30 lbs allowance

[team 3311]

Hello guys,

I've got a question.
How serious are they about the 30 lbs? Would they let you go with 35?
Please tell about your experience from the other regionals this year.

Thanks for responding

[dtengineering]

How serious are you about following the rules?

Jason

[sportzkrazzy]

At Florida they weighed everything you brought in the door in terms of spare parts.

[big1boom]

They are not going to weigh your withholding allowance (or at least we have never seen anyone getting spare parts weighed, even when we brought in a whole robot as withholding at 10K lakes last year (it was within allowance)). It is up to each team to stay within the withholding allowance weight on their own. That being said, if you bring in a whole robot, some people may look and wonder if that qualifies.

[Navid Shafa]

Originally Posted by dtengineering

How serious are you about following the rules?

Jason

Well put. If it's a rule which everyone else is following, what makes you think that it should be any different for you?

[Steve_Alaniz]

No... most places do not weigh your 30 lbs... If you bring it in as raw material and assemble it there it only counts as the actual machined or altered parts... it is all very tricky... careful reading of the rules will allow you to maximize this to well beyond the assumed normal definition. Usually, they are aware that your team spent $4 - 5 thousand to register so they look for ways to bend over backwards to allow you to compete. I have seen "illegal" bumpers, illegal parts and illegal drive trains allowed to compete. In THIS year by the way, so as long as it is not blatant... and you do not gain an unfair advantage... you can compete. Oh they may try to be politically correct but 35 lbs.. 30 lbs... they have bigger fish to fry... and I wish they would.

Steve

[team 3311]

We actually weren't planning on having more than 30 lbs but our cover turned out to be very very heavy.
We could take it apart again, which would make it to spare material, but that would be just stupid taking stuff apart and back together.

No... most places do not weigh your 30 lbs... If you bring it in as raw material and assemble it there it only counts as the actual machined or altered parts... it is all very tricky... careful reading of the rules will allow you to maximize this to well beyond the assumed normal definition. Usually, they are aware that your team spent $4 - 5 thousand to register so they look for ways to bend over backwards to allow you to compete. I have seen "illegal" bumpers, illegal parts and illegal drive trains allowed to compete. In THIS year by the way, so as long as it is not blatant... and you do not gain an unfair advantage... you can compete. Oh they may try to be politically correct but 35 lbs.. 30 lbs... they have bigger fish to fry... and I wish they would.

Steve

We do not gain any special advantage. We have the cover and the bumpers out, thats all.

So you think we should be fine with that?

Thanks again for answering!

[Navid Shafa]

What bigger fish are there to fry compared to a blatant disregard of the rules? I agree that the whole "Bumpers out of the bag" arguement is rediculous, but I see no reason that any team should push the limits knowingly.

[Mike Betts]

Originally Posted by Steve_Alaniz

No... most places do not weigh your 30 lbs...

We did in FL (week 2).

[Mr V]

In my 3 years of being associated with FIRST I've never seen them do a weigh-in of spare parts at the Oregon or Seattle regionals.

It sounds like you are not going to be in compliance no matter how you cut it with your current plan. As noted the limit is on fabricated parts not COTS. So if you were bringing in an arm or claw for example as a fully assembled part the entire assembly would go to your 30lb limit. If it was carried in unassembled then the hardware, motors, cyls ect would be considered COTS items and not be limited while the parts that were machined, cut, and/or drilled to the final configuration that will go on the robot will be considered fabricated.

In your instance the parts that make up the cover are already cut/machined/drilled to their final configuration to go on the robot so the only thing you would save in weight would be the fasteners. Ditto for the bumpers.

So I suggest taking apart that cover, leave home the largest/heaviest parts and fabricate those on site in accordance with the rules.

If you have tool or person power limitations of getting it fabricated on-site look us up and we'll be glad to help in any way we can.

[yarden.saa]

In Israel no one checked it,
my team had the same problem so we drilled holes in the parts to lose weight. (We had 3 pounds of holes)

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Seeing as how you are from a young team, the simple answer is YOU will know! One of the beauties of this competition is that participants generally break their necks to stay inside the rules. To do that, they also make sure other teams perform the same way. It is one of the reasons we do inspections.
If you think you have no advantage, then you are mistaken. You have five more pounds of advantage over a team that planned and worked and put that extra five pounds in the box or bag when they shipped. They took the time in the build that you did not. Don't discount their time, use yours on the practice day to overcome what others have during the build season. You will feel better knowing that you competed under the exact same time limits as everyone else. If you do well, it will not seem like a hollow victory. If you do not, then you will feel like you did your best under the rules, and someone with a better (you fill in the blank) won.

[Chris is me]

Our withholding allowance was not weighed.

I would do everything you can to follow the rules.

If you are overweight, do keep in mind that COTS parts do not count. Detaching some motors and electronics might be all you need to make the allowance.

[thefro526]

We have never had our withheld parts weighed upon entrance to any regional I've been to in the last few years, but it changes depending on the regional. (We've also never brought more than 10lbs or so in with us anyway.)

That being said, if your withheld parts appear to be close to the 30lb limit, someone may ask you to weigh them just to be sure, or another team may tell the Inspectors that your parts should be weighed...

Depending on your mechanism, you might be able to pull some COTS components off like Chris said, or if your mechanism has some relatively simple parts, you could bring in the raw materials and make those simple parts on site.

(Also, you might run into someone at your event that has read this thread and knows that your parts have a chance of weighing over 30lbs and they may recommend that the parts get weighed...)

[Steve_Alaniz]

Originally Posted by Navid Shafa

What bigger fish are there to fry compared to a blatant disregard of the rules? I agree that the whole "Bumpers out of the bag" arguement is rediculous, but I see no reason that any team should push the limits knowingly.

Not to give the wrong impression. I highly recommend compliance with all the rules. We're weighing all our parts because we intend to comply with the rules as per the honor system and we will be under 30 lbs as per the rules. I'm very unimaginative when it comes to rules and bending them... I would have been a lousy lawyer. However it is sometimes unavoidable that a team may "push the limits" due to something like a robot damaged at a previous regional, But my perception of this rule... IN THE WAY IT IS ENFORCED is that it is more like speeding. At 30.1 mph in a 30mph zone, you are breaking the law and should expect a police officer to pull you over, chew you out, give you a ticket and tell you to never do that again...and possibly roll you with a nightstick for good measure. That doesn't happen. Maybe at 40... and I would hope that if someone brought in 40lbs or more of highly machined parts they would be asked to prove compliance. I guess Florida has the manpower to have someone stand by a scale and check everyone in but the volunteers at most regionals are very busy with robot inspections, moving supplies, directing teams and visitors, checking for safety glasses and appropriate shoes and the other thousand things it takes to make a regional go. As for me, PERSONALLY, if I were an official, I would just say yeah 35's ok just because I'm soft that way and I believe most people intend to follow the rules and if they are 5 lbs over bringing stuff in they are probably going to weigh in at 125lbs on the robot... and I KNOW that weight is dead serious.
<sigh> everybody takes these thing so seriously.

Steve