Fabrication

[Anupam Goli]

We've all heard the arguments of in-house fabrication vs outside fabrication, and we know the answer depends on what your goal in FRC is and what your team wants to do. However, there is a point where things are taken too far.
FRC provides an engineering experience in designing and assembling a robot. However, the emphasis here is design. My team has become a team of fabricators. Our team does not do design, we design around the parts we fabricate. We avoid outside fabrication because fabrication is "the fun of robotics" I'm not arguing that fabricating parts is fun, but if you solely want to fabricate and not design, that is not engineering.

Has this problem occurred to anyone else, and has it gone to the other extreme?