Quote:
Originally Posted by dradel
Curious here... It was my understanding that parts that are used on a bot cannot be reused on a later bot if it is modified. Technically speaking wouldn't putting fittings into an air cylinder make it no longer off the shelf?
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...And then when you take them back off, it returns to being a COTS item.
Quote:
Originally Posted by dradel
So by your reasoning a team could reuse cylinders, transmissions, compressor, swerve drive and so on if they disassemble then reassemble ?
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If they are off the shelf items, with no modifications whatsoever, yes absolutely. Hundreds of teams reuse compressors every year.
If the swerve drive happens to be a bought product, and again if the parts are unmodified, it needs to be restored to an off-the-shelf state and then it can be reused.
Any custom made parts, any COTS parts modified by machining, anything you actually "made" cannot be reused. So this is why teams design and build new drive bases every year. But if both drive bases use Toughboxes, and they didn't add any mounting holes or otherwise change them, reusing is functionally identical to buying another. So to save teams money it's permitted to take those COTS Toughboxes and put them on a NEW custom drive base, for example.
Again, *any* modification (that isn't / can't be reversed) changes the part from COTS to a custom part and it cannot be reused.
All of this post assumes the 2015 rules are similar to the rules in 2014 and before.