I was wondering how screwgate was handled at MOA. How did inspectors ensure that no team was receiving a competitive advantage by using illegal screws? And if nothing was done to check screw material, what is the point in having rules that aren’t even enforced?
Which would you prefer:
Head Inspector: Please disassemble your entire robot so I can verify each screw is compliant.
or
Head Inspector: Are all your screws compliant?
The second requires teams to behave honorably and truthfully. The first requires insane amounts of time.
In general, I find VRC competitors to be honorable and operate within the spirit of the rules. This isn’t NASCAR’s “If you ain’t cheatin’, you ain’t tryin’” ethos.
Am I naive enough to believe no cheating happens in VRC? No. But I would say the compliance rate is high.
I’m not familiar with this, could you elaborate a little bit more?
NASCAR teams (and racing teams in general, whether it be small town dirt tracks or Cup Series) are just notorious for pushing the rules to the extreme, sometimes breaking them intentionally to gain more clarity, or trying to skirt the rules entirely for competitive advantage in the hopes they won’t be selected for random inspection.
A friend who used to work with a small town racing team told me the story of using small, brittle drill bits broken off in suspension bits as a “pin” to keep the car at a legal height, but as soon as it took the first turn at speed, the bit would snap and the ride height would lower, creating an advantage.
Don’t get any ideas 
honestly, situations like you presented in the second paragraph are what I think makes competition more exciting and more educational. lots of people experimenting their way around the rules is how we get new innovations and is how the next revolutionary design is created. I wish that rules were more allowing for this kind of thing, because any team can think their way to a crazy design, regardless of money, time, access to CAD, etc.
Ah yes, nothing says “Inspiring” like losing to a team that knowingly skirts rule(s) to win.
I had a situation back in the 2010 era of teams pushing the limits during the qualification matches. I instituted a “before semifinals all robots would undergo inspection” and all of the “we added that part during the day, oh it is over by an inch” stuff came to a dead halt.
Unless I missed it, I’m not seeing mention of an important issue w/ non-Fe screws: strength & fatigue life.
These are some big heavy bots w/ lots of power (linearly when moving, rotationally as in flywheels, mechanically in arms/assemblies/etc, pneumatics, and so on).
Honestly, I’d feel better knowing that the fasteners holding this all together are strong and not prone to stripping or fatiguing.
Regarding the ‘repurchasing’ new screws. Any advanced team is typically already going to have a LARGE supply of Fe screws. In the grand scheme of things… screws are cheap and last forever.
If you’re going to pick a hill to die on… I’d pick something more impactful to ALL teams, like allowing 10 motors w/o air and 8 with.
And if weight is that important to you… get out the drill and add extra holes to the Al structural members. You could lose a TON of weight with a drill, dremel, and a few hours of time.
Or… we could just not skirt rules… and still be back on even ground.
Let’s also not forget that competitors have agency here. Rules need not only be enforced by the Head Inspector. Mentors have an obligation to make sure their teams follow the rules. Competitors can influence other teams to follow the rules by creating a culture of compliance (which, in my experience, largely exists).
Because I need an 8 motor drive 1m flywheel 1 motor intake/ indexer.
10 motors would be extremely overpowered against 8 motors w pnuematics
Off topic but It would be cool if they sold and let us use 2 of the exp 5.5w motors in place of v5 1 motor, and Maybe the pnuematics in place of v5 1 motor
Configurations would look like this:
2 small motors, pnuematics, and 6 big motors
2 small motors and 7 big motors
7 big motors and pnuematics
That way there’s some kind of penalty for having a robot thats over 400$ more than what your competitor has (since screws seem to cost so much) and its not extreme to the point where no one uses pnuematics
I would also like to see a 2 for 1 swap smaller motors for big would really open up the engineering trade offs.
Honestly it would be awesome
At the EP summit I asked and was told the 5.5 was in short supply, they didn’t want to allow them and then have the issues around supply make everyone cranky.
Sounds like a familiar situation lol
if vex’s intention is to avoid making everyone cranky, i feel like i have to say all things considered they’ve done a remarkably poor job recently.
Pnuematic moment
20 char