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Re: "Spare Parts" Rules Are Broken
I think this example is how our team dealt with the "Spare Parts" rule.
Our robot was shipped with a 2x ball grabber. At Sacramento, we realized that it did not have enough torque to successfully lift the ball consistantly and that it was too difficult to operate. We took a hacksaw and removed the entire arm.
We put the remaining robot into the box for Silicon Valley.
At home, we worked on a design to modify the arm to be able to hang.
In order to comply with the rules, we avoided any part that required welding or complex machining/manufacturing. When we drove into Silicon Valley that morning, we brought a tiny portable drill press and a lot of raw material, almost straight out of the store, with only a couple aluminum plates actualy cut to size (since we couldn't do these with a chopsaw, too inaccurate). At the competition, on Thursday, we spent a whole 8 out of our 10 hours working on the arm, while others worked on the program and such, drilling parts with our drill, and cutting the aluminum tube extrusion down to size. We had to set up our pulleys and Fisher-Price motor-powered winch, all parts bought straight out of a store and unmodified.
Clearly, these raw materials were not spare parts, as they were unique and fully intended to create a new mechanism. However, they were store-bought and unmodified until Thursday. But I don't feel that bringing raw, store-bought materials is in conflict with the rule as stated, and that it seems most people on this thread would agree.
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