2 Proposals to reduce waste in FRC

Each fall we go through our parts, and end up throwing out a lot of perfectly good 3D printed parts that could be used on future robots - spacers, shaft collars, etc. What is worse, is that each year as soon as the game is release, we print these exact same parts.

A second, but related issues, is that teams are incentivized to buy COTS parts and systems rather than develop their own. This is because COTS parts can be reused year to year, while custom parts, even if they do the same job, have to be built from scratch each year - a waste of materials and funds. Last year, despite several of our students wanting to design a climber, the team opted to buy a COTS climber system so that we could reuse it in the future (as an economic investment). As a community, we should be finding ways to reduce waste and encourage creative design. Below are 2 proposal to help with that effort:

  1. Any 3D printed part, whose CAD is public before the season, can be reused.

3D printers are ubiquitous at this point, and every team can print any component whose CAD is public. While there are some more advanced 3D printers out there, the vast majority of 3D printed parts can be made by any team at this point. The proposal could be limited to standard FDM printers.

  1. Any part(s) with public CAD which a team designs and fabricates that are a direct replacement for a COTS item can be reused.

The proliferation of COTā€™s sub-systems, which are allowed to be re-used, have disincentivised teams to develop their own systems because they can only be used for one season. It would be great if there was more incentive for teams to design their own systems rather than purchase them.

I know the limitation on re-using parts is meant to level the playing field, but in reality it seems that these restrictions are more advantageous to high resource teams which have the skills, time, and funds to get around them. Teams with the ability to do so build almost completely custom robots every year, so these restrictions do little to hinder them. On the other hand, low resource teams end up using their limited 3D printing capabilities to print the same parts year after year, and only spend resources on items that have future as well as present value, rather than developing their own technology in house.

I am curious what otherā€™s think, and any modifications to the proposals are welcome.

Should teams be allowed to reuse of 3D printed parts if CAD is avalible
  • Yes
  • No
  • Yes, but only they are made on a standard FDM plastic printer

0 voters

Part(s) that are designed and fabricated with public CAD and are a direct replacement for a COTS item can be reused
  • Yes
  • No

0 voters

6 Likes

Other people will have more insightful things to say, surely, but Iā€™d note that I would find it hard how to define what a ā€˜direct replacementā€™ is.

Say you have a climber in a box. Is a team that makes their own similar system but the climb arms are on hinges and have powered angle adjustment (as some teams did) a ā€˜direct replacementā€™ or something more/less?

What about if they use a different metal material? Or thickness? Does length count?

I (think I) understand what you mean by direct replacement but Iā€™d guess such things are quite hard to define and someone would simply have to define it, more or less arbitrarily.

1 Like

I think that allowing reuse of basically any custom fabricated part will be a net positive for the program. I think that the overlap area in the Venn Diagram of ā€œteams that can make advanced custom partsā€ and ā€œteams that will reuse parts from year to yearā€ is minimal. Typically the more advanced and complex a part is, the less likely it is to offer a competitive advantage to reuse it as-is the following year.

Perhaps things like drive gearboxes or custom swerve modules offer some advantage, but again, if a team went through the trouble of designing and fabricating something custom for which there are readily available COTS alternatives, it was probably to specifically suit that years robot or challenge, thereby reducing the likely hood of that part being a good drop in for the next game.

Overall, allowing teams to reuse parts year over year will, in my opinion, will raise the floor for developing teams without offering an overwhelming advantage to teams with high machining resources.

29 Likes

Why limit this to 3d printed parts? Our team has had COTS parts machined when they inevitably go out of stock. (i.e. we had the 7" greyt turret lasercut locally because it was perpetually out of stock for infinite recharge). Its functionally identical to the purchased version and if we are making allowances for 3DP why not for anything that is identical to COTS items.

6 Likes

ā€œDirect replacementā€ is incredibly hard to define, and even harder for an inspector to determine. For example, lets take a relatively simple case of elevator brackets and products offered from some of the major FRC suppliers:

I have seen and used all three of these solutions. Each one is different, has different pros and cons, and lends itself to slight variations in major subsystem design due to sizing, spacing, etc. Are these three products ā€œdirect replacementsā€ for each other, or are they separate and distinct alternatives? As a team, if we design something similar to one of these three, but providing a slightly different pros/cons list or allowing for a slightly different subsystem design, would that be a ā€œdirect replacementā€?

