I think there is a very significant portion of veteran teams that would benefit more from using the KOP chassis than giving them a $450 voucher. How come it isn’t in our best interest to prevent them from making the wrong choice?
In 2011 half of FRC couldn’t put up more than one tube in a match or launch a minibot, and there weren’t that many rookies.
I’m certain you do know a lot more than I about drivetrains, and I likely would agree with you after I see the game that the KOP drive would be used for, but…
…suppose you had already raised and spent money on a C-base chassis, two toughboxes, CIMs, along with other components so that your team had something to work with during the pre-season time period. It’s tough for a rookie team to get those $$ together. Wouldn’t you want to be able to use a voucher for parts other than those you had already purchased - the same as other teams are able to do - rather than receiving near duplicates in the KOP?
Sounds like a practice bot to me!
Not all rookie teams are even in a position to fundraise enough to buy a Kitbot at this stage of the game. In fact, I would say that you’re in the 1% or so that are. If I was a rookie, and saw that I could get a frame or $450, what would I go for? Probably the $450–not realizing how hard it is to build a custom drivetrain.
What FIRST is doing is, they are forcing the rookies to take a drivetrain and work with it during the season.
Maybe some of the rookies are doing that in the offseason. Well, I don’t suppose that those rookies can repurpose some of that material into, oh, I don’t know, superstructure? How about spare parts?
You’re not wasting money. You’re building inventory. And if your programmers don’t have a testbed working by the time the real robot is handed over to them 2 days before bag, that’s their problem. Practice robot, anybody?
And just let them sit on the shelf until kickoff, because you can’t fabricate anything you’ll use in competition except during the 6 weeks, right?
As a rookie team, you will find your sub-teams stretched during the build season. The programmers need a robot to test code/electronics on and the build teams needs the base of the robot to make the top of the robot.
When 3467 was founded, leadership knew what to expect and in pre-season so we had some old robots from teams from around the area and purchased a second KOP chassis from AM along with a second control system. While a significant expense we knew it would pay for itself over the course of several seasons. We can have a practice chassis that the programmers use to test code and prototypes and our real robot so mechanical and programming aren’t working over each other. Additionally, after your robot is bagged or shipped you have duplicate chassis your drivers can get comfortable on and depending on the rules you can keep part of your robot to work on. This past year it was a 30lb allowance that didn’t have to be bagged so we kept our shooter to tune and test code. Make sure you read the rules!
As a rookie most of us here would recommend you invest pre-season. It will give every aspect of the team a chance to work before you get into the hectic build season. Give your mechanical team some time assembling a chassis and chain.
Yes, that is exactly what we have now, except it’s not only a driver practice bot, it’s a whole-team pre-season practice bot.
I guess I’m one of those people who doesn’t like to be forced to do something, even if it’s for my own good. 
Yes we might be able to repurpose some of our components into superstructure during the season - that was one consideration in choosing what to buy this year. We’ve tried to be very careful in spending our money so we end up with the most flexible situation next winter in terms of spare parts and COTS items we could use in the winter.
No, that’s not it at all. We haven’t purchased anything ahead of time we don’t plan to use for pre-season learning activity - we couldn’t afford to.
We’ve spent one grueling nine-hour saturday going over the 2012 game and rules so far in a sort of mock kickoff, and we hope to do more of those covering other seasons before the 2013 kickoff. We will do our best to comply with the robot rules - anything we use next winter from our practice bot will be removed and then assembled to our competition robot.
Yes, we’re trying to do as much learning as we can pre-season. We have a full, driveable KOP-like base built with a complete control system - HP let us buy a cRIO II using our temporary team number. Team 67 gave us a copy of the 2012 programming software. We’ll have a complete pneumatic system when a few more parts are delivered next week.
Thank you all for your responses. I realize your advice is to help a rookie team start off on the right foot.
I do not disagree that a KOP drive base could very well be the best solution for us next winter and that a practice bot would be very useful. I’ve been very interested in the recent discussion about belts and I’ve been intending to bring that up with the rest of the team next week. Regarding the voucher though, I would rather have the same flexibility you have to choose - if we need to - to use a voucher on components other than the drivetrain parts we already have - parts we can use for our competition robot’s effectors for example, like more jaguars, a gearbox…
I’m conflicted, slightly.
On the one hand, 2815 has used the 2011 and 2012 kitbots with very light modifications (mostly to make it 6WD) and won three regionals with them. It works!
On the other hand, I know 1293 attempted to make belts work with the C-Base in 2011. They encountered enough flex issues with their arm that they ended up only using belts on the center-to-front run and chained from the gearbox to the center and rear wheels.
On the other other hand, 1293 also didn’t have the brain trust you get when you put Gates, AndyMark, and FIRST’s KoP engineers on the task. I’m not saying they’re infallible, but I imagine this is the group I’d want to assemble if I was trying to get such a belt drive working in mass quantities.
We’ll likely try it. And even if it turns out horribly unsuitable for our goal, well…we know a thing or two about chain.
The kit chassis can easily be stiffened with a few pieces of 1x1 tubing running across the inside.
Also, to those mentioning the $450 voucher - I really believe $450 is not hard to raise in a single weekend or a single bake sale, even in the worst locations, it can be done. Yes the veterans have flexibility to make the choice to take the voucher, but $450 isn’t all that hard to raise, even if you are a rookie. If someone needs fundraising help, feel free to PM.
First I know it is no one’s responsibility to give away spare parts. However it is an extremely common thing to do. One of the useful advantages of the kit bot chassis for young teams and teams with fewer resources is that they can almost always find spare parts at competitions from veteran teams that didn’t use their kit bot drive train. I know we gave away half of our kit wheels this year to rookies that broke theirs. There will be far fewer spares at competitions in the coming years.
I for one am leaning to getting the kit bot chassis because I find it a very valuable tool to teach new students and it also gives the team experience using the parts that the rookie teams use. That way we can help rookie teams at rookie builds and at the regionals. If we didn’t have our own kit bot it would be much harder to get our team up to speed on how to help others.
I was discussing this with some students at a team meeting yesterday, they seemed interested as it would be a fairly easy way to try out a belt drive with minimal risk. Especially as it is something we have debated trying for years but have never gotten around to attempting.
I’ve been waiting for someone to say this…Yes money is money, and every dollar has to come from somewhere, but taking a team on the road for a competition costs a ton more than this. I really think that this gives the rookie teams a “fall back” if they choose to try something more adventurous and it doesn’t work…at least their kit will have the base drive train…and it sounds like an awesome one this year!
I’d like to pay Michigan prices and get 2 regionals for less than the price of one. Or continue to get the control system every year in the KoP.
Unfortunately life isn’t fair. At least FIRST is trying to make the KoP more valuable for as many teams as possible.
Then you’re lucky that you only have to endure this hardship for one year, then you are free to do as you please.
Would first choice be allowed for teams who chose to pick the $450?
Nothing implies that FIRST Choice would not be allowed if you choose the voucher.
Keep in mind, technically, and as the KOP Engineers view it, FIRST Choice is a completely separate component of the KOP from what you receive on kickoff, ie. when you get the kitbot.
I would assume so. FIRST Choice is available to every team; maybe some of the items aren’t normally available (or are much harder to get), so to not have FIRST Choice available to the voucher teams would be a slap in the face that they wouldn’t forget soon.
Could you please clarify what you meant by that 2nd sentence?
Before 2009, the Kit of Parts included a new complete control system every year.