[dez250]

as of being a FIRST volunteer, and having worked with some of the inspectors, i am going to have to say weigh in with the battery, and to show you all the truth, no one can get away with a hollow battery in an inspection, unless the inspector misses or forgets to do half the inspection. See the battery is not really placed in there to add weight, it is in there to work as a BATTERY. I know this may be hard to fathom for some of you but the battery is an operational device of the robot, plain and simple. With out getting into much detail, when you go through an inspection, the robot should be turned on, this is to check for any wiring that may be done incorrectly and cant be seen by our eyes. Also it is to make sure all the parts (including the pneumatic pump, with an empty accumulator) turns on to fill it and turns off with the pressure switch when it hits around the correct PSI. Now i am not saying that you may think, OK then just place the battery in after the weigh-in, and that might work if bots were inspected properly, but as it is now, the battery is the robots weight so its included in the weigh in. Also i would not recommend people to try and fool inspectors with hollowed out batteries, because these batteries are filled with a caustic gel that i have seen eat through metal, due to a team member on an unmentioned team trying to shave weight off the sides of a battery and causing it to leak while in shipment... Now imagine that on your skin!
~Mike