Quote:
Originally Posted by rsisk
Serious question....
The fan is not a pneumatic device
but the tube being filled with air is
right?
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Quote:
Originally Posted by notmattlythgoe
No. The pressure would be too low and if the fan is turned off the pressure is lost.
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My router died, so I've been offline for about a day, which is probably for the best. To amplify a bit on my last post in the other thread, I said essentially that I shall assume that the manuals are written in American English
except where the GDC defines otherwise. This is
exactly what I meant; when a word means something different in the US than abroad, the folks on the GDC meant the US description (e.g. gas torch means a device which projects flame powered by gas, not a gas lamp). The GDC regularly re-defines terms through the glossary and inline definitions (examples: those things on the front and back of my car are not BUMPERS, and the BATTER is not someone who bats, nor a substance which is beaten, nor a really high slope area around a tower used to redirect dropped items horizontally, but the low-slope area around the TOWER on an FRC field).
Pneumatic (leaving out descriptions of people) generally means "containing or working by compressed air". The game manual expressly excludes (via R77L) pneumatic tires (which usually do not do work beyond acting as springs), vacuum-producing devices (which can be argued as non-pneumatic according to the general definition as they work on the difference between ambient and
rarefied air), and closed-loop shocks (which act as springs) as pneumatic devices. It does
not expressly exclude fans, radial flow pumps, axial flow pumps, gravity pumps, or impedance pumps. If any of these devices create compressed air that does work (and there is no minimum PSI limit defined by the GDC for compressed air), then by the normal definition of pneumatic in the English language, I consider them to be pneumatic devices -- until and unless the GDC rules otherwise.
For the record - I am not trying to tear down any team that is using fans as pneumatic devices, just giving a warning that until/unless you get a solid ruling from the GDC that what you are doing is somehow an exception to the pneumatics rules, you may find your creative solution shut down at your next event.