This is a follow up post to this, for all the world-going teams that are concerned about plastics.
My team experienced an issue regarding the rules surrounding this at our Maryland State Championship event. One of the robots on my team uses a specially made cam gear, like many others this year, to power its catapult. To abide by the one-sheet rule, we were only able to produce 4 triple-cams for our robot, relying on spacing and praying for it not to shatter. At the competition, we noticed one of the teams, who later won the competition, was also using cams but had 8 (2 sets of 4) cams on their robot, of very similar dimensions to ours. This seemed nearly impossible after our own measurements and cuts were done with seemingly little scrap left over. We raised it as an issue during the early part of the day, but our complaint was ignored until we later stressed it to our regional representative from REC, who said she would look into the matter. They held up our bracket of the alliance rounds to try to sort the issue out, and after a long while, a ruling was made that their bot was cleared for play. Since I had done a mock-spacing of their cam on a 12x24 sheet of paper from measurements I pulled off of their robot earlier in the day, never able to fit 8 cams on it, we were perplexed at this. Later in the competition, after said team had already won the competition, we asked why. The answer I got was somewhat unclear, but it basically sounded like they didn’t want to continue the issue any further during time constraints, so they cleared them for play. I later had email correspondence with officials, and it seemed that they thought they couldn’t accurately determine legality without dismantling the robot in question to get to the cams, make copies, space it out, etc. So from that, I find that there is now a precedent set in regard to <R7.f>, essentially trusting the teams for their word that it is in specs due to time consumption and the issues that come with robot-dismantling. So to those of you still reading after the above mountain of text, as robots such as the one in question, which I still firmly believe was in violation of specs, will be at worlds, it seems as though a team’s lexan quantity will be trusted on the team’s word unless quick, definitive proof can be made. So if you choose to make a call, make sure to have a method in place like the one I should have suggested (using a piece of paper with a slit down the middle to go over the axle and trace out the cam, then fit 8 copies into the 12x24 space,) but otherwise, there’s a good chance the possibly-in-violation team will be trusted.
EDIT: TL;DR:
A specs call in regard to rule <R7.f> at a state championship was resolved trusting the word of the team who built the robot, as no easy solution to discern measurements was found, though they were most likely out of specs.
A few years ago a BC team used nearly 100% of the Lexan allowance, and, at their first event, was subject to questioning regarding the quantity of Lexan used. After their first event, they carried around a 12x24 piece of paper with all their parts traced out, and they could show where each piece of Lexan on their robot came from. This will make inspection at VEX Worlds go a lot easier for teams that use a lot of Lexan, and will help answers at the field, too.
This has nothing to do with what happened in Maryland, except that if the team in question had brought a cut-drawing with them, there would have been no questions.
As you said, it would be difficult to visually evaluate the plastic and determine if it was cut from a single sheet (or can be assembled to fit within a single sheet). Now that I really look at it, the lexan used on our robot was never measured or even questioned. While the size doesn’t come near the limit, I would think it would be good practice to ask these types of questions because looking at the plastic won’t tell you anything about its legality. I agree that teams should trace their pieces on a sheet of paper, as this ensures that every piece is accounted for. Since teams are not required to do this however, they won’t, and to really enforce this rule there would have to be a standard requirement that is difficult to produce, especially at this point in the season. Implementing a “trace rule” would serve as a concrete method of determining whether a team is following <R7.F>, but with the date being so close to Worlds this would require teams to dismantle their robots and trace plastics. Depending on the time this rule would be added, it might serve as a hindrance rather than a benefit since most teams don’t use a full sheet anyways. Though in order to ensure that there are no questions or missed calls about this subject at Worlds, I would support this if it were to become mandatory.
I agree with your notions entirely. I think that the addition of the rule at the end of worlds would be well timed. Holding up competition sucks, but Vex definitely seems to be built around an ideal of equality in build materials.
@Rick Tyler: I agree with this completely, since it is easy to measure portions of the plastics on the robot, you could easily validate the information. That was part of the problem at Maryland. It appeared that they had CAD files with them, but they were not to scale.
Also, @Team241F, I completely agree. I also think functionality ultimately should come down to a judge call, if brought into question.