[Cory]

Originally Posted by magnets

Excellent point. FIRST goes bananas about safety. There is a safety animation, a safety award, a safety manual, safety inspectors, and tons of safety rules on the robot. I understand the need for safety, but FIRST should be consistent with how they make calls like this. Why should canned air, used in an unrecommended situation be considered perfectly fine, while using an air compressor or a flap grinder in its recommended configuration be considered too dangerous for use in a pit?

It's not unreasonable to think that a safety inspector would call this out. FIRST seems to have given the okay on this for now since Einstein teams were visibly misusing the canned air to cool their breakers on the field, but I agree that the trick will be illegal very soon.

Teams have been using air dusters to cool motors/breakers since I joined FIRST in 2001. It probably happened before then too. You'd have to be a complete idiot to endanger yourself or anyone else while using it. Clearly a properly used air grinder is exponentially more dangerous than spraying an air duster upside down.