FRC Carpet Potentially Discontinued?

Competition
1

We’re working to get fresh carpet for CCC 2022 from our usual local carpet supplier and have run into an issue regarding availability. This has normally been a non-issue in past seasons.

Here is the spec of the FRC carpet:

Shaw Floors, Philadelphia Commercial, Neyland II 20, “66561 Medallion” (please note that Neyland II carpet is not available for team purchase and the closest equivalent is Neyland III https://www.carpet-wholesale.com/item-316272/carpet/philadelphia-commercial/neyland-iii-20-12’/medallion.php).

Our local carpet supplier told us the following:

My Rep got back to me and it appears that they (Philly Commercial) are getting ready to discontinue the Neyland III, and likely not continue making 15’ goods of any style going forward.

Has anyone else heard similar regarding availability of the Neyland III going forward?

Does anyone have suggestions on functionally equivalent alternatives?

Best,

-Mike

12 Likes
2

How about lots of corn kernels?

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3

I didn’t know carpet had microchips in it.

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4

My team is buying a roll of 15’ x 105’ Neyland III and the Grey color that FRC uses is apparently extremely backordered. We are probably just going to get a different color but maybe the reduced availability could be drawn up to a discontinuation. Does only one company make said carpet?

5

Yeah it’s a Shaw’s Floors SKU. When we bought our carpet in 2019 it was a few week backorder at the time back then.

This might move our timeline up to try and get our hands on some now.

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6

Some fine people down in Australia needed some carpet when they bought an FRC Field Perimeter recently, so we sourced some carpet from American Carpet Wholesalers.

We purchased “Neyland III 20 - 15ft x 75ft 11in” without any hitch.

Good luck!

Andy B.

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7

Lunacy all over again??? Water game confirmed??? (joking)

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8

Maybe a game theme where we can use shag carpet? 70’s theme?

Or artificial turf? Football theme?

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9

Imagine all the little rubber bits getting everywhere with turf.

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10

Given the game theme… BATTERIES, a field of batteries…

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11

Disco balls?

12

And you think tuning auto modes is hard now because for precise operation you have to account for the carpet pile? Just wait, here’s a real challenge!

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13

Well, if teams localized using an external reference vs a encoder value it wouldn’t be a problem. Bring on the shag carpet and April tags

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@ghesla What was the brand of carpet you purchased for the recent Brazil FRC event?

Andy B.

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15

Has anyone contacted the manufacturer directly?

  1. Can confirm or deny possible discontinuation
  2. Can recommend a similar alternative.
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16

Wanna bet that HQ has already asked these questions for the 2023 season and/or following, and has a plan?

I could definitely see a backorder if HQ’s annual carpet order is going through at the moment.

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17

The actual competition carpet, Neyland II, was discontinued something like 5 or 6 years ago but every year when FIRST orders a few acres of it, they load that program, that year’s right color yarn into the machine and spit it out. So unless they are scrapping their 15’ loom I doubt they will stop making the actual competition carpet based on how many acres FIRST orders at a time.

If you order enough they will make any carpet you want.

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It is a basic commercial broadloom carpet. Some close equivalent will always be available. The current version is Neland III which still seems available. 12 ft seems to be more common than 15 ft.

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19

This has me wondering if FIRST could take pre-orders for a few extra rolls of carpet before they place their order for the season. I imagine the logistics after FIRST gets their order of shipping just two rolls of carpet directly to a team would be a major hurdle, though.

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Imagine a level of belief in community that this would require.

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