During competition, is it legal to use a spray that cools down your motors in case they overheat? The spray is not a lubricant, and is not sticky, and instantly evaporates. It is only meant to cool down the motor quickly. I have not seen anything in the manual saying that you can’t do this, but I want to see if anyone knows anything about this. Thanks in advance.
Yes, my team, as well as many other teams, have used this many times in the past.
If you want true clarification, ask Karthik in the Q&A, but it has always been legal in past seasons.
Alright, thank you for your quick response!
I have seen referee’s approach teams and tell them to stop spraying their motors. I even saw referee’s during the round robin finale at the World Championship yelling at teams for doing it, however, an IFI official noticed and came over to see what was going on and corrected the referee saying it was indeed legal as long as it was done safely.
I highly suggest making an official Q&A post so that there can be an official ruling on this to avoid this kind of situation in the future.
Thanks for bringing it up! I had forgotten about it.
-Nick
I don’t mean to hijack the thread, but could someone suggest a spray that they use? I think this could benefit my team during eliminations so we don’t have to use our timeout.
This has been asked. I had the same question last year after the U.S. Open. The link is posted below, but to sum it up, yes Karthik has stated that it is legal. I have just bought cheap stuff from walmart. Though Team Xtreme had some fancy stuff at worlds last year they might be able to suggest.
https://vexforum.com/t/answered-legality-of-canned-air/25995/1
I would recommend teams to use caution while pursuing this technique; although I do not know of any instances which demonstrated the problem, I do know that generally speaking, rapid cooling of a hot material can reduce its lifespan. I’ve seen the spray that some teams use form ice on motors–I’d be interested in learning the long-term effects of this practice.
We could try it determine how many ponds it can pull stall it, then cool it fast and do this 10 times and see if it has any affects. anyone want to volunteer 10 motors some cortexes and some air. No promises it will be fully intact and working when returned if I do return them.
There is probably no need to use the coolant at the regional level. I had never used it before division eliminations last year when 400X gave us some. At that point I wouldn’t care if my motors disintegrated after worlds as long as they made it through the finals.
But, the entire point of using the spray is to keep your motors cool so that they are less likely to build up heat and trip the internal PTC’s, thereby leaving your robot dead in the water.
As long as you have 20 minutes of cool down time between matches it is probably unnecessary to use spray. But during finals when matches are almost one after another the motors really build up and hold onto heat, making it more and more likely with each match that you may trip a PTC even if you normally don’t have issues.
Yes, this is legal. This has been discussed before, and I remember Cody was against things like canned air for spraying motors because it somehow gives some teams an unfair advantage. Yet he asked Karthik whether drilling holes on motors to cool PTC was legal… 
We used component cooler/freeze spray rather than the dust spray (Not really sure what its called, never used it?
) that some teams flip over and use. More expensive, but it gets the job done. We purchase ours from Fry’s Electronics, but I’m not sure if that’s a Texas chain or not… [Amazon.com
That being said, We’ve learned that if freeze spray is a necessity rather than an occasional thing, you probably should look into lower ratios/a lighter robot.
Although I plan to purchase a few cans for emergency in the future, our robot was better designed this year and isn’t on the edge of overheating anymore. We gave our last cans away at Worlds because they wouldn’t go on the plane and haven’t purchased any since.](Amazon.com)