Re: Were to store practice bot at regional?
 

I understood Adam's question the same way you did. My answer is that the practice robot is a FABRICATED ITEM, and that team access to such items is limited to 45 lb during an event as required by R18.

Re: Were to store practice bot at regional?
 

I think you are reading way too much into this. If I bought a 20' piece of 1" angle last year, and cut 1 foot of off of it to make a robot part, then by your definition, the other 19' would be off limits for this year.

Also by your definition, if I had a piece of 8020 that was 24" long on my last years robot, that I then disassembled and put in the parts bin, I couldn't cut a 9" piece off of it and use it this years bot.

Pardon my bluntness, but that is the most ridiculous interpretation of the rules I have yet seen.

Many of the components of every robot I have been associated with were made from scrap parts and pieces of material from the company where I work. They had been previously cut, drilled or otherwise modified to be a part of something else. After the team further cut, shaped and modified them, they became robot parts. In the following years, as long as the part is modified from its condition as used in the previous robot, it is legal for this years robot.

There is no rule that describes "raw material" as brand new, never cut or modified material. If I use a piece of 1" angle, and apply manufacturing processes to it to make it a part of my robot, its history has no bearing on its legality as a robot part. There is no magic that is imbued into the metal when it is made into a robot part. I get no advantage from using that part unless I use it in the same exact configuration as it was used in a previous robot.

Re: Were to store practice bot at regional?
 

Let me reiterate what I said and hope that you can read it this time.

Fact: We have a lab at Northeastern University
Fact: All of our stuff is there
Fact: There is an event at Northeastern University
Fact: We are competing at that event


Based on the logic presented earlier in this thread it would stand to reason that by the very virtue of these facts 125 is breaking the rules since we have > 45 lbs of fabricated parts at the venue (specifically all of our prototypes, test chassis, old robots, replacement parts, broken parts... heck, I think we have close to 15 lbs in prototype launcher forks alone).

The only solution I could see to this issue (because under that reading of the rules it is an issue and I would, of course, need to rectify it) would be to remove all of the offending parts from my lab. Do you understand why I have an issue with this notion?

This isn't even approaching the issue that our entire machine shop is available to us at the venue which I assume would also fall under your statement of unfair.

I'll leave the exercise of redoing this with our shop 5 minutes across the street from the venue (or 5 miles) as you will have the same issue with fairness. To which I will simply say, "So?". FIRST isn't fair and neither is life. Legal situation - I bring in 30 spare VP versaplanetaries of various configurations because I want to change my intake roller speed. That's likely over $1000 in parts. Nowhere is that on my BOM. But team 5905 that doesn't have a large budget and is 4 students out of a dad's garage can't do it. And the team from Mexico certainly can't, shipping would be silly on that. You gonna tell me I can't do that next? It's the EXACT same situation.



I'm going to ignore the thinly veiled assertion that I am planning on breaking rules.

Re: Were to store practice bot at regional?
 

Wouldn't the 30 spare gearboxes all count your total robot weight if you intended to use them in different configurations?

Re: Were to store practice bot at regional?
 

No, they are COTS items.

Re: Were to store practice bot at regional?
 

Even if you intended to use the different gearboxes to give your rollers different speeds? Wouldn't this count under the different configuration clause of the robot weight?

Re: Were to store practice bot at regional?
 

What part of "unlimited raw materials and COTS items" is unclear?

Re: Were to store practice bot at regional?
 

As I was reading through the manual on Bag Day, I wondered why the 'identical replacement parts' clause had been removed as well. I guess looking at it one way, some may have argued that this essentially allowed teams to 'upgrade' their robot while still keeping the parts 'identical' (to most observers) - but then again, even that doesn't seem to make sense.

