pic: Legal Frame ????????????????

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Kevin,
Good thing I am in a good mood today.
Good Luck!
Al

[budly99]

Originally Posted by Vikesrock

You mean the robot that they put in hundreds of hours prototyping, designing, and entering into CAD in meticulous detail? Some teams emphasize the physical shop work of putting a robot together, but it is by no means a requirement of the competition. The process these teams go through is likely far closer to an actual real life engineering process than what your team does or what mine has done in past years.

Sorry for venting. I have asked to have the post removed. But, most teams do not have the option of shipping off a design and have the parts made for them. I was only referencing a post I saw last year. FIRST is about the journey...but most of the awards are based on final product.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Mr.G

Definition of wrap

wrap verb
a : to cover especially by winding or folding
b : to envelop and secure for transportation or storage : bundle
c : enfold, embrace
d : to coil, fold, draw, or twine (as string or cloth) around something

Al, I am just having fun now, but I disagree per the above definition. When "wrapping" an oddly shaped present you would cover each segment as I have stated for placing the string around the robot.

Cheers.

Except that paper would not be touching the interior vertices. Instead it would be touching the outside vertices of the concave polygon. Any frame that is a concave polygon is illegal because all of the vertices on the polygon are not touched when you wrap a string around the bumper perimeter. I don't like the rule but I also don't like several other rules, doesn't mean I can break them.

If you want to align yourself consider making an asymmetrical frame and deploying a single bar out. That way half your force is taken by the bumpers. Alternately if you are just worried about another robot ramming it you can place it up in the air and only deploy it when you are going to score. Or you can just build it strong enough to take hit... you know, like we had to do back in the day when we didn't have these fancy bumper things.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by budly99

Sorry for venting. I have asked to have the post removed. But, most teams do not have the option of shipping off a design and have the parts made for them. I was only referencing a post I saw last year. FIRST is about the journey...but most of the awards are based on final product.

Teams including my own have worked very hard to secure the ability to get stuff machined off site. We have a small sponsor that churns out CNCed parts like no one else and we're very grateful. It took my team tons of work to come up with what little resources we had.

What makes you think the teams you are referencing just had these sponsors fall into their lap? What makes you think if you're not standing by the mill as it's running you're not trying, or you've somehow done less engineering?

[budly99]

Originally Posted by artdutra04

My standard advice:

Stop whining about something that can be fixed by working harder.

Teams that have the resources to do lots of prototyping, design their entire robots in CAD, send the parts to machine shop sponsors, and assemble completed robots are the way they are because of a lot of hard work. These resources and relationships did not just fall in their laps. These teams provide their students a very engaging and rewarding opportunity to work with engineers and companies, to participate in an advanced engineering design process, thoroughly ideate and test prototype ideas, understand topics like manufacturability and limitations of various fabrication technologies, see how using CAD software significantly improves the final robot, and much, much more.

Instead of whining about these teams, recruit engineering mentors. Recruit machine shop sponsors. Fundraiser throughout the year to afford lots of prototyping. Learn and become fluent in CAD software. With enough hard work, any team can become a top tier team.

How do I know this is possible? When I first joined 228, we had about eight students and an annual budget of about $12k. Last year, our budget was probably among the top quarter percentile of FRC teams, we had identical practice and competition robots with parts made at our school, at two sponsor machine shops in Connecticut, and at one sponsor machine shop in California. We attended three official events and took home a Regional banner and Regional Engineering Inspiration award. We bucked the traditional advice against never designing a swerve for the first time during the build season, and did just that (and even made it able to drive over the bump), and other than a bearing defect issue (out of our control) got it working within the six weeks build. And we worked our collective buts off for the entire year, both inside and out of the six week build, to fundraise and get the resources in place to make all that possible. Our goal has never been to whine about the top tier teams, but to become one.

Kudos to all the teams that can accomplish this. I was responding to the post about an illegal robot getting an award, and the poster wondering how it can happen. My point is I believe there is a bit of a contradiction between the mission of FIRST and the way awards are won.