R806- Throughout an event, compressed air on the
ROBOT must be provided by its 1 onboard compressor only
R804
The following devices are not considered pneumatic devices and are not subject
to pneumatic rules (though they must satisfy all other rules):
a. a device that creates a vacuum,
b. closed-loop COTS pneumatic (gas) shocks,
c. air-filled (pneumatic) wheels, and
d. pneumatic devices not used as part of a pneumatic system (i.e. used in a
way that does not allow them to contain pressurized air)
If I am using off board compressed air in between matches to cool off motors does that violate these rules? R806 says compressed air must come from the robot but R804 says that you can use devices that don’t lead into a air tank.
R804 just talks about what you can have on your robot. If you mount the compressed air to your robot and have it cool off your motors, controlled by a servo or something, then you’ve violate R806 and 804(d).
Wonder what happens if you put something on your robot that contained pressurized helium. It’s not air!
This is the kind of question that has an ambiguous answer, because it’s likely to depend on the event and the LRI/RIs and Pit Admins as to what they will allow and how, exactly, you’re implementing this. If you’re using a compressor that is never attached to the robot, i.e. where you’re using an air nozzle to blow air over the outsides of the motors, it might not be ruled a violation of R804 or R806 since it never interacts with the robot’s pneumatic system. This is the air compressor as tool rather than robot part. However, there are districts and/or venues that will not allow tool-operating air compressors in the pits at all, no matter what they’re used for (our own NC district is one) because of the noise that they create. So you might or might not be able to get away with that solution. On the other hand, any attempt to introduce the air into the motor more directly would very likely be ruled against, no matter the source, unless it’s a legal part of the robot’s pneumatic system.
The question is, why not just have the robot’s own pneumatic system do the job? It’s easy enough to set it up and you can use both the remaining pressure in the tanks and the on-board compressor to do the job, all run through a single solenoid. Or you can run an extra set of tubes and plug them into the system exhaust valve after the match and still use remaining tank pressure to do the job, without even needing a solenoid or having the robot enabled (we actually did this on our IR robot to cool the four drive Falcons at the end of a match.) It just seems like overtaking the plumbing to do this with an off-board system of (at best) questionable legality.
Please please please see if there is a current thread about a topic before you create a new one on an extremely similar topic. It would be great if these two threads could be merged.
You will have to transpose all the songs you want to play on the motor ~2 octaves because of the helium. Unless of course you want the chipmunks version
Absolutely no worries, in general duplicate threads were just bugging me this season and I finally said something, this thread just happened to be the “where”. A mod would have to come along and merge, that is normally handled by flagging a post, but I am personally not sure if it is good idea to flag one of your own posts to get their attention.
To your credit you tagged the thread with the correct categories, that’s more than a lot of threads can claim, including some of my own.
I wish we had the pinned reminders thread of old CD pinned to the top of the webpage - to search and to be careful crafting responses. I could use those reminders myself on quite a few occasions
I agree. R804 says that a device solely used to cool a motor by venting air through it is NOT a pneumatic device for robot rules purposes. That said, many venues outlaw A/C compressors in the pit, either for noise or electrical capacity reasons. Why not just bring in a bottle of compressed air? Either something you charge at the shop or hotel, or perhaps something like this:
Back when we ran 775 pros as our drive motors we pulled air through them with a vacuum, we joked we should make a system to cool air first with a cooler full of dry ice, but we figured somebody would have a cow about it, so never followed through with it.
Berl,
You should have gathered from those posting above that using compressed air to cool robots parts off the field and external to the robot is not covered in the rules and so is allowed with certain exceptions. These are mostly venue related due to the high current shop compressors use while running. District events in particular have limited resources but each event has different restrictions. Noise is also a factor. Check with your event as to the use of such devices.
The times you most want to be able to cool the motors (with something external to the robot) are elims, or other times when matches are scheduled back-to-back. If the motors are going to cool with time anyway, there’s little reason to worry with it. A big compressor is typically not going to work in the queuing line or field-side. Having a big bottle of compressed air on the robot cart might not be super safe, depending on execution. So, using an onboard compressor has a lot going for it.
This is likely why Berl is asking. Their district events are both considered “small events”, with at or sub 24 teams total, where back to back matches will likely be 70-80% of the matches they have…
