Hello! Our team was recently at a competition, and another team that we were alliance parters with told us that the rubber bands we used were not allowed since they were latex based. They said that we could only use non latex based rubber bands. Is this true? I haven’t found anything in the rules stating that they are not legal. They are size #64
With a look through the manual, this is as close as I can get:
R5d:
Any parts which are identical to legal VEX parts are permitted. For the purposes of this rule, products which are identical in all ways except for color are permissible. It is up to inspectors to determine whether a component is “identical” to an official VEX component.
If I’m not mistaken this is why you are allowed only size #32 and #64 rubber bands.
At the end of the day do realize that the referee/robot inspectors make the final judgement, and not a random team you’re allianced with (people can be wrong sometimes)
Thats not true at all.
Pretty sure the VEX brand ones are actually made of latex (correct me if I’m wrong) But I would highly suggest using non-latex anyway, as they tend to last longer and have more pulling power.
VEX rubber bands are Alliance Non-Latex.
In a previous season’s Q&A, rubber bands of different materials were ruled legal, as long as they’re “close to the official VEX Rubber Bands” in elasticity. Two caveats:
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Previous season’s Q&A rulings do not automatically carry over. The answer would probably be the same if asked again this year, but no one has asked this year as far as I know.
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Inspectors still have the final say on what’s considered “Identical to a VEX part”. So fi an inspector really wanted to, they could perform some sort of “elasticity testing” on your rubber bands, and if they determine that their elasticity is substantially different from the VEX bands, they could potentially fail your robot for that reason. However, it seems pretty unlikely to me that an inspector would do this.
If you’re particularly concerned about either of those things, the easiest thing to do is probably to buy a box of alliance non-latex rubber bands (less than $5 at the amazon link above) and stop worrying about it.
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Perhaps their school or organization has a “no-latex” policy, and they erroneously thought it was a VEX rule rather than a local policy. This is why RTM is so important.
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