[ChrisH]

In past years you had to provide a Bill of Materials (BOM), including the source of all parts, for your robot. This year it was eliminated because "nobody used it for anything".

We made one anyway. If you pointed to any part on our robot, our compliance person (your team has one right?) could tell you where it came from and why we thought it was legal. We might have been wrong, but at least the judge would have our reasoning.

The act of creating such a document forces you to consider your sources. This is a very good way to self-check your robot for illegal or questionable materials.

The weekend before ship Chatsworth, Team 22, hosts a practice competition every year. Inspection is part of it. I was one of the inspectors this year and I tried very hard to be ruthless. I'd rather have a team at least be aware of a problem before they shipped than have a surprise when they got to the regional. If you don't have enough teams near you to have a mini-competition, just have another team send a representative to check your robot and you send one to check theirs.

Sample violations I found:

3/32 and 3/16 plywood - Only 1/4 and 1/2 were on AHL, and similar plywood was not from available from SPI. If it was really essential they could have sanded down 1/4 to get the right thickness, but they had used stuff they found around the shop. Both teams thanked me for pointing this out. In one case they were waiting for the "correct" material to arrive and were just using the plywood for the mini-competition. The 3/16 ply was a non-conductive support for the light. But it should only take 15 minutes to replace it with legal materials. Weight would probably be a push, depending on what the replacement was.

Control system grounded to frame - This was unintentional and a possible safety issue. This was later corrected.

Van Door motor - had a big argument on this one. There were mentions of the Van Door motor inadvertently left in the rules and the mentor assumed that meant he could buy one and use it. I don't know if it was ever fixed or not.

Arguably the Van Door motor was the only violation that provided a possible competitive advantage.

At the mini-competition these violations got you a "fix it ticket". You could still run your robot and then fix it in the two or three days before ship. Or you could just hope it wasn't discovered. We left it up to the teams, what if anything, they were going to do.

Both the BOM and the courtesy inspection force you to THINK about what you are using and why. The rules are there to level the field a bit and ensure that the materials used are reasonably safe (ie. no Berylium). As long as we're mostly on the honor system there will be violations, both purposeful and inadvertent. We can't do much about the purposeful violations, some people will always bend the rules no matter what. But by forcing people to think about what they are doing, we may prevent many of the inadvertent violations.

If we're going to have rules about materials they should be strictly enforced. If not enforced they should be abandoned. Mr Gray responded while I was writing this, but I like his suggestion. It allows inadvertent violators to correct mistakes while making it a disadvatage to violate the rules.