YMTC - Manufacturing

[Steve W]

Team Red is designing a new transmission. The plans are completed by June 30, 2006. The prototype must be built and tested by November. Parts are ordered. Not just for the prototype but also for the competition bot. This is legal under the 2006 rules. Now some of the parts need machining which a sponsor has graciously offered to do. Now comes the question. Because of the cost to the sponsor it would be easier to do all parts at once rather than some now and some after kickoff. If the sponsor manufactures the parts for the 2007 bot and keeps them till Wednesday after kickoff, would that be considered as illegal under the 2006 rules? I understand that the 2007 rules may differ and that they cannot be counted into the equation.

[Hieb]

I would have to believe that it is a violation of the rules. While I can understand the advantages to the sponsor for doing all of the parts at the same time, it is still fabrication of a non-COTS part outside of the build window.

[Jack Jones]

Too easy:

<R15> ...absolutely no fabrication or assembly of any elements intended for the final robot is permitted prior to the Kick-off presentation.

Whether the build team had them in their hot little hands before or after kick-off is irrelevant. The parts would be intended for the final robot and could not be customized ahead of time.

Loophole?:

The sponsor could add those machined parts to their normal inventory and offer them for sale to the general public. However, IMO, that would violate not only the spirit of the rule but the letter of the rule as well, since it would not change the fact that those parts were intended for use in that team's final robot.

[MikeDubreuil]

Personally, it doesn't matter to me- as long as it was done for cost and not time savings. According to R16, this example would be against the rules. The parts were fabricated outside of the build season.

Originally Posted by <R16>

During the Build Season: During the period between the Kick-off and robot shipment deadline, teams are
to design and fabricate all the components and mechanisms required to complete their robot. They are
encouraged to use all the materials, sources and resources available to them that are in compliance with the
rules of the 2006 FIRST Robotics Competition. As the robot shipment deadline approaches, all work on the
robot must cease and the robot must be placed in a “hands-off” condition. The entire robot (including all
FABRICATED ITEMS intended for use during the competition in alternative configurations of the robot)
must be crated and out of team hands by the robot shipment deadline.

[KenWittlief]

Originally Posted by Jack Jones

Loophole?:

The sponsor could add those machined parts to their normal inventory and offer them for sale to the general public. However, IMO, that would violate not only the spirit of the rule but the letter of the rule as well, since it would not change the fact that those parts were intended for use in that team's final robot.

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

however, this transmission is being designed in the off season, for a robot that may not have a drivetrain like previous years. In that perspective it is a general purpose transmission. If the sponsor company was willing to manufacture the complete transmission, and offer it for sale through normal robot-hobby-educational channels (so that any team can buy the whole transmission)

then I think they are very much in compliance with the spirit of the rules, and in line with the spirit of FIRST interteam cooperation.

That would be the best of both worlds. Your team gets to design a transmission the way they want it, based on their experience over the years, and by producing many of them it will drive the cost down.

Other teams would be able to use it, but I suspect the team that designed it would have the best understanding of how to take full advantage of its characteristics and design functions.

[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.)

[Richard Wallace]

931 was in a similar situation last year. We built four copies of a custom transmission (look here) as an aid to learning about holonomic drive. After 2006 kickoff we decided to use the transmission on our competition robot, so we built four more copies during build season.

To comply with <R15> we did all of the fabrication of competition robot parts, including machining provided by our sponsor, within the 6-week build period. This required our sponsor to repeat set-ups. Clearly they would have saved significant time by making eight copies of each required component during Summer 2005, and they proposed doing that in case we wanted to use the parts in competition. Knowing the rules I had to tell them we could only accept parts for our competition robot that were fabricated between kick-off and shipping deadline, or during a fix-it window.

This left us with several transmissions that could have functioned as spares, but were not legal spares per the rules. Lucky for us, we never needed spare transmission parts.

[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

[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.

[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.

[DonRotolo]

Originally Posted by MikeDubreuil

Personally, it doesn't matter to me- as long as it was done for cost and not time savings. According to R16, this example would be against the rules. The parts were fabricated outside of the build season.

Umm, what about the design part of R16? Designing the transmission outside the build season is also not allowed, or??

Don

[KenWittlief]

During the Build Season: During the period between the Kick-off and robot shipment deadline, teams are to design and fabricate all the components and mechanisms required to complete their robot.

YIKES!

WHAT?!

HOLY COW! YIKES!

no more using battery holders or motor mounts or modular electronics boxes that were designed in previous years?

No more using designs posted by other teams on CD from previous years?!

YIKES! (this changes everything)

[Steve W]

Let me add another element to the question.According to this rule :
<R22> Individual COMPONENTS from robots entered in previous FIRST competitions may be used on 2006 robots IF they satisfy ALL of the rules associated with materials/parts use for the 2006 FIRST Robotics Competition.

If the Red Team competes in an off season event, would it be classified as a FIRST event and would the parts be allowed in the 2007 season if the rules remain the same as 2006?