Shipping the CRio

[jgraber]

Originally Posted by dtengineering

Whoa... that Q&A needs to be read by teams thinking about maximizing their options under the withholding allowance. This is the link http://forums.usfirst.org/showthread.php?t=11854
-snip-
Theoretically, if you were good enough at building light enough, you might not have to ship ANYTHING in the crate on ship day. You'd have a busy morning on Thursday bolting everything together... but you would have had a bit of time to practice that in the preceeding weeks. That is an extreme case ... Jason

I love extremes of all kinds, since they make any middle position seem more reasonable.

Here is another fun hypothetical design constraint to consider: "R35 only bot"
Design around or develop COTS sources for every single part of your robot, (ie custom cable lengths/ends, custom erector-set-frame lengths, prewired encoders and sensors) and design and practice-drill for rapid assembly.
- Ship nothing,
- No withholding allowance
- Build your entire robot from R35 COTS stuff on Thursday.
Here is the tradeoff:
+ much more time to design and practice building the robot, !no ship date!
- much less flexibility of design
- requires more pre-season prep looking for COTS suppliers
- much higher stress levels on Thursday
+ Incredible coolness factor: "Yeah, its just a little something we put together on yesterday..."

With that extreme in mind, 40lbs of R36 seems like a middle ground.
Control panel is an empty board with mounting holes and pre-routed wires.
Wire stripers & crimpers & solder ready to go to reconnect the CIMS and other motors.
Big box of COTs, and step by step instructions, practice, practice, practice