I know there are probably plenty of topics on this, I just don’t have the time to read through everything…
To keep it short, the team I mentor received an aluminum air tank about 3 years ago. We had it powder coated as some of our local teams have been doing the same thing for years. We competed in 2022 and 2023 with this tank on our bot, all the inspectors said they loved the color and thought it really tied the robot together, and only 1 said he’d check with the ref on legality (ref saw no issues with it), that inspector was at our last event last year. I’m a little concerned about it this year.
My main thing I’m asking is what other teams think we should do, I’ve read the rules and see it states no modifications at all, but for a tank we got the green light on previously I dont want to cause an issue this year.
As an RI I would disallow that, per R803, as I can’t be sure your team isn’t painting the tank to cover up any damage it might have. Not that I think your team is actually doing that.
That shouldn’t have been approved last year per the rules. Painting a pneumatic COMPONENT is explicitly called out as illegal, and I wouldn’t expect powder coating to be ruled differently.
The blue box for this rule used to say something akin to “treat pneumatic COMPONENTS as sacred”. That verbiage is gone, but the rule is still the same. Don’t modify them in any way that’s not specifically allowed.
As mentioned, painting is specifically called out as illegal. Beyond that, powder coat involves baking the tank which could conceivably effect the heat treat on the tank. (Yes I know this is extremely unlikely to significantly effect the strength of the tank.)
Or any year. That rule hasn’t changed, and it’s been there over a decade at this point. Not all inspectors are going to catch that though, and as an LRI if I saw that tank from the side of the field I probably wouldn’t think anything of it - it looks like that could just be the original manufacturers coating on it.
Anything that may obscure the factory printed ratings or safety warnings is a bad idea. If I’m looking at an air tank and can’t find the ratings or see them legibly what reason do I have to believe your word on the safety of the system.
Sorry for you RI’s who think this is a slam dunk, but I’m a bit triggered by some verbiage of a RI above.
We should stop and wonder why the previous RI’s passed this tank. If the rule were clear, the tank wouldn’t have passed inspection in previous seasons. Just because we’ve always said something, or understand that decorative stickers are illegal whereas labeled stickers legal, doesn’t mean we have a concrete answer for why an air tank shouldn’t be powder coated.
To be clear, and I generally agree that it seems that powder coating a tank, no matter how beautiful, the PC is against the intent of the rule and could decrease the tank’s safety in at least some nominal/marginal way.
Powder Coating isn’t “paint”. It doesn’t have the potential to chemically alter the composition of the surface of metal. And, arguably, the baking process doesn’t “alter” the tank because the temperature isn’t nearly as high as most annealing processes for aluminum, steel, or welds. This tank isn’t painted.
If a team vinyl wrapped an air tank, it would fall into the same vague grey area open for interpretation.
What rule updates need to be made to make this more explicit?
Even if you don’t think powder coat counts as paint for the purposes of R803, the rule doesn’t give a short list of disallowed modifications, it gives a short list of allowed modifications. Powder coat is not an allowed modification.
I think the rule is clear - the tank must be used in it’s “original, unaltered condition”. Just because “paint” is listed in a non-exclusive list of examples of alterations in the blue box, does not mean that something that achieves the same end result, such as powder coating, that isn’t technically painting is allowed.
I don’t think Vinyl wrapping is a grey area or allowed either. Wrapping like that is a modification. We had our trailer wrapped a decade ago, and it’s still there - that’s as near a permanent modification as you can get. Yes, with effort it can be removed, painted over, etc… but that’s just another modification.
In short, don’t modify pneumatic components. I don’t think that’s a difficult rule to understand, even though it’s one that teams have certainly missed in the past.
Teams have missed it, as have inspectors. Which is the point of me asking the (hypothetical) you, “how do we update the wording of the rule to make it clearer to RI’s who aren’t you?”
Beyond a certain point, I don’t think we should rely on RIs or LRIs to understand the technical intent behind the rules - that’s exactly why we have the rules. If it requires an engineer to interpret the rules, they probably have some room for improvement. You’re right on the metal temperatures, but who knows about any softgoods in the tanks providing seals? I don’t, without doing more research, because I’m not a pressure systems engineer. I just know enough to say that pressure systems deserve extra rigor due to how unsafe they can be if they fail.
As far as why it was passed before, I’d chalk it up to “RIs and LRIs make mistakes.” A tank that is powder coated that nicely could easily pass the quick glance test, and make the RI think it’s a CoTS tank that came that way, and the inspector might not even think about R803. I personally think that if a reasonably experienced inspector is looking at the tank with R803 in mind, it’s clear enough to know that the tank shouldn’t pass.
So it looks like most people agree it shouldn’t have been allowed, that being said where is the line drawn? I can order a powder coated tank that fits in CoTS rules, but I can’t have it coated after purchase, that I understand. But if a manufacturer sends it out due to it being a weird color that would be fine?
I know I’m basically arguing semantics at this point, but I want it to be clear so my team won’t have a problem in the future.
The rule is not unclear, there are just a lot of rules, and people miss things. Teams could sit down with a manual before their first event and check every rule, but if you get inspectors to do that it’s going to take days to get everyone inspected. So…
Teams be thorough when reading robot construction rules, and don’t rely on what you or other teams have done in the past. Your local RIs might be missing something and rules change, and you don’t want to find that out at DCMP or CMP when you don’t have an good fix.
Just my $0.02: If I see a tank that isn’t familiar, I’ll just start asking the student questions. I might ask them what type of tank it is, where they bought it, if there’s a link they can show me, if they painted/modified it after they bought it, things like that. If they have convincing answers, like showing a product page with a tank that looks the same or very close to the same, that’s probably good enough for me. If I don’t believe them, I might bring the LRI over for more prodding.
If the manufacturer powder coats the tank, they’'ll put the required markings on after powder coat, if there are any. Things like manufacturer and part number. If you powder coat after receiving it those will be hidden under the coat.
Oh, and a note for the OP: If an inspector checks with the referee on a part’s legality, he’s not doing it right. Referees don’t care if a part is legal or not, that’s the inspectors’ job. Inspector would check with LRI, who would check with CRI if he’s unsure.
Clearly, you’ve never inspected at Champs. There are so many things that should be caught by both the team and inspectors, but they get missed through multiple events. Missing things is not as uncommon as you seem to think.
