How is it possible that less than 4 hours after kick-off the cage and the reef scoring pipe are already sold out. This seems to be a complete failure on FIRST’s part.
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Well… 2023 hinges were no different. Some of this comes down to suppliers. I am sure Andymark does not want 500 unsold cages/reef pipes to go with their fuel. I don’t recall if there was some sort of order limit on the cages or reef pipes (seems like a mildly equitable way to handle the situation)
Far from ideal for sure. But I am trying to see if from their perspective.
At least game pieces themselves are relatively easy to make/substitute for the time being.
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We have the reef pipe and hanging cage coming in, starting to ship week 1.
Note both are unwelded (DIY) and the scoring pipe has the pegs clamped on.
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The AndyMark reef pipe was either never available or sold out in the first 2 minutes of kickoff, because I kept refreshing the page during the game animation and when the page finally went live it said it would be in stock on the 15th and wouldn’t let me order. Kinda rough there’s a difficult to manufacture field piece that is critical to scoring that I can’t buy an official version of for a week and half post-kickoff.
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We tried to come up with a low cost, easy to assemble version that mimics the shape of the reef scoring posts. Teams should be able to pretty easily fabricate the gussets and get something going hopefully, especially since you’re already in the PVC aisle at the local hardware store.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/10f65VqIGIpw-AIX_nJelyWTBZQZnUs5x?usp=drive_link
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The estimated back in stock date will be the first shipment we (AndyMark) received. They have not been available yet. The cages actually sold out in roughly 4 hours.
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I think we are letting Andy Mark off the hook. They know how many teams there are and what the demand is going to be. We are not one of the rich schools able to buy things at the drop of a hat. I have to get purchase orders written and submitted, and I didn’t even get a chance to get to work to get this done. It’s unfair and always puts us at a disadvantage.
This happens every year, and we are only allowed to use approved motors, servos, and controllers as specified by the organization FIRST. While I understand the need for regulation, the issue is that Andy Mark never has enough of these items in stock. When we identify what we need for our robots, they are often sold out.
For example, I need a mecanum wheels setup this year. I just put in the purchase order on the site, but tomorrow I need to get this PO written. Will they still be in stock by the time I can get this done? Any grants I get have to be administered by the school (FAMIS) or by our PTA. I can’t just see something and buy it right then and there. I am really upset by this!
Andy Mark should be aware of the number of teams and the demand for their products. It’s disappointing that this issue has not been addressed, and it continues to impact our ability to compete on an equal footing.
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I’m not sure I can agree. While the number of teams is a known factor, that really just defines the total market for FRC specific products. Even with game pieces, it can be hard to tell how many to make, as some teams may just use the single one in the KOP, and others may order enough for a full practice field. Judging how many of anything is needed to stock of an FRC part is hard, and I’m sure andymark gives their best guess of what the people want.
The extremely high seasonality of FRC, where most of your business comes from Jan - April also has an impact. The impacts of stuff going out of stock are magnified by the fact that not having something in your hands that day means major setbacks to build. This sucks, but cannot really be avoided, as again, demand is hard to know.
However in this case, it’s a set of products that are extremely hard to judge demand for, as AM field elements are basically the ones on the competition field, and thus designed to meet that spec, rather than being the cheapest possible home practice elements, like offered in part by other vendors. Thus, many teams may opt for other products, and so AM might have made less than there was demand for, assuming other vendors cheaper options would be more popular, or any number of other reasons.
I understand issues with purchase orders and funds being tied up in red tape, but this is why it is often recommended to purchase things you know will need next season to alleviate this, like motors, tube stock, wheels and the like. In addition, there are many other vendors who offer versions of what Andymark sells if that is an option.
Finally, the fact you mention ordering mecanum wheels concerns me a bit. This thread outlines why mecanum drivetrains are not it in 2025.
However if you’re ordering mecanum intake wheels, please carry on.
