I thought shedding 2 lbs was tough I can't even imagine the pain of over 10 without totally removing something important

Like dets002 said the wiring adds up, we save over 4lbs alone on getting rid of extra wire and a terminal strip setup.

We lost 10 lbs off our 'bot last night by welding our extruded AL frame and taking out all of those joining fastners. 10 lbs! WOW!

It does make a difference.

Neill
Team 933

Another idea is putting your battery, breaker, and fuse panel close together. Less of the 6 guage will save a significant amount of weight.

Maybe pump the air out of the pneumatics before you weigh it? Dont want any air weighting you down :)

Can to pneumatics maintain a vacuum without power? Can they maintain a vacuum at all?

I have no idea. I think the everything could hold it, but I dont know how the motor or pressure releif valve would react.

get rid of atwood motors
 

We were 17 pounds over yesterday. So we got rid of our 4 motor drive. We got rid of our atwood motors and home made transmission and the extra wheels and chain. OH WELL...ITS THE JOURNEY THAT COUNTS!!!
i SHOULD HAVE BROUGHT A SCALE IN SOONER

You can go to Small Parts and purchase an assortment of various sized holes to place on your robot for weight reduction. They are expensive - only the very rich teams can afford them - but it is convenient to be able to move the holes around until you get them just right. We had a box of them around, but unfortunately I mixed up all the sizes in one box and the little ones fell through the big hole and I never found them again.

We tried running the compressor on helium, but the robot had such a squeaky little voice we couldn't stand it.

Permanent magnets are allowed in any amount. You could try aligning their fields against the earth's magentic field to generate some lift. Of course, your 'bot will have to be able to handle directional derivatives, and convolution integrals aren't on the additional hardware list. You might be better off working in the frequency domain.

Next year Exide is coming out with a battery that uses massless neutrinos. Getting rid of that heavy box full of electrons will be a big help - just not this year.

There may be a topological way out, though. If you start with a two-dimensional Moebius strip, and move up to the three-dimensional Klein Bottle, there should be some way to take the next step to a four-dimensional construct (let's call it a "Kamen Manifold") that would get rid of the mass entirely. Then you can work with all kinds of neat things, like PVC pipe with an OD smaller than the ID so that the inside is on the outside.

By the way, how strictly do you think the ref's are going to enforce L'Hopital's Rule this year? I mean, you have to set SOME limits...............