[Matt Reiland]

It was actually kind of sad inspecting last weekend at one of the regionals. We stopped 6 different teams that were trying to bring in entire arm assemblies fully assembled (We are talking 3 axis of motion BIG assemblies here). AND, they were all totally upset with us for not letting them into the venue in that condition (They had to go to the parking lot and take them apart). These 6 were only the ones that were blatently obvious, we also saw other teams pulling out smaller assemblies out of book-bags and plastic crates that they had brought in. I really expected less teams to push the rules as hard as they did.

My own opinion is that the rule is not good for the competition, especially for teams that are in multiple events. There should be some way for you to repair parts that are damaged in the events legally. The onsite machine shops are great for certain parts of the robot, but a CNC's piece that is fairly complex like some of the arm pieces on the robots would be very difficult to make at an event with the current rules. I would hate for this type of ruling to limit the design and build such that they stick to off the shelf clone robots instead of creating and machining ingenious mechanisms that may get damaged and require repairs.

But that's just my opinion....