Hey,
My team decided to paint our robot dark red, to match our school colours. We made sure to get as little of the robot. I’ve attached a photo below. I am aware of how similar the colour of the robot is to VEX red, and decided therefore to paint our license plates. I’m curious if this is allowed. If not, we are planning to carry another set of plates.
In order to reduce confusion, I decided to attach a second set of license plates. These are going to include our team logo (they don’t yet), and change colour depending on our alliance. This means we essentially have twice the amount of ‘blue’ compared to other robots. I think this is fine, because the plates are non-functional decorations
Our coach says that this isn’t okay, but I can definitely not see any part of the rules that make it illegal. It’s definitely not confusing any field elements, and I’d argue there’s more red in our non-painted parts than we have in our painted parts, along with me seeing many robots that have used more red gears than us. We are also not trying to look like we are on the opposing alliance, because all the plates that are currently burgundy are going to be changed to blue.
second license plates is an issue as it may perform a functional purpose to prevent game objects from interfacing with your mechanism and preventing them getting stuck and being possessed by robot. (GDC would say don’t over think… but would removing second license plate cause triball to get stuck?.. meh probably not-ish…)
using red paint would not mimic game objects in this case, so really not an issue.
if you coach does not want you painting your bot, why are you doing that??? seriously, coach is already annoyed at you all about how annoying you are… (oops sorry, MS teacher here)…
As per the game manual, the rules regarding alliance color pertain only to the color of the license plates and not to any other part of the robot, so there’s nothing wrong with painting your robot red as shown in the picture. If you wish, you can still use a second set of license plates as a non-functional decoration (showing your team logo) but it shouldn’t be necessary.
It is legal, but be wary, as the head refs bay get confused as to who is who and mess up rulings. Be sure to make the license plates a very visible red and/or blue so the head ref knows for sure what alliance you’re on. Having license plates on all 4 sides of your robot would help the ref distinguish which alliance you are on, but I would just add 3 total.
Also, if your coach says no, until someone official says yes, I would follow what he says. In my chapter, our advisor’s word is law (unless he says otherwise).
For both of our license plates, they don’t provide any functional purpose. The triballs are huge and won’t get stuck there. The ones attached to the tower were there at previous comps with no issue, it’s the one over the wheels that are new. If needed I can just add a piece of aluminum behind them to show that they don’t do anything,
Our coach cleared it when we painted the robot, but then kind of was like “I’m not sure about the rules for that”. We also have multiple coaches, and three of them were like ‘I mean it looks fine’ while one of them wasn’t. He’s still pretty on the fence. If it was a hard ‘no’ then I wouldn’t be here on the forum.
Would you then say that our burgundy plates that we have (see image) would work when we’re on the red alliance, or should we (although ugly) change the plates to the typical VEX red?
I’ll make sure to converse with the Ref about it for our upcoming competition. The blue is very visible, I unfortunately did not take a photo of it (because it looks less cool). The red plates are the ones you see above.
Where we are, coach’s word is also law, except for in this one he was on the fence and told me he was against it to do more research (hence why I’m here).
I’m not going to be 100% sure, but I think that your painted license plates should be good enough since your license plate is quite clearly red and I’d imagine that referees would agree too. Might be a good idea to check with event staff beforehand to any tournaments you go to in order to be sure.
p.s. What sort of paint did you use? I might consider doing the same thing during my team’s off-season with my school’s blue color scheme
Perfect. I’ll bring an extra set of regular red plates and then see what happens when we get inspected.
We used oil-based spray self-priming paint, since it means we don’t need to prime the aluminum and it’s quick to apply. I tried finding the specific can I used online but couldn’t find exactly what I used.
I recommend using it, it worked pretty well and only took a few coats. I can also confidently say it works in cold temps, since we painted outside in -10C. It does, however, chip (as all paint does). Good luck!