All in all, the frc market is highly seasonal, with demand that is hard to assess. This can lead to out of stock products, but in many cases, there is replacements from other vendors available, and I caution against mecanum drivetrains.
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I’m not sure AndyMark is the right target of frustration here. AndyMark is a business and needs to take sensible risks. Overall, if we want this to change, we need to have constructive ideas to address the full range of the issue, not just bash AndyMark for not being able to predict the future or bear immense financial risk, because asking them to do either of those isn’t reasonable.
The larger problem is that AndyMark will take on risks for FIRST that no one else seems to want to bear… the result is that there are some “sole supplier” issues where FIRST really can’t push AndyMark to take unreasonable risks, and I suspect there aren’t others who really want those risks. So I view this really as a FIRST problem, not an AndyMark one. Unfortunately, I don’t think FIRST will take on more risk (you can see in many places they try to externalize as many risks as they can), so there’s a huge dilemma for the community to address.
While they can know the number of teams, I can’t see how the part about predicting demand is anywhere near true. If they knew, they would order the exact amount. Predicting the future is REALLY HARD. There is no way AndyMark should be held to perfection, much less accuracy on forecasting demand for these types of parts.
I think this is a reasonable concern, and I think with items selling out in single digit hours, there is something that isn’t working well. I hope no one at AndyMark or FIRST in NH thinks it’s fair. I’d love to see an apology from FIRST on this, because I think it demonstrates they didn’t BROADLY learn from the root causes of the game piece issues, they just solved the tactical issue… but I won’t hold my breath.
The question is what we as a community can do about it. This problem has similarities to the part pre-ordering for this season (to correct issues on opposite ends of the spectrum between Steamworks and last year) - which I happen to think was a brilliant solution. That needed decisions and control at FIRST in New Hampshire as much as or more than AndyMark, I suspect. I think the same will be needed here.
The challenge with the cage in particular is that it requires cutting strong materials and welding … which means this isn’t just “we can get materials from somewhere else and figure it out”. It involves getting thick steel bent and welded, and then considering how much the paint may matter to getting a sufficient grip on the cage. So my frustration is the compound nature of the problem: The part went “immediately” out of stock, and it’s basically impossible for us to build. FIRST in NH didn’t give us the ability to know in advance welding would be a critical need if we didn’t “win the lottery” on buying the part. So now instead of doing early season things to support the team, our mentors have additional work in discovering new suppliers and figuring out how to get something built and welded in short order. That tight “lottery” combined with the thick steel bending and welding, in my mind, is where the failure really shows and where I don’t think the outcome for this year is fair or reasonable.
That said, there are a few different ways this situation could be improved:
(1) Make all purchasing of field elements a “first choice like” lottery. Everyone submits their desired orders by Tuesday noon, and the winners ship Wednesday. This doesn’t solve the volume problem, but it at least improves on the existing lack of fairness to getting many teams access to one item, when others can order as many as they want early on (similar to last year’s game piece problem). This also helps with teams that require certain approval processes.
(2) Have a clear set of things teams will need to access in order to build critical field elements. This, of course, requires FIRST to communicate clearly and think end-to-end on what is necessary. Thinking this through may also help AndyMark know when there will be significantly more demand for certain parts. I’ve never been on a team that has wanted field elements before (too many can be emulated closely enough), but the cage is unique enough that the proxy just isn’t close … and I’m concerned about the wooden version’s ability to support sufficient weight - e.g. climbing on 4 1/2"x1/2" pins on the upper surface of the lower plywood will likely be beyond the plywood’s compressive limits… so I would have expected extra demand given the unique construction needs of the climbing element (and it being a climbing not scoring element). Perhaps this can be thought about in the future, and there are various parts to a solution here - when the required skills are communicated (e.g. needs to be months in advance), if it’s a standing list vs communicated each year, etc. There’s obviously a balance here for FIRST in how to do something like this without giving away too much of a game.
