Off robot air compressor

[Billfred]

Originally Posted by Kirk

I have read update 18 and understand that FIRST wants us to hook up our off-board compressor to a robot controller and use a spike, pressure switch and all that. Is this really going to be enforced? In L.A. we were told that we had to wire an in-line 20 amp breaker in case of short and prove that we had the proper regulators and that we could not pressurize the robot to over 120 psi. We did all that and had no further issues. Do we really have to shell out $600+ dollars for another controller and go through all the hassle of programming and wiring it up or will our in-line breaker be sufficient? I am mainly looking for input from lead inspector or other official personnel at nationals.

I am not Dave Lavery, but the inspector in me says the compressor has to be wired like it is on the robot. If you keep the required Spike and compressor off the robot, you'd make three connections to the robot in order to have a legal setup:

1) To the 20A breaker on the panel, for power
2) To a relay output on the RC, for control of the Spike
3) To the pneumatics system, for obvious reasons.

I'd like to hear what the other inspectors have to say about this idea, as I'm not a pneumatics whiz.