We were wondering if Paracord 550 Ropes are allowed in the 2017 FRC Steamworks competition.
I04 will be quite enlightening.
Given the definition of ROPE in the manual, what is making you unsure?
In my opinion it is legal according to the rules. Anyone disagree?
They are composed of flexible, non-metallic fibers twisted, woven, and braided together, so I think they are allowed. However, I would recommend that you not use it. Although you will probably have a safety factor of at least 3, it will stretch up to 30% under load. That means more climbing time and more energy going in to tensioning the rope as opposed to lifting your robot.
Here is a great no stretch option for a small diameter rope. (The 3/16" One). This is what our team is using.
Click “No Flatten Rope - For Lifting”
We are going with 550 paracord, but two strands of it. It is possible, but not easy, to make a retaining knot out of the stuff but my read of the rules says there is no reason that the top couple of feet of our “rope” can’t have some nice .25 inch rope as one of the three strands, and that makes a nice, secure knot. Our climber can be a little rough on paracord. Inside of a “comb” type device it is difficult to to smooth off all rough edges. A covering with safety suggestive red electrical tape helps a lot. As to time and rope stretching our climb is about six seconds so we are unconcerned. We may also weave in a bit of kevlar thread if we get around to it. Inspect after each climb. Obviously we are not disentangling on the field…pit crew will have an assortment of options…
T. Wolter