As for 3d printed partsā€¦ while I donā€™t entirely disagree, I do worry about the competitive impact this can have when comparing two low-resourced teams. One has been around for a few years and build up a stockpile of printed parts to use, the other may be brand new with no stockpile. Even running their lone printer 24/7 for the entire season may not be enough to print everything the first team has! I know we have other (larger) inequities between the ā€œhavesā€ and ā€œhave notsā€ of FIRST teams, but do we really want to be introducing another area of inequity within the program?

1 Like

Can you give an example of this part? I can only imagine simple things like spacers and maybe some hubs (which one could buy COTS anyway with the money).

Inequity between low resource teams is just another way of saying there will be fewer low resource teams. The ā€œhavesā€ donā€™t need any of this, so IMO it just raises a few low resource teams into lower-middle class.

8 Likes

My hot takeā€¦get rid of rules limiting reuse of parts entirely. All parts are legal. (Maybe force the open source rule, but even then)

If you want to build your custom chassis pre-seasonā€¦great.

You want to run your preseason elevatorā€¦great.

None of these parts are going to be tailored to the game anyways, so you still get an advantage for redesigning during season if you choose to do so.

These rules are generally unenforceable, confusing, wasteful, and make the program more expensive.

The best robots will still have custom tailored mechanisms for the game. In my opinion, getting rid of all these rules would raise the floor, without dramatically raising the ceiling.

33 Likes

I think what OP is thinking is not for a replacement to Climber in a box but more over spacers, motor controller mounts, etc. things that are 100% directly replaced by 3DP alternatives. They could probably label it as ā€œSingle components not designed to directly interact with 20xx FRC Gameā€

1 Like

It would be more fair to say ā€œCAD released prior to xxxx dateā€ to avoid teams releasing CAD on kickoff eve to ā€˜make it legalā€™ while preserving the competitive advantage of having it built long before any other team.

18 Likes

CAD released no more than a year prior to the current build season

I like this idea.

1 Like

Iā€™d reduce that to around 6 months or so - Otherwise, anything made during the previous build season would be ineligible and some teams like to clean things up a bit before releasing CAD and code.

2 Likes

Does this matter? The current open-source rules for software and designs donā€™t have a date and seem to work well enough, given the enforcement problems. The rules are there to encourage sharing of designs and software. If you set a date, that would limit the ability for teams to develop things after that date or at least lessen the incentive.

I am pro the open use of any part that has its design released to the public with the simplest and smallest rule set possible.

I also think FIRST HQ (or really anyone that wants to do more than our google sheet pages) should do more to build a central repository where teams can share their designs and software.

11 Likes

I am fully in support of this statement. My original proposals were more restricted - a first step. But given this support for the more open use of parts, I am curious if this is where most people are as well?

Do you support the ā€œopen use of any part that has its design released to the public with the simplest and smallest rule set possibleā€?
  • Yes
  • No
0 voters
1 Like

Iā€™m pretty sure we decided around 2017 that printed hex spacers were entirely too low of a bar to follow the letter of the rule on. Didnā€™t even open source thatā€¦because I just shoved Vexā€™s CAD model into the slicer and scaled it up 3%.

13 Likes

The problem with things like this is you get teams following different rule sets.

This was the same problem with the BOM. Some teams were limiting their designs to follow the BOM rules while others were just ignoring them.

22 Likes

The rules should reflect reality. Stopping teams from reusing parts is silly and nigh unenforceable, particularly in an equitable manner. Itā€™s time for those rules to go.

26 Likes

So, are you saying that you would not be in favor of allowing previously printed parts because, while it would help some low resource teams, it would not help all of them?

My perspective is that if youā€™re looking at two parts that are essentially identical, itā€™s pretty dumb if one is legal and the other isnā€™t.

4 Likes

The current rules make it too easy for good teams to basically ignore them and use their own ā€œā€ā€œpublicā€"" libraries and designs year after year. It would be nice if there was some kind of regulation on what counts as ā€œpublicā€; for example, posting a link to the repository on the official FIRST forum or something.

I really donā€™t think itā€™s a big issue. But it would be valuable for lower resource teams to be able to find these releases in a known place. Seems to me that making more designs public would only be a good thing for most teams.

3 Likes

I donā€™t think what Iā€™m about to say is actually a good idea to implement verbatim, but your post made me think of a utopia/dystopia in which designs were usable if the repo had won an ā€œengineering documentationā€ certificate the year before. Itā€™d be similar to old website awards where the judges (or peers?) gave a ā€œyou passedā€ certification in addition to picking the final winner. Set some usability criteria and a review system that encourages (maybe even logs) meaningful sharing. I wonder if thereā€™s an efficient way to do that.