[Jeff Pahl]

Standard disclaimer - this is based on the 2013 rules...

In my opinion, such a motor modification would be illegal. I do agree, it does not affect the power output of the motor. However, the challenge of incorporating an encoder into your design without modifying the motor should just be considered part of the challenge each year.

Allowing a modification of this sort would then open up a whole slippery slope of other teams wanting to do other things to motors to simplify their design process. Which will then lead to inexperienced teams doing things they should not do, like drilling through the important parts. And it just gets too hard to inspect and have to make judgement calls at the event as to if a certain modification is legal or not. It's hard enough telling teams that their bumpers or frame are not in compliance with the rules, without having to tell someone that their custom motor modification is illegal and quite possibly render their entire robot or competition strategy useless. Allowing modifications of this sort would probably be enough to cause me to stop being an LRI.

One of the things we do in the manufacturing side of engineering is constantly implore the folks on the design side to learn to work with stock parts instead of custom "altered items" which always seem to experience lead time issues.