Crazy Inspection Stories

[Marc P.]

Sharp edges pose a safetly hazard

[Koci]

Remember, your target weight should be something less than 130 anyway. Leave yourself at least a pound of margin to take the differences in scales into account. You can always add a little weight if the scale will let you get away with it, it's a lot harder to take it off.

We actually had been at I believe 128.7 at our first regional. We used the remainder of the weight limit to add weights near the front of our robot, since our robot was top heavy and could easily tip. If we needed to, we easily could have taken these weights off. It was just nicer to leave them on and weigh 130.0 lbs.

[Solace]

Our inspection at Houston took all of 15 minutes, and we have a pretty complex robot. Maybe that's just a product of the fact that our main engineer, being the perfectionist that he is, wipped up the neatest wiring job I've ever seen though.

We actually lost weight from the regionals (or it was the scales?). We weighed 129.9 lbs at UTC New England, and 129.4 lbs at Houston. maybe we just got lucky.

[Kris Verdeyen]

Originally posted by David Lantz
We were very lucky at Houston. Our inspection took a maximum of 10 minutes. This was all thanks to the great efforts of one of my teammates who did an exelent job on the wiring. The inspector was very very picky on everything but couldn't find one thing wrong with our bot. I was very proud when he finally gave up and said that there was nothing wrong with our robot.

Oh wait... he did want us to file one corner of the chaise that had been dented during the practice rounds and had one small burr sticking out...

It's always a good idea to leave something obvious, minor, and easy to fix there for the inspector to find - otherwise they'll bug you for hours before they come up with something obscure, minor, and impossible to fix.

[Alaina]

When we were inspected in Sacramento our weight was 130.0
Hell yeah!

[Kevin A]

Our robot was easier and easier to pass inspection from Sacramento to NYC to Houston. I see why there is a sharp edge rule. Even tho our robot passed inspection, i still lost blood 2wice.

[Justin Stiltner]

One thing that my team found out from 343 was that different batteries weigh different amounts.. in some cases up to a pound of difference!!! so if you cant figure out where your extra weight came from.. try switching out the batteries