Moving Motor Ruling

There is a team within my organization that wants to move a motor from one system to another within a competition. They are curious to whether or not this is legal. Basically they want to be able to move their last motor around on their robot without going through inspection again. This being that regionals is coming up and inspection is only open on the first day. I’m just questioning the legality of moving the final motor around without reinspection because I don’t want them to get into trouble at regionals. If anyone knows a specific rule that supports or contradicts this, please let me know. Does anyone have any ruling?

This would be legal (given that you don’t violate the size rules, etc.), but a re-inspection would be required. It would probably be best to tell the inspector what you plan to do, and ask if there will be an inspector at the competition by the time you switch the motor. Rule wise, as long as you don’t violate any rules by size or anything that the first inspection would tackle, you are fine, but you would still need to be reinspected.

As far as I know, they won’t be able to reinspect because inspection is only available on the first day. So would this still be legal if they weren’t able to go through inspection again?

If so what rule does this violate?

Couldn’t you just move the motor to all of your places the first day, and get inspected in “all configurations” then? That way, each configuration would have been pre-inspected, and as long as you don’t change anything while moving the motor during the actual competition, it should be legal. Right?

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That’s just it. What if they did change something else that wasn’t shown in the original inspection. It’s simply a matter of trust. In that case I could go through inspection and make a change to my robot that benefits it’s performance without reinspection.

What rule does this violate if the robot isn’t reinspected after a change with a motor is made?

How radical of changes are we talking about? I think re-inspection calls for teams who swap out an entire subsystem (electronics, chassis, manipulator) specifically. I’ve made plenty of small changes over my competitions, none of which required a re-inspection.

A lot of this is still “honor system,” even without discussing re-inspection. I could change something (like over-clocking a Cortex, or adding extra plexiglass) after inspection, and probably wouldn’t get caught. But I don’t do that, and neither do the vast majority of other teams.

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The team in my organization wants to move a motor from one system to another. eg) One Motor from the catapult to the cap lift

@5SRobotics if you look at R2C it states

If a robot has multiple functional configurations, all possible configurations must be inspected before being used in competition.

Therefore, it is allowed to change the motor to a different configuration as long as it is inspected during the original inspection

So if they don’t go through the original inspection with all configurations, and there are no reinspections at the competition, then they can’t change the configuration legally?

That would be a question for the official Q&A

They should just get all possible configurations inspected when they inspect initially.

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If the judges or anyone else thinks your out of the size they will spot check you. If you’re in the size, they should be no problem