[Joe Johnson]

I really don't think that an absolute cap on energy stored in spring is required because it is quite difficult to actually store a HUGE amount of energy in a spring given the other rules of FIRST (weight, safety, cost and size).

The energy in the Battery is very very large in comparison to anything you could pull out a spring with a 1000 Watt removal limit.

The battery can quite easily provide an average of 100 Amp at 10 volts for the entire 2 minutes -- that amounts to 1000 Watts for 120 seconds or 12,000 Joules.

It would be difficult to store anything like that about of energy (legally) in anything other than latex tubing. I have not done a sharp pencil analysis but from what I can do in my head, I think it would take over 500 feet of tubing. Not impossible but not exactly easy either.

If we have to put in an absolute limit, I would make it pretty high, perhaps something like 3000 Joules (taking Mike Betts' number of 2 orders of magnitude higher than the limit FIRST set of 30 Joules). The exact wording would perhaps go like this:

No more than 3000 Joules of the energy stored in springs at the beginning of the match can be used to power your robot.

Comments?

Joe J.