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Unread 14-08-2014, 12:53
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Karthik Karthik is offline
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Re: Pneumatic Restrictions & Improvments

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jon Stratis View Post
I remember people rejoicing when this rule disappeared a few years back. To ensure safety from exploding tanks, though, it wouldn't surprise me if we saw something similar to this appear in the future... although it would probably just list legal storage tanks and not put a limit on them. Kind of like we have a list of legal batteries.
This seems like a good compromise. If FRC could do some testing and give us a list of certified safe air tanks, teams would have plenty of notice and an unambiguous set of guidelines to work with.

As for general limits on the volume of storage, I would hope we wouldn't see those return. Prior to 2011, those volume limitations made it very difficult to use pneumatics without having an on-board compressor. With the weight and battery issues caused by a compressor, teams often skipped pneumatics entirely, with the exception of their shifters. Once the limits were removed we saw a huge increase in the usage of pneumatics, coupled with many unique designs which were previous infeasible or very difficult (254's jaw in 2011, 2056's shooter in 2013). There's been a definite evolution in design as a result of these more relaxed rules, and I'd hate to see us take a step backwards in terms of the functionality of robots.
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