Originally Posted by bduddy (Post 1354861)

That has nothing to do with them counting towards the weight of your robot. If they are intended as interchangeable parts (a concept which is not fully defined in the rules), they all count.

Originally Posted by mrnoble (Post 1354869)

1) ...
2) ...

Originally Posted by mrnoble (Post 1354869)

My understanding of the hypothetical versaplanetary problem is as follows.

1) Are the gearboxes pre-assembled? If yes, they are modified, in a way that is intended to be for the robot in question, and should count towards the 45 pounds. If not, or if they are disassembled back to original condition, they are COTS. Even so, "modifying" a gearbox by putting it together isn't something I as your competitor would grouse about, unless...

2) they are intended to be swapped out interchangeably to modify the performance of the robot, especially from round to round, based on the desired function per each round's competitive requirements. If so, you are treating them the same way other teams might treat interchangeable appendages. In this case, they should all definitely count towards your 45, and I WOULD grouse about it.

Originally Posted by neshera (Post 1354782)

Mr. Schreiber:

1: "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."

How about closing the door(s) to your lab and not accessing the fabricated parts in there during the competition? You could just bring 45 pounds into your pit area on Thursday.

2: "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. "

Only if you use it. Again, put yourself in the shoes of any other team at the Northeastern Regional. More importantly, however -
It's not a problem to have your shop/lab/parts at the same institution as the competition. The distance from the field to your CNC machine is not the issue.

3: "FIRST isn't fair and neither is life."

Both true statements. But recognize that part of the attraction of sports in general is that there are rules to try to "level the playing field." If the goal of FIRST is to change a culture, and to make it a mass movement, it is in all of our interest to try to make the competitions as fair as we can, and to attract as many students as we can.

4: "I'm going to ignore the thinly veiled assertion that I am planning on breaking rules."
That's what the emoticon was for! No assertion made.
Good luck at your competitions!

Originally Posted by Anupam Goli (Post 1354898)

FRC Q&A 396:

https://frc-qa.usfirst.org/Question/...-long-as-we-do



Some food for thought. I think I'm even more confused by their definition of static in this case.

Originally Posted by Anupam Goli (Post 1354898)

Some food for thought. I think I'm even more confused by their definition of static in this case.

Originally Posted by Anupam Goli (Post 1354911)

So from what I'm gathering, according to the definition of "static", it's okay to have in mind what you need to pull from your practice bot by the event, but you can't decide to pull your arm beforehand, but then pull your intake during the middle of competition? Or is it just saying that the Robot Access period is a disjointed part of the event, and for teams going to a district competition, the withheld set of items can't change between the access period and the friday of competition?

Originally Posted by Wayne Doenges (Post 1354926)

Q. Can we bring an old robot to the competition for the purposes of using it to supplement our Chairman's Award presentation and not have the weight count against our team's 45 lb withholding allowance?
Follow FRC0340 on 2014-02-25 | 1 Followers
A. These items would count towards the 45 lb limit in R18.
I think this pretty much solves the problem.
If the GDC counts a old robot against the 45 pound with holding, they would consider a new robot the same way.
So now lets stop :deadhorse: and go play Aerial Assist :D

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber (Post 1354932)

Sure, can I just say that the GDC needs to pull it's collective head out of a certain part of their anatomy? That's possibly the second stupidest ruling I've seen recently from them (the dumbest being batteries counting against withholding which they did resolve).

By this logic any robot built for demo purposes that a host team may want to have outside to interact with students would count against their weight. What if for part of my RCA I want to bring my FTC team's robot for display in my pit?

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber (Post 1354932)

Sure, can I just say that the GDC needs to pull it's collective head out of a certain part of their anatomy? That's possibly the second stupidest ruling I've seen recently from them (the dumbest being batteries counting against withholding which they did resolve).

By this logic any robot built for demo purposes that a host team may want to have outside to interact with students would count against their weight. What if for part of my RCA I want to bring my FTC team's robot for display in my pit?