A few weeks ago, our team had our first competition. We are a middle school team, and it was an HS-MS blended event. We passed inspection, started qualification matches, and during one of the gaps between our matches, a judge/referee person was walking around inspecting robots. They specifically were looking at teams’ mesh. When they got to us, the judge/referee inspected our robot and declared the small sheet of mesh (it was the thinner kind) on our intake ramp not VEX mesh due to it having a diagonal style pattern/design, causing it to be illegal. We were told it had to be removed/replaced then and there.
We were extremely confused, as we had literally bought that sheet of mesh a week ago with some other parts, and directly taken it and put it on our bot. It was the only piece of mesh we had, so we couldn’t have mixed it up. The judge was extremely kind and helpful, and they told us to show them the order receipt/confirmation which I luckily had on hand, and we were allowed to continue competing.
My question is this: has anyone experienced something like this, with another part or something? And also, does anyone have any theories as to why this may have happened?
Not taken as a rant.
So VEX mesh is listed here in two sized:
One of them clearly has a diagonal pattern (the thick one). They also have reportedly had different gray/black tones. The thinner one appears to be a bit more random pattern close up, but a bit further away it does have distinct diagonal appearance. That may be what was tripping up the Referee inspecting (note Judges never formally inspect robots, they are busy reading notebooks, interviewing teams, watching matches, and deliberating who will get what judged awards).
Taking a step back, remember everyone is human at competitions, and may make mistakes. It sounds to me like your team came prepared with receipt and handled the situation well. It also sounds like there must have been some teams using incorrectly sourced material, and once you produced your receipt no further issues.
I do think this season, teams will be coming to events with documentation about their design and build processes. Having an up-to-date parts list (aka Bill of Material - B.O.M.) is helpful piece of documentation in your engineering notebook.
This happened to us at the US Open last year during inspection, when an inspector claimed that VEX legacy pneumatics parts were not allowed and told us to remove our pneumatics. We were also quite confused and a little mad, so we spent some time finding the rule allowing VEX legacy pneumatics, followed by a picture of the part we had on the VEX legacy pneumatics part list.