Much to my surprise, the biggest problem with inspections were teams forgetting to bring their Bill of Materials. At least 7 out of 40 teams at SVR had this problem. Mostly they weren’t rookies. In some cases, this was their second regional!
The second biggest problem were bumpers. Read the*!&# rules! Pool noodles
means pool noodles, plywood back means plywood back, easily removed means …
Alan Federman, Lead Robot Inspector, SVR, Davis.
I reminded our head mentor of the need for a Bill of Materials about 2 weeks before the end of the build season, and I was told it would be taken care of. It was…by me, in the car up to Pittsburgh, at 5:30 in the morning. :rolleyes: Oh well, it did actually get done.
I did manage to keep my team on track with the rules for the bumpers. They were constantly asking if we could use odd things for the bumpers, and it got to the point where this happened:
“Hey Stephanie can the bumpers…”
(very frustrated)“If it’s not a pool noodle, plywood or a bolt, then NO!!”
(Semi-scared)“I was just going to ask if they can be made now.”
for some unknown reason, the bill of materials is something that 1370 always forgets until it comes time for inspection. and its a real pain trying to write a bill of materials for a fully assembled machine…
I also became very familiar with <R35>. I not only knew it was <R35>, I got to know how far down to pull the slider bar to find <R35> in the .pdf
I feel your pain. We slipped up and left the BOM in the pit when we went to inspection. I always make sure the kids who make the BOM (the mad cadders) e-mail it to me so I have a copy just in case.
As for the bumperswhat do you consider easily removable. We ended up using 1/4-20 cap screws because we were uncomfortable using 1/4 turn fasteners for them.
Easily removable means that if you get reinspected you can take them off, fit in the box, put them back on and make your next match.
We used a tape measure on two machines because it would of taken a 1/2 hour to remove, measure and put the bumpers back on. If I was a stickler for the rules, the number 2 seed would have been disqualified.
This should have been caught durring the initial inspection. It’s hard to DQ a team when it has already passed.
It is hard to DQ a team – full stop. No volunteer wants to do it.
However, I would not take the fact that the team had previously passed inspection into account when deciding or recommending a DQ. Many teams make changes to their robots after passing inspection. When this happens the team is responsible for requesting a re-inspection. This year I have seen several teams add bumpers or modify the method used to attach their bumpers after passing initial inspection.
i have a question… if your bumpers are covered with the fabric… how can you tell that their pool noodles? do you rip it open to check?
-kevin
Alan,
How strict are inspectors being on the securely fastened bumpers rule? I’m seeing a fair number of bumpers on the field. Meaning, more than zero. At GLR, our robot got wedged on top of an opposing team’s bumper because they only secured it with wood screws. I believe one robot at Peachtree had to remove its bumpers because they simply wouldn’t stay on. There’s a fine line between easily removed and… well… easily removed in the course of a game.