A Happy Tech Inspector Story

[dtengineering]

Occasionally on CD there is a post discussing an unusual incident in tech inspection, often unhappy for the team involved.

I'd like to share a happy story. At GTR this weekend we were nabbed for having a 9" long by 3/4" diameter pneumatic cylinder. Credit to the tech inspectors... 8" long is okay, 10" long is okay... but 9", for some reason (it wasn't on the order form) is not. I could express my opinions on whether this makes sense, but that would distract from the happy part, and really makes little difference. A rule is a rule, and it is the tech inspector's job to enforce it.

Now this wouldn't be a big problem for us, except our 10" cylinders were back in Vancouver... a five hour flight away. So the lead tech inspector spent about half an hour on the phone helping us to find an 8" cylinder we could buy, while "our" tech inspector went to ask other teams if they had one we could borrow.

Turns out they found one we could borrow on Friday morning (thanks to 188 for offering to go retrieve it overnight from their school) or one we could buy that afternoon at SMC pneumatics. We bought the 8" one, had it installed in under an hour, passed tech and... get this... the robot actually worked better with it than it did with the 9" one.

Thank you to Tristan and Nicholas, GTR tech inspectors for a great example of gracious professionalism in seeing that all FIRST rules were enforced in a supportive manner, and helping us make our robot better in the process.

Jason

P.S. And thanks, of course, to the very long list of other volunteers who make the GTR so wonderful.