A note about bumpers.

[Semitangible]

My team has always made the bumpers exactly how they show them in the game manual. We've always made them wrap the entire frame.

In the 2019 season, we used the KOP frame, and were overweight by a little over a pound and a half, following these "instructions" in the game manual. We were told that the weight was a change for this season, and that teams "who build bumpers like [we did] are usually trying to intentionally make them heavier for an advantage."

It should be noted in the manual that using the FRC frame and the FRC design instructions will result in bumpers that are too heavy. I think that perhaps the FRC committee made an oopsie and didn't realize that their change would result in their manual leading teams astray.

I'm only sharing so as to save other teams from having to frantically rip apart their bumpers at competition to meet weigh-in, like we had to, thinking we were in the clear because we did what FRC showed us to do.

[Kevin O'Connor]

Welcome to the FIRST Forums! Thanks for the feedback. What type of wood do you typically use? What does your bumper attachment system look like? Do you use the optional aluminum clamping angle?

The evaluation of the change to the Bumper weight included weighing full sets of bumpers that we have here at FIRST, discussions with LRIs about anecdotal evidence regarding bumper weight, and a large dataset of bumper weights from one of our LRIs showing that an extreme majority of bumpers weighed in below the new limit across hundreds of robot inspections at multiple events over multiple years.