But Wetzel, it does potentially affect you. Maybe that team that might have lent you a battery out of its supply of 8 now decides instead of dealing with the hassle of all the leads, they will only have 4 batteries at the event. They will have enough for their team to get by, but not any to lend out.
And as a footnote to those who have been saying, "We shipped the batteries" or "We would have shipped the batteries had we known of this" - that requires disconnecting the leads.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by 4.2.2
If you include batteries, you must:
Ship them inside their original box or carton packaging.
Use the Styrofoam covering with protective caps to cover the battery terminals.
Secure the boxed batteries inside the “inner battery box” section of the robot crate in an upright position. The photograph below shows a sample of an inner battery box built to comply with regulations. Remember to label this box…see below
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So beside a cost savings of carrying them in yourself, if the leads are allowed to be attached, you have a time savings over other teams that shipped.
That doesn't make this a good decision - the precedent set over the last several years argues against making this decision now. Even in years when you had to ship batteries with the robot, you only had to ship the batteries from that year's kit, if I recall correctly. You could have brought extra batteries from prior years (if they met the specs for current batteries) or others that you had purchased new.
One other bad sidebar to this - the Anderson connectors should be built new each year. You can use an old battery, but you can't use a fabricated item built before kickoff.
Don't anyone DARE ask that question to Q&A!!! Sometimes ignorance is bliss.