make vs. buy wheels

[artdutra04]

Time is the only thing that teams can never acquire more of during the build season. Everything else - money, materials, machining resources, mentors, Mountain Dew - all have the potential of acquiring more of them.

As such, during your six weeks, is it better for you to purchase COTS wheels with no or minimal modifications and move on to more important tasks - like the manipulator which actually does the scoring - or spend days machining wheels which more or less do the same function as COTS ones?

Now if you have sufficient resources at your disposal, and it is decided that machining/fabricating custom wheels will not detract from your ability to create an awesome robot, then by all means go for it. Otherwise, there's bigger fish to fry during the build season.

Remember: custom does not necessarily mean better. Engineering is just as much about optimizing time/ease of assembly and minimizing costs as it is about actually designing stuff.