Quote:
Originally Posted by martin417
(emphasis mine)
If you count assemble as a "modification", then you can't use any gearboxes from a previous years' robot, as it was fabricated prior to the season.
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Darn right! Our robot this year uses 8 gearboxes. Most were purchased before kickoff day. All were assembled during build season. If we had assembled them prior to kickoff day, we could have completed our robot earlier, providing us with a significant competitive advantage.
Quote:
Originally Posted by martin417
I know some teams buy shifting transmissions (expensive) and use them for several years.
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So you are saying that we are competing against teams who are assembling their sub-components prior to kickoff day? If you truly believe they are not breaking the rules, please supply the numbers of these teams. If we play against them at our upcoming events we'll let the robot inspectors decide if they are playing legally or not.
Quote:
Originally Posted by martin417
If you are going to point out that you could disassemble and then re-assemble the gearbox to make it legal, then I have to say that is just dumb. I don't believe that the GDC wants teams to perform mindless tasks that have no benefit to the kids.
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What the GDC committee wants is for everyone to be playing by the same set of rules. Whether you (or me for that matter) think the rules are "dumb", or simply inconvenient, doesn't allow you or me to just not follow the ones we don't like.
Quote:
Originally Posted by martin417
If an item is bought in an un-assembled state, and subsequently assembled to the directions (so it ends up in the state intended by the manufacturer), then it is still COTS.
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Our team's most precious resource during build season is time. It takes time to assemble things. The rules are written so that assembly of everything you didn't purchase pre-assembled must take place after kickoff day. Our team's strategy to get to an assembled drive train is to prepurchase all our COTS parts before kickoff day. Extending your argument beyond just gearboxes, if we were to decide to use an
Andymark 2016 KOP chassis on our next year's robot, we could buy one ahead of time, assemble it, and save a ton of build time after kickoff. After all, the kit includes a full chassis, wheels and gearboxes. So, on kickoff day 2016 we slap on some CIMs, and we've got our working drivetrain good to go. THIS is kind of thing the GDC doesn't want to see happening.