What do teams think about the rule of shipping the two batteries that were sent ( in orig. containers).
Don’t get me wrong, but what I think is irrelevant–the rules say we have to ship the batteries, and even if I don’t want to ship the batteries, I will ship the batteries, for no other reason than the fact that the rules say to ship the batteries.
However, our team has many, many old batteries that, while aren’t competition-legal, are equivalent to the batteries we have to ship, so practice with our practice bot won’t be hurt at all. The bigger blow is that we have to ship the controls. Usually that’s a 6-1/2 / 7th week project…
I’m not worried about the battery rule. I see no problem with it.
JBot
we have to ship both batteries? even if we don’t need them?
My guess is that every team will need both batteries…
well that sucks! i better warn my team…
Seeing as 1 match is enough to make our drive system “mushy”, we’ll definitely need every battery we can get our hands on. We ordered a few more batteries, because we change out our battery after every match.
But yes, the batteries do need to go in the crate, in their original packaging.
JBot
Shipping both batteries is not a huge inconvenience to us, as we have plenty of extra, old, illegal ones to mess around with, but we can’t really do much anyway because we don’t have the organization or money to build two robots. I still really dislike the rule, primarily for the original packaging bit because it is very easy to misplace that little brown box in a room with a lot of little brown boxes. (I found ours being used to store chain, actually) What would you do if the box was completely lost? You must ship the batteries, but you must ship them in original packaging, so you can’t ship them, but you must ship them, but you can’t ship them, etc.
This is bad will cost extra for shipping. :mad:
I have no problem sending the batteries, it makes sure that I don’t forget one.
Being on a team with no time, money, or enough participants to build an extra bot, I see no reason to keep the battery at school…
Remember that you get free shipping to one event from FedEx, and drayage for the first 400 lbs is included in your registration fee. I doubt that the 26 lbs from shipping the two batteries will matter much.
Wetzel
Actually, our team might be effected by this very situation. We purposely built our crate extra sturdy and expected to go over the 400 lb mark like last year, when we had a crate + robot + bumpers that totalled 465 lbs. This year though, the addition of 2 batteries puts us up to 491 lbs., and the addition of the control board and a battery box could cause us to go over the 500 lb mark and have to pay another $50 shipping for each competition.
This is not a huge amount of money, just an inconvenience as we have to get cash to pay for it since we don’t know how we would get a PO to handle this.
I think that shipping in the crate should be at the teams discretion.
I ditto Al.
I agree.
This rule along with the shipping of the control board rule only hurt rookies. It really makes no difference to veteran teams if they have their controls/batteries. They can go into their stockpiles and pull out an RC, OI and battery to power up a “practice bot”. Sorry rooks.
What would a team do, hypothetically of course, if they didn’t keep the battery packaging? 
Not reading the shipping rules until nearer to Ship Day?
We could post the specs on the regulation original packaging I suppose.
I think we actually have an old box packed into the crate from a couple of year’s ago when this rule first came out and was first turned into a suggestion. We left the original shipping box and packing in the little wooden compartment, but never shipped more than one battery before. This year the battery will have company and an extra $50 overage charge. <sigh>
Gary,
I would post the question on Q&A. I would think that it would be acceptable to form a cardboard container around the batteries (like the original box), fully insulate both terminals and enclose in the battery part of the shipping container. Just to be on the safe side, include a copy of the battery sheet in the crate.
Same boat here. I had to eat $350.00 in shipping charges last year due to a PO mess. Although you may be able to generate a PO to yourself and provide the receipts to the district so you can get your money back. That is what we have to do this year.