Machining Sponsorship for FRC Teams

[Oblarg]

Originally Posted by Cory

I don't think this is a correct reading of R12.

If money exchanges hands for material costs you'd be fine, because it would be like you buying the material and handing it to them.

The moment money exchanges hands for labor I don't think you could call the party receiving the money a sponsor and not account for the fair market value of their labor on your BOM. The example in the blue box you quoted is meant to read that "their labor costs (the normal hourly rate Machine Shop XYZ would charge paying customers) do not apply (when work is done at no cost to the FRC team)".

Unless you get a different response via Q&A you would need to account for the full dollar amount you paid Anchorlabs...but you would be getting a discount on that amount compared to if you were a random guy walking in off the street.

At the risk of derailing the thread, I am going to opine that this is a particularly deranged rule that results in many teams having robots that other teams could not legally field even if they were able to raise the money to get the machining done, and I'd love to see it changed so that all non-COTS parts that are not manufactured in-house must include fair market price for the labor. This might necessitate raising the budget cap, but it would be far more equitable.