Regardless, the whole 'keeping the practice robot in the trailer' thing doesn't bother me one bit. Looking at the 120lbs of robot sitting in the parking lot, I'd be willing to bet that a minimum of 1/4th of it could be made into 'unmodified COTS' components, at which point, if the team were to use them, it'd really be no different than getting a replacement from spare parts. After that, assuming you've removed about 30lbs of COTS stuff, you've probably got 90lbs of robot left. How much of that 90lbs is actually stuff that can be transferred from one machine to the other? I'd be willing to wager not much more than half, if even that much... You've got to remember, the team in question would be disassembling their robot in the parking lot to get a spare off of it, so I highly doubt they're going to spend 2-3-4 hours taking the thing apart just to replace something on their comp bot, but who knows.

All of that being said, I understand why people are arguing it's illegality, and I'd have to say that depending on how exactly you phrase it, it's either illegal or at least 'questionable' - but I'm not sure if it's really the biggest problem here... There are teams out there that struggle to build competitive machines every year, and are tempted by 'stretching' the bagging rules - we've all heard about it, and probably have seen it happen first hand - these are the teams that we should be worried about, not the ones with the practice robots in the trailer. I'd be willing to argue that most teams with a practice machine in the trailer aren't going to be the ones that you have to worry about stretching the unbag rules...

One last note on the spare parts thing, I'm pretty sure that removing the 'identical part' clauses from the unbag/witholding limits only serves to hurt under resourced teams. Technically, according to the rules, I could in theory, use one of my unbag periods to turn some amount of raw materials into spare parts, throw them in the bag, and be perfectly fine. The only limiting factor here would be the resources the team has access to during the unbag period - which as we know, varies greatly from team to team...

Re: Were to store practice bot at regional?
 

For the purpose of inspection, yes, these would count towards the robot's weight. The team in question would need to narrow the field of (30) transmissions down to some number that wouldn't increase their machine's weight outside of the 120lb limit.

Now, if they were to test before they were inspected, and narrow (30) gearboxes down to one, there are no problems here.

As far as getting in the door is concerned, since the (30) transmissions would be unmodified COTS components, they're a non-issue, at least when looking at the withholding allowance.

Re: Were to store practice bot at regional?
 

So if I assemble a gearbox out of various COTS parts, its a fabricated item? If another team breaks a near identical gearbox and I want to given them mine; I have to dismantle mine to COTS parts and reassemble because my gearbox was not part of their original 45 pounds?

what about lending a spare intake? a custom wheel that fits 1/2 hex? What if I take a fabricated item, and remake it into something else at the competition with another team, can they use it then? in 2011 you could lend a minibot for coopertition points. A lot of cool blockers were made last year during the lunch break, how come those collaborations can't become more sophisticated? What if a team made a simple plug and play hot zone detection? Would they have to supply it to every team to be fair or could they give it only to their alliance members?

Seems like these rules work against efforts to help another. If I can't give a non-cots part because its not declared with the original 45 pounds, I feel that is against the spirit of FIRST.

Re: Were to store practice bot at regional?
 

Well, I'm glad I asked. I had no idea that this was such a loaded topic.

Our intent in bringing the practice bot was to harvest COTS parts from it. We brought enough raw materials to fabricate repair parts in the pits, and have done so, rather than use fabricated parts of the practice bot.

Based on the responses here, it sounds like it's more sporting to do the harvesting at home. We'll do that for our next regional.

Thanks for all your input.

Re: Were to store practice bot at regional?
 

None. The unclear part is part of the hypothetical of bringing 30 COTS gearboxes of different ratios to provide different speeds to intake rollers.

Re: Were to store practice bot at regional?
 

If your different gear ratio caused the gearbox to have a different weight, then you should have the bot re-inspected (as you should do any time to make a modification if that modification makes a change to your weight, or adds a new component.) But it is perfectly legal to bring all those gearboxes, and they do not count as part of your weight. Obviously, you could not install all those gearboxes due to rules about number of motors, weight, etc. But you could certainly bring them in.

Why dont we ask first?

Re: Were to store practice bot at regional?
 

You should have the robot re-inspected regardless of whether or not the weight was changed - nothing in the rule about re-inspections mentions weight.

Also note that if you plan to repeatedly switch gearboxes, the inspectors may consider them "interchangeable parts" and add all of them to your robot's weight.