Globe Motors & other FIRST Suppliers at Design Show

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Posted by Joe Johnson, Engineer on team #47, Chief Delphi, from Pontiac Central High School and Delphi Automotive Systems.

Posted on 3/18/99 6:23 PM MST


In Reply to: Globe Motors & other FIRST Suppliers at Design Show posted by Andy Baker on 3/18/99 7:06 AM MST:



To all,

While I am sure that Mr. Cox would like to sell Globe motors to every FIRST team. I know that it would be a huge bother for them to do so.

So much so that they might rue the day they decided to donate very expensive and very excellent motors and gearboxes to the FIRST kit of materials.

I am begging teams not to contact Globe to buy a motor or, worse yet, ask them to donate even more motors to FIRST.

Globe is a great company. They agreed to donate very expensive parts to the FIRST kit. It was not easy to convince them to do this, but in the end they agreed that it was a worthy thing to do.

By asking them to sell you motors, you put them in a bad position. If they say yes, then they loose lots of money because they could not really make you pay the true costs of an engineer heading on down to the factory floor, getting it to the dock, getting a request for shipper filled out, having the dock personnel pack it and send it out. To top it off, for a large automotive supplier, the cost of actually cashing any checks you'd give them would probably be more than the check is written for.

If Globe refuses to sell or give you motors, then they look like the bad guys and get a black eye for doing something great (donating motors to the kit).

As to Mr. Cox's explanation of why teams could not buy them directly and whether or not it would be cheating, chalk that up to Globe being new to this FIRST thing an not fully understanding all the ins and outs of the FIRST competition rules.

In conclusion, as someone who works for a company that donates a lot of stuff to the FIRST kit (and is often on the receiving end of requests for free motors, etc.) and as someone who spends a lot of time in the off season trying to get great new stuff in the kit (Globe motors for instance), I urge you to take the advice of Eric Rasmussen of FIRST in one of the updates:

Please do not contact Globe Motors asking for spare motors.

Thanks,

Joe J.