I happen to think “pre-order field elements” won’t work unless some clear combination of the above is specified. I can’t see my team buying 95% of field elements from AndyMark, so we wouldn’t generally preorder… but if it was “this is heavy steel that requires cutting, bending, and welding and is only $200”, the equation changes. It’s especially true when it’s magnitude $200 vs something much higher. When field elements are $400-500+, we’ll almost never do it. We don’t have the budget. So this being “hard to build” and “cheap” means it may have more demand than past field elements.
Hopefully there are more ideas folks can bring out.
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Threaded rod, 3/4 plywood and the eye/chain stuff should get you close enough for week 1&2 prototyping. But the real deal will matter a bit for sure, especially with the deep cage.
This is the first time in a while we have had part of the field like this where the real thing matters a lot. In this case I wish FIRST had designed the cage a little different: from HDPE, unpainted sch40 pipe, threaded rod, maybe a 2D steel plate or two, etc.
Make it so we can build all the critical dimensions and surfaces on a router, maybe order a small part that can be made quick (steel plate). Reduce the labor demands or financial risk demands on Andymark. Win win win.
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When the reef sections are up for sale, will there be a per-customer limit?
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Aiming any of this at Andy Mark is wrong. Andy Mark produced a product. If FIRST didn’t make sure there would be enough for teams, that’s on them. Don’t blame a small company for the parent organization issues. This is no different than sourcing a hard to find game piece.
AndyMark took 6 years to get rid of the extra 2017 game pieces.
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they still have 4965
but the whole issue here sucks. while you can make a decent replica of the reef thing, the cage is gonna be weird. maybe the real cage is the friends we made along the way
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Not only this, the game design committee NEEDS to start putting more resources into designing field elements that are more conducive to being made at home by teams, or at the very least elements that can be easily transformed into accurate Team Element versions constructed with standard woodworking techniques instead of the gross monstrosities they release plans for today. Even getting an actual carpenter to look over the Team Element plans would be a slight improvement, because it certainly appears that whoever currently designs them has little to no practical construction experience.
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I appreciate Thrifty Bot coming through with an affordable reef alternative. Has anyone come up with an affordable cage alternative?
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SendCutSend wouldn’t make the official cage plates for us, because the inside bend radius is too tight for the material thickness. It’s only 0.030", which means the 0.135" steel is actually starting to be displaced / cut by the bending die.
It seems that the smallest radius that can be bent without hitting this inflection point is 0.086". I’m researching the viability of making non-standard cage plates bent at this radius, and possibly a jig to help with welding or epoxying the tubes and plates together.
If you deviate much from the bent-sheet-welded-to-pipe construction of the official cage, you rapidly start having to either pay for or do a lot of fabrication, or change the shape. You might be okay with changing the shape if you already know what parts of the shape aren’t relevant for your climber, but no inexpensive non-official design will be able to work with all possible climbers.
While your frustration is understandable, demand really isn’t that predictable particularly for season specific stuff. If your ordering process is slow, you could try buying your basic materials before season. Make a guess at how many motors, wheels etc. you’ll need and keep some stock on hand. I believe some suppliers will let’s you submit blank POs early and chose what you need later, but you’d have to talk to them about that. If the school or PTA won’t let you order components before season or order parts as you want them, that is a discussion you need to have with the school/PTA, maybe you can get pre approved to use a credit card at certain suppliers, or start to break your parts budget off into an account your mentors control directly. Unfortunately I’ve heard about a fair number of teams who don’t have control over their spending and have these issues.
I have been told there will not be a per customer limit at this time. Should that change before they come in, I will update.
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Will there be another batch of cages going up for sale?
I do not blame any supplier for not wanting to stock what is an expensive one game use item. I am annoyed with FIRST for making the angles for the assemblies unique so that the items cannot be accurately mocked up using standard pvc plumbing fittings.
We are fortunate that we have the equipment to make the pieces at our shop, but I know most do not.
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