"Spare Parts" Rules Are Broken

[Don Wright]

Well, please let me reply since I am sure that we are the team that everyone is speaking of.

1. Yes, we brought our practice robot into the GLR.
2. Yes, we used our practice robot during the practice rounds. 2 or three of the rounds I believe it didn't even move.

I know I speak for my entire team in apologizing for breaking the rules about this. I was not aware of the rule but should have been and it is my fault and I am the one to blame. As soon as we were told we were in violation of the rules, we removed the practice robot from the building.

However, I can say exactly what I told the judges who confronted me. Absolutely no parts that were on the practice robot were used on the robot we shipped. ZERO.

This is what was done to our shipped robot on Thursday:

1. One gear that was on the elbow was replaced to increase the gear ratio.
2. The robot controller was swapped from the prototype electronics board to the real board which is not a violation of the rules.
3. We added a pneumatic brake to our winch. This had been part of our robot before it shipped (someone from 469 might be able to remember it when they saw it), but we removed it because we didn't think we needed it when we shipped. Later, we found that we did and on Thursday, our machinists re-fabricated the bracket in the PICO trailer (along with helping other teams make parts for their robots).
4. We added a piece of aluminum tube to the bottom of the winch mechanism to stop the plate from flexing.
5. We added the rubber rat to the control console.
6. The rest was programming and electronics work which we did to the shipped robot as we debugged it in the pit on Thursday.

The first round on Friday, our autonomous mode was unknown, so instead of taking a chance of damaging the robot, we did not even bring a robot to the round.

Again, I sincerely apologize for our acts at GLR but can honestly say that we did not mean any harm. I take full responsibility for our actions.

If anybody wants to disagree with anything that I have said, please feel free to post here or email me at dfwjr1973 @ hotmail.com and we can discuss.

Also, No Remorse, I am curious to you comment, "They also used the practive bot for something else, but I won't elaborate". Could you please contact me. I would really like to know what you are talking about.

Sincerely,
Donald Wright
Project Engineer for Team 830