I recently got a response from a Q&A that makes pretty much all robots illegal:
Q. If a COTS item is mounted to an assembly of fabricated components, is the item still considered COTS if it is otherwise unmodified? (ie, no mounting holes drilled in it)
A. No. Mounting a COTS item into an assembly is considered modifying it, making it a Fabricated Item. If the COTS item was removed from the larger assembly and otherwise unmodified, it would be considered a COTS item.
Now, isn’t a robot an assembly? So mounting a Jaguar to an electronics panel makes it no longer COTs, and thus in violation of the rules? I’m sure this is an unintended result, but humerus none the less.
When you buy a COTS part it is not mounted to anything.
So if you want to bring a COTS part into an event it should not be mounted to anything. That doesn’t mean that it has never been mounted to anything, it just means that it is unmodified from its original state when purchased.
Jaguars (per your example) are specifically allowed by the rules so the definition of COTS would only apply as to whether they form part of your witholding allowance. If you mount a Jag and bring it in (or attach a wire to it), then it is part of the 30 pounds… if you have it sitting in a box, by itself, in as-new condition, then it is COTS.
Mounting the Jaguar would still be legal even under the strict interpretation of the Q&A answer, per R58-G, which explicitly permits the “modification” of attachment with fasteners.
On the other hand, if a mounted Jaguar is considered a Fabricated Item, would the cost exemption for the KOP quantity of Jaguars no longer apply?
I am assuming that this discussion is with respect to defining the 30-lb withholding allotment.
If you mount a COTS part to an assembly, then it is part of the assembly and, therefore, becomes part of the 30-lb withholding allotment. It does not matter at this point if you have modified the COTS part. It is still part of the assembly.
If you remove the part from the assembly, place it in a box with no wires attached to it, like it was when you bought it, then it becomes a COTS part again.
Poof, like magic. COTS to assembly and back to COTS again.
So in other words. You bring in your hypothetical 35lb electrical board. You are 5 pounds overweight in your withholding. You take off all your jags, crio, spikes. You have a box of COTs parts that weighs 30 lbs (my that is a lot of jags) & 5 lb of trimmed wire & back boards. You are legal with some assembly required.
That is, in fact, the whole point of the rule. You’re trading assembly time and annoyance for legality and staying under the 30-lb withholding limit. It’s not like a fully assembled 35-lb electrical board is actually equivalent to the jag-less unassembled version. There’s a good bit of work and all represented in the assembled version.
Well to that logic than any motor or gearbox brought in, unless still wrapped up just as it was shipped, has been modified. If you were to have a RS550 with a 16:1 reduction for your turret that you kept back to fine tune it, by your logic, you’d have to remove the gearbox off the motor and then take the leads off the motor.
You forgot you have to remove the pinnion that doesn’t come installed on the motor to get it back in COTS config. I’ll let the fact you have to grease the gearbox to use it slide because removal of grease is pretty over the top.
But seriously I would call a fully assembled Banebots no longer COTS because the parts had to be assembled. It’s like carrying in a fully assembled AndyMark C-base verses a box of parts. One is legal one is not.
