Machining in the pits at regionals

[Gary Dillard]

Anyone run into this one?.....

7.7.9 ...Grinding and tools that cause sparks are not allowed in the Pit, so teams must use the machine shop when repairs and fabrication may produce sparks.

Thursday at Central Florida Regional they made an announcement in the pits that you were not allowed to cut metal in the pits, all metal cutting and machining had to be done in the machine shop. The origin was reasonable enough - someone was grinding in the pits and sparks were flying so they made the announcement. I went to speak to the safety reps to clarify the announcement, and they said cutting "plywood or plastic" was OK, but not metal. They said that the interpretation they had received from FIRST for "tools that cause sparks" was any metal-on-metal fabrication, and they were trying to make things consistant across regionals.

After a long, spirited but friendly debate with them (as you can imagine) I told them I would contact FIRST about it since it seemed unreasonable. Thankfully this letter of the law wasn't enforced - they still allowed teams to use hacksaws, drills, files, we used our mill and lathe - so they weren't unreasonable about it, but I'm curious if anyone else has run into this? If it's a non issue I won't even bring it up to FIRST.

Can you imagine hauling your robot to the machine shop everytime you want to drill a hole in it or file off a sharp edge?

[tbush503]

I was kind of a student mentor for vex team 173 at the UTC New England Regional, and we had that same problem. We came in with an incomplete robot and needed to cut metal to finish our ball collecting unit. We started cutting and they told us to stop because of the sparks. We were able to us a hack saw, though, so complete our robot just in time.

[MrForbes]

Sparks are only produced by using an abrasive at high speed on steel, so this is what needs to be controlled.

In general, non-abrasive machining and filing, and any work on non-ferrous material, do not cause sparks, and should be allowed.

[Rombus]

at Buckeye, they dident seem to make any announcements, but i dident see anyone grinding on the robot. Ill fess up to breaking the rule about soldering in the pits though, but it was 3 joints to wires that ran though the robot, and there was no way i was going to let someone else attempt that join when i knew i could do all three in about a min.

I know it doest make any rule breaking any safer, but i saw atleat 3 other soldering irons out in other pits too.

[Andy A.]

I've run into this rule when using a dremel to cut off some protruding bolt heads.

I was producing some sparks with the cutoff wheel. I was also pretty careful and used a bit of aluminum as a shield. The 'safety guy' was pretty cool about it, and let me finish the bolt I was on and told me to use a hacksaw for the rest of them. He understood that I was being safe about it but that his job was to enforce the rules. So no more cutoff wheels for the rest of the regional.

I can understand the rule- it's to protect us and the venue. Still, I guess I would like to see an allowance for maybe allowing this sort of thing if you can get a safety rep to supervise and sanction it.

-Andy A.

[dlavery]

Thursday at Central Florida Regional they made an announcement in the pits that you were not allowed to cut metal in the pits, all metal cutting and machining had to be done in the machine shop. The origin was reasonable enough - someone was grinding in the pits and sparks were flying so they made the announcement. I went to speak to the safety reps to clarify the announcement, and they said cutting "plywood or plastic" was OK, but not metal. They said that the interpretation they had received from FIRST for "tools that cause sparks" was any metal-on-metal fabrication, and they were trying to make things consistant across regionals.

Gary -

It sounds like a slightly over-exuberant pit announcer and safety rep. There is no rule against metal-on-metal fabrication (otherwise, fastening a screw with a metal screwdriver would be prohibited). While this is, hopefully, an isolated incident it is probably worth taking it to FIRST just so they know and can make sure that no one else runs up against this.

-dave

[the_short1]

Mainly, my interpretation of the rule, is just to prevent sparks that may cause fires, can you imaging having your pit display (carboard, pictures, etc), clothing catching on fire due to sparks landing on it, your whole pit catching in flames, all taht work going to waste?.. no.. please dont make sparks in the pits!

[sanddrag]

I think the no grinding rule is for the flying debris and for local regulation on indoor sparks. The funny thing is, I've ground steel as hard as I could to make the most sparks possible to try to light a propane torch and absolutely nothing happened. It didn't even light. I think the risk of fire from grinding sparks is extremely minimal, but I think the bigger concern is flying debris and local regulations.

[KTorak]

at Buckeye, they dident seem to make any announcements, but i dident see anyone grinding on the robot. Ill fess up to breaking the rule about soldering in the pits though, but it was 3 joints to wires that ran though the robot, and there was no way i was going to let someone else attempt that join when i knew i could do all three in about a min.

I know it doest make any rule breaking any safer, but i saw atleat 3 other soldering irons out in other pits too.

I must have skimmed over the soldering rule. I soldered some connections at GLR over the weekend in our pit.

[Rombus]

I must have skimmed over the soldering rule. I soldered some connections at GLR over the weekend in our pit.

Yeah, its under 7.13.1 "Pit and Competition Safty"
Brazing/Welding/Soldering: Prohibited at the pit stations. Use the machine shop.

Could the possibly mean pipe soldering? I was using my personal iron which is a nice temp controlled fast heat fast cooling model. I think total hot time for the iron being on was less than 5 min. Heck, i even think a safty advisor walked by as i was doing it.

[MrForbes]

The funny thing is, I've ground steel as hard as I could to make the most sparks possible to try to light a propane torch and absolutely nothing happened. It didn't even light.

I've set a few things on fire when grinding steel at my home shop over the past decade...like a box of tissues on the workbench, and dry grass outside.

There is a real fire danger, but that is not the only danger, the sparks do cause pain when they contact exposed flesh.

[robochick1319]

I was at the Central Florida Regional and I remember that announcement.

As the Safety Captain, they told me exaclty what the problem was but I too had questions about drilling and filing.

I don't know who you talked to but, the rep I spoke with said those were fine as long as no serious sparks took place.

There were a lot of safe teams at Florida but there were some dangerous ones as well that caused that rule.

[Mike Hendricks]

This came up at the Davis/Sacramento regional last year (at least to our team personally) ..

We were using a dremel to cut off a piece of aluminum on our robot, and one of the safety people told us to stop; dremels were not allowed in the pits for cutting and grinding (sheesh .. what else would you do with a dremel?). They didn't seem to mind drilling or filing however. I also remember that we had to take our robot up to the machine shop trailer (I can't remember why, I think we needed something welded on it) and the people at the door did NOT want to let us take the robot outside. Finally, after "discussing" it with them and a FIRST official, we finally were able to take it up to the machine shop to have it worked on. While we're talking about the machine shop, I also recall an instance towards the end of Saturday when we needed to go pick something up from the shop that we were having done, and the event people (from the college) refused to let us go outside because they were moving crates.

As for soldering, I remember a clarification to that rule last year in the Q&A. In the rule book where it says Welding/soldering/brazing (that's not a direct quote, I don't have a rule book near me right now), that is referring to pipe/metal soldering; "Safe soldering is allowed".

Personally, I feel that as long as its being done safely, theres no reason not to allow dremel tools in the pits. In fact, Section 7.16 even suggests bringing a dremel tool with accessories, and a soldering iron (with accessories).

While you can appreciate FIRST's efforts to keep the regionals safe as possible, it seems like there is a line between safe and too safe and lately, a lot of regionals have been boarding on it.