Yep I said it but not for the reasons you think. I brought this subject up to a few people at kickoff. First IMO can’t keep a 6 week build season if they want to grow first. We are killing the worlds supply on items and its only getting worse. This year will be the year of no / short supply for pneumatic tires. This issue will also happen again next year to another part or item. IMO if we want to grow first we need to change. While the challenge of building robot in 6 weeks is a good experience not have any parts for 3 of them is not only unfair but a buzzkill. Also how many millions of dollars is wasted on overnight shipping becasue of a 6 week build?
I’ll disagree because literally most of that happens in the real world.
I don’t think this is the only solution to the supply/demand problem. FIRST has a lot of options to help suppliers meet demands, warning them ahead of time that certain items may be in high demand might be another solution. Having a tight production schedule, and having supply constraints are both real world issues that companies face all the time. Being able to come up with creative solutions to those problems is rewarding in it’s own respect. Pneumatic tires aren’t the only way to slay a dragon.
Perhaps FIRST could set up their own reserve of parts either through AM or through some FIRST owned store?
Who here wants to lay out a million dollars on tires people may or may not want to buy? You can’t blame AndyMark or Vex Pro for limited supply. Forecasting is extremely hard. Ordering too much can cost you dearly.
Supply and demand Is real worth stuff. The 6 week time frame is the too big apart of frc to ever go away.
I’m more worried about people not getting electric wheel chairs built on time because we need robots.
We got lucky and ordered tires a day before they sold out. Sometimes what helps is timing. It would be neat if for at least one season, FIRST tried to do a 7 week season. Maybe then we’d see the real effect of extra time.
The world is not out of pneumatic wheels. I can drive down to my local harbor freight and pick up plenty right now.
One of the cool things about FIRST is that it’s an open materials competition. We don’t have to use a specific wheel from a supplier who caters specifically to FRC – we can put any wheel we want to on the robot. And maybe take the opportunity to give students a taste of how it was back in the seasons of yesteryear, when you couldn’t buy everything with 1/2" hex bore+1.875" bolt circles, and had to use some creativity to make it work on the robot. The real world doesn’t snap together easily.
IMO we could just announce the game and never do the bag and tag part of it.
That’s a new idea
Here is what has, IMHO, has been implied with some of the posts in this thread but not actually said. Having a shortage or a lack of availability of parts is part of the real world in multiple facets. First suppliers must try and predict the quantity that will be wanted and then how much in terms or raw materials and wholesale product they need to buy. Second if what you want is not available then this actually presents you with the opportunity to find a similar product that is comparable just from a different source. If no such product is available then coming up with a new solution that doesn’t rely on the missing product is part of the challenge of FIRST and having a limited time frame in which to build your robot.
FIRST is dumping everybody’s time and money in the garbage by not telling suppliers that they’re going to need certains parts. I understand that it “adds to the real world engineering challenge”, but if our goal is “to make FIRST available to every high school student”, shouldn’t we try to help the suppliers that make this program possible not waste money?
I’ve heard people say that no suppliers are given advanced information about the game, but is this still totally true? I know AndyMark knows what the game piece is ahead of time, but I’m guessing they had no idea that the game would favor pneumatic wheels, otherwise they would have came up with the kitbot upgrade kit earlier, and would have made more wheels/Rhino tread parts.
6 weeks is a big commitment students. The way it is lined up right now for the school I mentor is that the entire season is nestled in between the end of winter break, and the start of spring break. I’d have to pull a calendar to see if there even was a bigger period of time that could be utilized. I mean I guess you could cut into summer and do post spring break well into summer, or summer into fall. Anyway I’m not a calendar guy but the time period does give use those two important breaks in a school year where our students can spend time with family and friends.
The challenge with letting suppliers ahead of time causes the problem of information control. Who do you tell what information and then what is done with that. For example if AndyMark was told that they would need to have available a bunch of treads and pneumatic wheels then obviously they start buying more of this. Now I don’t know how many AndyMark employees also serve as mentors to teams, but if they did and they started noticing that hey, where getting a lot more pneumatic tires, or we need to produce and have available more Rhino treads, maybe my team is going to need a stronger than usual drive train this year. Does this really tell you any accurate details of the game, no; however, it does give these teams some time in the offseason to start working on chassis designs a head of time and give them a head start when kick off come around.
That seems like a point in favor of nuggetsyl’s no bag and tag argument. That plus pushing kickoff earlier or regionals later.
Actually what would be interesting is to compare what teams order compared to what they consume through the build season, and what just goes to waste. For all we know teams could be over ordering parts and then going “wait no we didn’t need this many” and things just go to waste.
Mayhaps someone should start a surplus thread where teams post valuable items that for whatever reason they purchased but no longer need.
Please God no.
As the lead build mentor, I can only take so much robot build before I get fired from my day job.
We rescheduled half of our build meetings to the evening for the same reason. That said, I think an open build season would help, rather than hurt. If you can only put in so much time, than you could space it out with shorter meetings over a longer build season. Your boss would thank you.
This. When I was on this team and now when I come back and “mentor” (term used VERY lightly), first semester finals fall directly in the middle of build season. You may think that this is an argument for a longer build season but the fact that finals are in the middle of build season and mid terms come around right after build season (actually I’m not sure about that for this school anymore but MY midterms definitely do… lol ;)) it’s fine the way it is. Also, mentors are here for a LONG time. 6 weeks is plenty.
Of course your argument is about supply and demand (basically), and to that I don’t have much to say. I just wanted to say that any longer than 6 weeks can cause a commitment issue (hell there’s already commitment issues but that’s a story for another time) so maybe you are correct and a longer build season can fix that issue but for students you want to keep it at 6 weeks.
Snap forgot about finals…
Yeah I’m not sure a larger period of time is even available. Either way I feel 6 weeks is a good amount of time it applies pressure but is reasonable.