants to go through the trouble of creating a legit business (and the other requirements for a FIRST-legal supplier under the most recent rule set), I don't see the trouble.)

Heh... who would be crazy enough to do that?

AB

[Richard Wallace]

Originally Posted by Andy Baker

Heh... who would be crazy enough to do that?

AB

Heroes.

Thanks, Andy and Mark!

[KenWittlief]

Something tells me that that would further tip the balance squarely in favour of the teams with the best funding or resources (who can afford to buy expensive components off-the-shelf, or commit resources to a production run).

I hope there are not too many teams who cannot afford to spend the allowable amount on their robots - what is the cap these days? $3.5k?

if a team is going to sell a transmission as a COTS kit to other teams, it cant be expensive, because they have to use the same price on their bill o materials as they charge other teams for the same transmission.

so the incentive would be to psuedo-mass produce an inexpensive robust COTS mechanism, that any team could afford (as a small part of their total robot BOM budget).

[Taylor]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

I hope there are not too many teams who cannot afford to spend the allowable amount on their robots - what is the cap these days? $3.5k?

I think you'd be surprised. We have (as compared to some other FIRST teams) a pretty limited budget - $19K this past season. We were faced with the choice of using the money we did have for the robot or to enter another regional. We decided that it would be not only good exposure for our team adn its members, but in the spirit of FIRST, to go to both Boilermaker and W.Mich. So subtract $10k for registration and KOP, $3.5k for charter bus, $2k for room & board, and $2.5k for tools and supplies - not much left over for the bot itself.
But we still had fun! And the completely student-designed, student-built robot was a source of more pride for the team members than perhaps anything else they'd done in their lives.

Sorry, off-topic. I'll stop now.

[TimCraig]

Originally Posted by boiler

We have (as compared to some other FIRST teams) a pretty limited budget - $19K this past season.

Pretty rich compared to many. I work with a team who's never had that much.

[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

I hope there are not too many teams who cannot afford to spend the allowable amount on their robots - what is the cap these days? $3.5k?

As was noted above, a lot of teams budget their limited funds in ways that preclude expensive but convenient parts. A $300 expense for transmissions is a difficult thing for more teams than you might imagine.

Now that I think more about it, with the kit transmissions available, there isn't really the risk that the teams that can spend a few hundred dollars more will dramatically outclass the others. That would have been a bigger issue a few years ago, back when we had the Bosch motors and their slightly inelegant transmission mount and crossed-axis output as the no-cost option.

[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by Billfred

I agree, but to be legal, you'd have to be ready to make and ship transmissions to all the teams in FIRST in short order. Either you're going to have to have a lot of machining capacity, or you're going to have to build a few hundred transmissions. Neither particularly sounds like it's worth the trouble.

(But hey, if someone wants to go through the trouble of creating a legit business (and the other requirements for a FIRST-legal supplier under the most recent rule set), I don't see the trouble.)

I think that's quite akin to the homologation rules that you find (or used to find) in stock-car racing series. Those rules specified that manufacturers had to produce and offer for sale a certain number of examples of the car that would compete. Often 50 or more. Teams and manufacturers tried every conceivable way to bend the rules, for the same reasons. For example, they would build enough parts for 50 cars, but not assemble them—and were rejected.

So, what if FIRST introduced a homologation rule? Build and offer for sale a certain number of examples, and you can do your fabrication in batches. Something tells me that that would further tip the balance squarely in favour of the teams with the best funding or resources (who can afford to buy expensive components off-the-shelf, or commit resources to a production run). Maybe that's not really what we want to see—it would be as if teams had to either buy into one of the prebuilt designs to realize the significant savings in time and labour, but at the same time, they would be diminishing the amount of engineering that they do on their own. That's probably shifting the balance too far in favour of kit-built robots, as opposed to scratch-built ones.

As for the situation Steve referred to, it's illegal, but I think that his intention was to release them to the team on Wednesday after the kickoff to make up for the time that it would have taken, had the machining been started on the Saturday of the kickoff. The rules don't allow for that solution, even though it's roughly equivalent. And I say roughly, because a team could order one batch of parts with half to be held in reserve, but reject that batch on the basis of the half that they use as a prototype. Then they could repeat that cycle as many times as necessary, each time always having enough parts for the real robot ready. Furthermore, it would allow a team to avoid the delays imposed upon them by their sponsor's schedule—there's no special consideration in the rules for a sponsor being unable to maintain their committments.