Non-level bumpers

[magnets]

sorry that's q199. It explicitly disallows angled bumpers. No doubt about it.

[FrankJ]

Fig 4-8 shows the bumpers being perpendicular to the floor. You really can't tell if they are parallel from the figure despite what the blue box says. I have always interpreted that rule to mean you cannot have "cow catcher" bumpers. We have never had a reason to mount one end of bumper lower than the other or have anything other than rectangular bumper so we never tested the exact meaning.

Currently you can have several bumper segments on on a side each one slightly higher. having the net effect of an angled bumper. Now as dX approaches 0....

[magnets]

Well, I thought I'd bring this back. Our team would really like angled bumpers (not like a cow catcher, but like 1114/67 in 2013), and we've been having quite an argument about the interpretation of the rule, and we were wondering what you guys thought.

There are currently three interpretations.

1.) The question and answer interprets the the blue box as saying no, so this year, the sentence in the blue box means the opposite as what it did last year, and angled bumpers are no good.

2.) The question and answer says that the blue box says no, and that sentence (which is a little ambiguous), means no, and 1114, 67, and 236 were all really illegal in 2013, but since the GDC never gave a clear response that year, no inspector could call them on it. (this is what I think)

3.) The q and a and game manual are in contradiction of each other.

Now, we may try some bumpers where the distance of each parallel segment is about 0.5" to get the same effect as angled bumpers.

If the GDC had put a rule in the original manual "bumpers must be parallel", then we wouldn't have had our sponsor waterjet an intake plate that only works with an angled bumper, or build a frame with an angled bumper, or build angled bumpers, or waste hours correcting the mistake. [/rant on bumper rules]