[JamesJones]

Sometimes I read FIRST rulings and just shake my head. I am convinced that they just don't really understand how many teams work. Here's the new ruling:

There have been many questions on figuring the total cost of additional components,
particularly with regards to labor from a machine shop. If a machine shop is a team
partner, i.e., the shop’s name is part of the team’s name, their labor can be excluded from
the cost of the robot. Conversely, if the machine shop is not a team partner:
• You must include their labor charges;
• If they donate their labor, you must include the fair market value of their labor.

They better start getting ready to announce some awefully long team names because we have five machine shops helping us and I don't think we could even build our gearboxes for $3500 in fair market value machine shop labor. Looks like they are all going in our name along with our main sponsor who, though generous with money, in unable to help with manufacturing. My impression is that FIRST was thinking a $3500 limit wouldn't change the robot designs much. If you have to bookkeep market rates for machine shop labor, that changes things drasticaly and we can throw out a weeks worth of design work.

James Jones
Engineer/Coach
Team 180 SPAM