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Originally Posted by Glenn
90% of the work done by Kingman on the (4) robots was done by students and the mentors. Laron only helped on a small portion of the welding no machining. We also had two other machine shops in Kingman (Brackett Aircraft and I-Corp Arizona) make some parts both companies donated the time and materials
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This is exactly the issue of concern. I am not concerned with how much either team contributes to the community. I am not concerned with the motivation behind the formation of the 'Bionic Poofs' manufacturing alliance. I am not concerned with the impact that said alliance has had on the students on these teams. I am not concerned with the challenges associated with multi-team design and build.
I am concerned with the rules of the competition that relate directly and unambiguously to the situation described by Glenn in the quote above and in the previous posts by team 60 and team 254 members.
The rules clearly state that work done on the robot by non-team members must be billed against the $3500 limit, whether that work was donated, bought, or bartered. The situation at hand is that roughly half of team 60's robot was built by people who are not members of team 60, and roughly half of team 254's robot was built by people who are not members of team 254.
If both teams have billed every thing according to the rules,
and both teams' robots are not in violation of the $3500 rule (and the $400 rule), then there is no problem with what they've done. In fact, if that is the case they've made an amazing accomplishment.
On the other hand, if they are not billing non-team labor against their $3500 budget, or if they are billing it and exceed $3500 / $400 for the robot / individual part, then they are clearly in violation of both the spirit and the letter of the rules. I believe that their alliance affords both teams a significant competitive advangage vs. every other team that designed and built their whole robot with only the resources that their team had secured. I believe the $3500 rule is in place to limit exactly this kind of imbalance.
The only grey area that exists with respect to the rules is the notion of one or more persons having dual team affiliation. To my knowledge there is no provision for such dual team membership in any official FIRST document. Likewise, I know of no official FIRST document which forbids dual team membership. This is something that I believe should have been cleared up before kickoff, or ASAP thereafter.