Innovation First- What gives?

[Arefin Bari]

I would think that FIRSTers would be very gracious with the support they get from FIRST and every single company that are affiliated with them.

It is true that teams have to come up with a lot of money in order to stay alive every year but has anyone ever sat down and calculated the amount of money that is needed to do something like this? Speaking from personal experience, in order to run a two day offseaon competiion in a way smaller venue, with a lot less resources you need good amount of money, persay ten thousand to twenty thousand dollars. Those money adds up very quickly.

Lets see... we got many colleges that offers scholarship to kids. Has anyone added that money up and see how much that is?

Let's take AndyMark.biz as an example. Their transmission are being sold at $330. I know a team in Florida who is making their own tranmission. Without any labor, each transmission parts come out to be $300. Has anyone tried to go out and make a custom transmission with out having the experience. I bet the cost of each transmission would come out to over $500 bucks a piece (including labor).

As far as IFI goes, I have never seen one of those guys back off when my team needed help whether it was at a competition or during build season. Stop by to one of those guys and ask them questions you have. They will sit there and talk to you, needless to say if you send one of your student to John and say "I don't know how to design a transmission, can you teach me?" John would probably whip out his dictionary and start teaching right there. As it has been pointed out before in this thread, IFI isn't given enough credits for what they do for this program. As Mr. Kressly said earlier in this thread... "Take care of what you have."

Your students learn and that's whats valuable to every single one of us. While working with them, we learn too. Where will you find a place in this nation where your students will have one on one conversation with a real engineer and go through a design process?

Team 1345 thanks every single business that is affiliated with this program and for letting us be a part of it.

[Matt Krass]

I think this topic has been sufficiently served, and its getting a bit testy in here with all these accusations of FIRST trying to rip us off, that's also already been shown wrong, could we maybe get it locked before things get worse, the original poster has already replied and retract their statements, there is really no point here.

Lock? Please?

[Jessica Boucher]

How about a breather? Let's give it 24 hours and then come back to it.

EDIT: Ok, it's open again, go nuts.