"Spare Parts" Rules Are Broken

[Don Wright]

While I believe that we violated the intention of the rules by putting our practice robot on the field for practice, it was because of a misunderstanding and it will never happen again.

I hope most of the teams that are violating the rules are doing it because they misunderstand them and not because they are trying to bend them. Even the fact that this discussion has gone on so long back and forth between respected members clearly shows that this is a gray area that probably needs to be clarified.

I assume that anything that is added to a shipped robot must be fabricated at the competition, from purchased parts shipped with the robot, or brought to the competition.

For example...we changed a gear in our arm. We made a brake bracket out of aluminum in the PICO trailer and added a purchased cylinder to it and screwed it to our winch. We made little aluminum covers out of painted sheet aluminum that we cut, bent, drilled, and screwed to our robot at the Regional. We bought new nylon strap Friday night at REI and Saturday morning, cut it to length, added the eyelets, and attached it to our robot after our original strap that shipped with it slipped off the pulley one round and got caught in some gears.

Since all of the changes we made were fabricated at the competition from common purchased parts, I assume this would all be legal.

We spent a lot of time making all the parts on our robot so that we coule easily make and replace them at the competition. We think that is one of our strong points. Although it was a good thing our mast screw mechanism broke because that was a weak link that needed to be found out because it would be hard to repair.

So, that brings me to my next question. Ironically, the screw drive nut on our practice bot broke right before we took it out of the arena. The screw drive nut on our real robot broke in quarter finals. So, we now have to fix both.

So, I am keeping in mind that however we repair our practice robot, we have to be able to make the same repair at Grand Rapids on Thursday. This means any fabrication too. So, I will be bringing bare material (sheet aluminum, tube, nuts, bolts, etc.) and even though the design was done here in the time between regionals, and we can try the design on our practice bot, it will be entirely fixed at the competition on Thursday. I will not be bringing the "fix" completed in with me. It will be made at the regional.

I assume I would not be in any violation of any rules. Am I correct?

Thank you.