What to Ship

[jaketessem]

We read somewhere that you can withhold 65 lbs of your robot and dont have to ship that 65 lbs on tuesday. Our robot only weighs 40 lbs. What are we required to send, we would very much like to keep everything else to work on it until the competition. Please Help!!!

[Chris is me]

Read the latest Team Updates and Q&As.

The GDC has specifically stated there is nothing your team has to ship. So yes, you can.

[dtengineering]

You don't have to ship anything in particular... in fact, you could just send an empty crate so that it is easy to ship your robot back home after the competition.

But that means you only get to bring 65 pounds of fabricated parts in to the competition with you. Keep in mind that if a motor is mounted to a transmission, or if it has a terminal attached to the wires that it is now a fabricated part. You also get to bring your control board (the classmate, joysticks, etc. that never goes on the playing field) and that doesn't count towards the 65 pounds.

So, if your entire robot, including both sets of bumpers (but not battery) weighs less than 65 pounds, you don't have to ship it. You might, however, want to ship any fabricated spare or replacement parts that you think you might need. You might even want to ship 50 pounds of ballast so that you can add it to your robot to help keep the 120 pound robots from pushing you all over the field.

You might also want to check out this thread http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ght=witholding

I'd say that if you've got your bumpers made, that you should ship them, along with any spare parts that you think you might need that are no longer EXACTLY as they were when you purchased them. That way you can maximize your use of the 65 pound witholding limit.

The rule is there for you to use... so study it and use it wisely.

Jason

[Techgirl675]

Would you be able to post a link to where on the Q&A is says this?

[dtengineering]

Originally Posted by Techgirl675

Would you be able to post a link to where on the Q&A is says this?

This link is from post #39 on the thread I referenced above. http://forums.usfirst.org/showthread.php?t=14653

Did you remember to search before you posted?

Jason

[Techgirl675]

Originally Posted by dtengineering

You don't have to ship anything in particular... in fact, you could just send an empty crate so that it is easy to ship your robot back home after the competition.

But that means you only get to bring 65 pounds of fabricated parts in to the competition with you.

So, if your entire robot, including both sets of bumpers (but not battery) weighs less than 65 pounds, you don't have to ship it. You might, however, want to ship any fabricated spare or replacement parts that you think you might need.

I'd say that if you've got your bumpers made, that you should ship them, along with any spare parts that you think you might need that are no longer EXACTLY as they were when you purchased them. That way you can maximize your use of the 65 pound witholding limit.

The rule is there for you to use... so study it and use it wisely.

Jason

[quote=

This year we've put all our electronics and pneumatic valves into a 20 pound control box, and built two complete chassis. One chassis will ship, along with the bumpers, weighing in at about 75-80 pounds. The control board, and backup chassis will stay behind, so we can practice driving, refine our software and still have 20 pounds to build a lift or some other mechanism as we watch and learn. [/QUOTE]

Our team has been reading over these posts (and more of them) about holding back parts of the robot. We are considering shipping our pneumatics system, kicker and finale components along with bumpers and other odds and ends. Doing this would allow us to hold back our electronics and chassis, to continue programming the drive a little better and the autonomous.

What we are asking is- Is this legal? The rules state that withholding materials include spares, upgrade parts and replacement parts. Obviously our running chassis would be none of the above, but the GDC's reply post in the first forums says, "There are no requirements on what is included or excluded from the WITHHOLDING ALLOWANCE".

[EricH]

The withholding allowance is Fabricated Parts. Nothing keeps you from holding back your robot. (Well, other than weight...)