[Mike Hendricks]

This came up at the Davis/Sacramento regional last year (at least to our team personally) ..

We were using a dremel to cut off a piece of aluminum on our robot, and one of the safety people told us to stop; dremels were not allowed in the pits for cutting and grinding (sheesh .. what else would you do with a dremel?). They didn't seem to mind drilling or filing however. I also remember that we had to take our robot up to the machine shop trailer (I can't remember why, I think we needed something welded on it) and the people at the door did NOT want to let us take the robot outside. Finally, after "discussing" it with them and a FIRST official, we finally were able to take it up to the machine shop to have it worked on. While we're talking about the machine shop, I also recall an instance towards the end of Saturday when we needed to go pick something up from the shop that we were having done, and the event people (from the college) refused to let us go outside because they were moving crates.

As for soldering, I remember a clarification to that rule last year in the Q&A. In the rule book where it says Welding/soldering/brazing (that's not a direct quote, I don't have a rule book near me right now), that is referring to pipe/metal soldering; "Safe soldering is allowed".

Personally, I feel that as long as its being done safely, theres no reason not to allow dremel tools in the pits. In fact, Section 7.16 even suggests bringing a dremel tool with accessories, and a soldering iron (with accessories).

While you can appreciate FIRST's efforts to keep the regionals safe as possible, it seems like there is a line between safe and too safe and lately, a lot of regionals have been boarding on it.