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This is a tough call.
The fact that you are not only reducing weight, but also changing gear ratios, makes it tough to justify having custom gears made. I understand that you would count the more expensive cost of custom gears. The hard call comes in deciding whether the custom gears would be customarily available to anyone and does that make them "off the shelf"?
Here is another dilemma we typically encounter:
You build your robots and spare parts all within the 6 weeks. But in your haste to complete everything on time, you rush through your manufacturing. So, you ship your primary robot and keep your prototype robot to practice. While practicing, you break something. Are you allowed to fix it? Well yeah, as long as you restore it to its original form and function. But what if during handling of your proto, you cut yourself on a sharp edge or corner? You realize that the robot you shipped also had sharp edges because in your haste, you forgot to deburr the edges. Should you be allowed to deburr the edges on the proto so you don't keep cutting yourself when you handle it? Well, I would hope that it would be within the spirit of the rules to prevent us from hurting ourselves continuously. What do you think?
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Warning: this reply is just an approximation of what I meant to convey - engineers cannot possibly use just written words to express what they are thinking.
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