As an inspector, and as a volunteer, and as an engineer on a team,
if there is a way to get a team to pass inspection and allow them to compete I would most likely do it. That is what our job is, as told to us by FIRST.
Our robot this year was cut from a sheet of 1/4" aluminum and left many small parts, I would not account for each part as a small piece of aluminum, only the large piece that we bought to make all of the smaller pieces since it is the cheapest. My interpretation of the rule is that it is there to help teams if they need it. If they buy a large sheet and it is cheaper than use that price, if they bought a large expensive sheet but only used a small amount and it is cheaper to account for it buy prorating the cost to a smaller amount I say go for it. I know there has to be some line, not like we are going to use the cost for 100 tons of aluminum then divide it up smaller.
There are many solutions to the above problem also, I could say I needed to buy that larger cheaper amount to account for scrap in the process of machining, laser cutting, or water jet cutting. After the processing on the parts the total amount used on the robot might only be half but due to the process you might always need to buy more even though you can't use it on the robot
, or teams may have made doubles of everything for spares and the cost of the spares didn't need to be accounted for. (We have quite a few bad parts from the laser cutting experience through 1/4" Aluminum)
I think the Bill of Materials is pretty much a joke anyway, the cost of the materials on some of the robots is a
very VERY tiny fraction of the cost to fabricate them, and this cost is magically
ALWAYS covered by the team's sponsors on every BOM I have ever looked at. I can't even guess how much money the machining would have cost on some robots this year, if it were not being done by sponsors of the team.
So did Blueabot cook the books, maybe but I would still let them compete. As an inspector, how would I know if the $499 they say they spent on sprockets was really $700? or $1000, I have no reference in front of me for some of these items to know the real cost. Along the same lines how would I know what Strongstuff and Lightstuff really costs unless I used it on my own robot?? On a side note I don't think I saw a Bill of Materials for over $2800 at WMR.