Answered: Legality of vacuum forming non shattering plastic

[Procrastination_pls]

Hi Karthik. I’ve searched the forums and was unable to find any previous, official answers to this ‘grey area’.

<R7> Robots are allowed the following additional “non-VEX” components:
f. Non shattering plastic from the following list; polycarbonate, acetel monopolymer (Delrin),
acetal copolymer (Acetron GP), POM (acetal), ABS, PEEK, PET, HDPE, LDPE, Nylon (all
grades), Polypropylene, FEP; as cut from a single 12" x 24" sheet up to 0.070" thick.
i. Plastic can be mechanically altered by cutting, drilling or bending etc., but it cannot be
chemically treated, melted or cast. Teams may heat the polycarbonate to aid in bending.

So, obviously plastic cannot be melted or cast, but it can be ‘heated to aid in bending’, provided the plastic is vex legal. The way I see it, vacuum forming sits somewhere between these two.
Heating plastic until close to melting and then bending/forming/casting legal plastic either by hand or over a mould could conceivably be seen as legal, but could also potentially be seen as illegally casting plastic.

Is it legal to vacuum form legal non shattering plastics for use in Vex competition?

Similarly, at what point does ‘heating to aid in bending’ become ‘melting or casting’?

I don’t yet plan to use this for anything, but feel there is interesting potential for vacuum forming, or similar methods of substantial heating of legal plastic.

[Karthik]

@Procrastination pls

Is it legal to vacuum form legal non shattering plastics for use in Vex competition?

Yes, this is legal. Vacuum forming is a specific type of process which uses heat to make uniform thickness parts from a thin sheet of material. This as per <R7f> as quoted above.