[FTC]: EXPENSIVE!!!!

[ttldomination]

Hello,

My team is currently in the climax of our robot, this is around the time when ideas start to fall into place, and the robot starts to take a general shape.

Yet, we are hit by a sudden cost, literally. Today, I compiled my *3rd* order list. This order list literally contains $250 worth of GEARS only.

So I have two questions.

1. How much money have other teams put into their robots? Because so far, we're pushing $1000. And I know this is all still initial...but 20 dollars for *1* gear?

[waialua359]

Welcome to the world of robotics.

[Akash Rastogi]

A lot of teams have the skills to design around a limited number of components and they do really well sometimes.

We have 5 kits- 5 seperate teams, buch of gear kits and frame rail kits from VEXlabs.

[gdo]

We actually were specifically centering our designs around minimizing our costs on parts. To my knowledge the only stuff we have bought besides the original kit was 2 servos, 2 brackets, some extra axels, bushings, and a few extra batteries, and a few metal beams. So maybe $200-350 total for extra parts.

I think our design didn't suffer, we can still deliver 8-10 pucks at once to the 20" goal. We still have mid years, so we have to make a few tweaks before our first tournament, once our mid years are over, I'll post some pictures here.

[Rick TYler]

FTC IS expensive. We have two competitive robots (and another that is the equivalent of an FTC squarebot), and -- if we had spent $900 on the initial kit -- would have more than $1,200 into each of them. On average, we spend $500-600 per robot on competitive Vex robots.

The bane of my role as team purchaser are the gears (gulp!) and replacing defective 12-volt motors (gulp!gulp!). Our failure rate of 12-volt FTC motors is about 50% (half to broken power tabs, the rest to burning up under stall -- would a thermal shut off be that expensive?). I love FIRST, and some parts of the new FTC kit are really interesting, but these motors need to be made more robust and field-repairable. At least with the team discount, the motors are not too expensive (in robot terms). I do wonder, though, why the little FTC motor is the same price as an FRC CIM...

[Rick TYler]

Originally Posted by gdo

We actually were specifically centering our designs around minimizing our costs on parts. (...) So maybe $200-350 total for extra parts.

That still makes it an $1,100-1,250 robot. That's pretty pricey.

[Lowfategg]

We easily did 3.5k in parts in just one year when we did FTC. That was with vex though.

[Rick TYler]

Originally Posted by Lowfategg

We easily did 3.5k in parts in just one year when we did FTC. That was with vex though.

For one robot?

We've spent about $5,000 in Vex parts over the last three years, but we've used it to build ten competition robots.

(And that, my friends, is the largest number of smilies I've ever used in a single message.)

[vexman2222]

no kidding!!

Our vex teams have always had a $200 limit on extra parts, in fact, this year our in-house at our in-house vex competition, my team used less then $50 dollars of actual vex parts. I happen to have a large supply of Erector Parts that supplement the base kit very nicely. The only parts I end up buying are usually more motors. I believe this makes it more challenging to design a robot.
On an FTC note Our team has the additude that for $900 the kit needs no supplemental parts, and the only thing we have ordered is another motor controller.

(I beat you Rick TYler)

[JesseK]

This year we had 3 FTC teams, for a total of 30 students. We went to three competitions were very competitive in 3 of them (semi finals or finals), and won awards in 3 of them. I believe the parts & registration costs were around a grand total of $5k.

When I finished the BoM for our FRC bot, we were joking about how a single robot that 40 students experienced cost less than half of what the FTC teams cost. I'm pretty sure that the lower cost comes from the fact that we're able to machine down the raw materials ourselves and all of the metal stock doesn't come pre-machined with intricate hole patterns.

Plus solid aluminum gears cost a bundle regardless of what platform you're on. It's a shame they won't go to steel or do less machining in order to save on costs. Also, you have to keep in mind that the FTC motors already come with a gearbox attached, which costs another $50 minimum in FRC...which may explain their cost vs. CIMs.

[Rick TYler]

Originally Posted by JesseK

This year we had 3 FTC teams, for a total of 30 students. We went to three competitions were very competitive in 3 of them (semi finals or finals), and won awards in 3 of them. I believe the parts & registration costs were around a grand total of $5k.

We also fielded three FTC teams, in two events. All of our teams were returning, so had the $450 discount on the kits. The basic costs, then, were:

Parts $520 x 3 = $1,560 (includes shipping)
FIRST Registration $275 x 3 = $825
Event Registration $100 x 4 = $400 (only one of our teams went to Vancouver)
Practice field components and pucks $500
Total: $3,285

Other parts $950

Total: $4,235

If we had spent full price for the kits, the total would have been $5,585. Pretty close to what you spent.

[Rick TYler]

It's not fair, though, to think of first-year costs as the same as on-going costs. As long as FIRST doesn't replace the kit (they have promised they wouldn't), we can amortize these costs over several seasons. We have enough Vex parts to build five first-class competitive VRC robots, but we've been accumulating those parts for three years. Right now I think VRC is cheaper than FTC, but I'll know for sure in another year or two.

[Foster]

We fielded 4 Vex (VRC) teams this year. We spend:

$175 to register the teams (100 for the first, 25 for each following team)

Full setup for two new teams - Vex $450 each + tool boxs ($40 + 10) $1000

Misc parts for all four teams $1100. Robots this year were 100% more complex than other years. Prior years 4 motor per robot, this year 8-9 motors per robot.We spent about $250 on just motors.

$275 for 30 shirts printed front and back.
Went to two free scrimmage events and the regional was $100 per team

Total $2950 for 26 roboteers ($114 per roboteer) Each Roboteer was in 75% of the matches so thats (6+6+6)*.75= 13 matches per roboteer, or $9.5 a match. All in all we find the Vex program has good value for money. I'm working on a $5K grant to start 4 new vex teams (with a field).

We have new unused parts that will enter into next years mix.

[ManicMechanic]

We're a 3rd year team, VRC this year. We started with the equivalent of 2 kits, 7 students last year. We added 3 students, so we bought a used eBay Vex kit to keep the kit:student ratio about 1:3. This year's expenses:

$130...eBay kit
$100...registration for 2 teams.
$0......Tournament fees (we went to a free event with good sponsorship)
$220...Replacement and upgrade parts
$450...Total for 10 students, or $45/student

No field or field pieces -- our autoloader is cardboard, and we made cubes out of styrofoam meat trays until the Welcome Kit arrived.

Alas, all that frugality for naught with a trip to Dallas breaking the bank.

[Rick TYler]

I haven't added up our VRC expenses in detail yet this year, but it's about $2,700. We went from 18 students to about 30 in VRC. Some of our students only do FTC, so not all of our 40 kids are involved in VRC.

So our outlay was about $90 per student for VRC, not including what we spent the last two years, and not counting the $1,100 we spent on a competition field. We are hosting a tournament so we didn't have much choice on this, and it is the same field we use for FTC. If we added in the parts we bought the last two years, our direct VRC expenses would be about $5,000, or $100 per student/year.

For the 20 kids we have in FTC, it has come to more than $200 per student.

Our indirect costs (tools, storage, t-shirts, etc.) run to quite a bit. Overall, we spent $250 per student this year on the program and program-related expenses. This should drop next year as long as our membership doesn't increase.

We are now mentoring an FRC team that wants to do VRC, and plan on starting two new VRC programs in schools next year. The financial impact of this is not yet known, but we expect that the new programs will be self-funding, with us providing expertise. It's unlikely we will use FTC as a starter program for these three schools because of its higher cost.