Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

I'm curious how many other teams are epically overweight. We're 30 pounds over LOL. I probably shouldn't be lol'ing, but it is 11:52PM, I just got home from a 15 hour build session, and I find the word 'potato' funny.

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

Everyone's been there. In 2006, on the Saturday before ship we weighed in at around 140, were about 5'4" in height, and had a cg so high it was pretty much instant flippage. Basically we had three days for a total redesign. Since then we've learned to budget weight starting from day 1, and have payed careful attention to how designs to develop. Call your situation a learning experience as well. :cool:

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

We were 5 days ago and trimming our robot down was just about as hard as doing it in real life in a few days!!!!!! :eek: :eek: :eek:

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

Quite a few hours of this gets you this. 40 lbs in 3 days!

But seriously, that doesn't sound fun! Do you have a lot of unnecessary weight?

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

Yeah we think we know an easy way to trim off at least 15 pounds by changing the roller/belt system. The plastic hopper material is also heavier than is needed. I'm sure we can get it off. Our first year we were 70 pounds overweight at the start of week 6, but then we did significantly redesign the robot that year. The problem for us is we have to use all the CIM motors, they are heavy. Note to self: always assume you have to use all the CIMs for your robot when planning. Besides, I need something to hole saw during the regional :D
Oh and our crate is overweight too, with hte robot inside with nothing else IF it weights 120lbs, we have 20lbs of weight left before hitting 400lbs.. ROFL. Have to use our crate from last year.

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

Best thing to do is design initially with weight in mind...you'll learn that soon enough.

We're 120.0 right now and finished w/o making any weight mods. Will trim it down a bit just to leave a bit of room for different things if we feel the need.

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

Well I'm a senior so I won't be on the team next year, but I'll be sure to make sure the mentors remember. We always over engineer everything.

Oh and we will be at the Sussex practice regional tomorrow (later today? LOL) so I hope other teams can have helpful suggestions. I wish I had more pics to post right now, but we were too busy to take any.

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

Yep. 330 found out how hard it is to remove a lot of weight back in 1998, when they got to their first event (the Nationals--back then, you didn't have to qualify) and found that they were 26# over. After that, we decided that we didn't want to do that again.

Since then, we've managed weight. We know what gets hit first, and what comes off first. 2007: projections for the ramps and armor put the robot about 5-15# over. Somebody came up with a pretty good idea: the ramps are going to be protection anyway, so why do we have the armor? We wound up with only about 1-2# over, so we took off one ramp to deal with it temporarily. Wound up removing a duplicate motor, but we came in at weight.

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

I'll never forget the weighing in at one of our two regionals in 07... The scale read 120.0 then 120.1 and kept switching back and forth. Then the head inspector says, "Well, they don't say how long it has to be 120.0 lbs!"

Only had to remove a few shavings. :-)

Contrary to how things usually go, for once we might be adding weight to the base of our robot this year.

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

WHAAAT!!! We NEVER do that!!!

pre2002--don't know personally, other than 1998
2002--hole-riddled
2003--left as-is; we only had a few ounces
2004--barely made it, and didn't have many places for holes
2005--See the wedges for the evidence
2006--ditched a mechanism and barely made it
2007--see above
2008--No idea (I was in SD or with another team all season)

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

Don't worry man, this was our robot in our rookie year 2 days before ship. Turns out we were about 40 pounds overweight as well (actually about 30 when we realized we forgot to take out the battery), but we managed to get it all together before the end of ship. Our best methods of losing weight were to remove some drive motors, replace some thick aluminum bars with thinner stuff, and of course cheese holing well into the night (literally!)

Best of luck, I'm sure that you guys can get it done!

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

We are currently overweight, but we can shave off twenty pounds with a quick drill ( 2 pounds over).Wink Wink.

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

5 oz. overweight.

Trim the zip-ties?

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

This is the first year we have ever been UNDERWEIGHT. Minus our 1/16th Lexan Covering, we are at 100lbs flat, the finished robot.. We weighed the entire roll of Lexan we will be using and that still will only take us to 106, and we're only using about a 1/2 of the roll anyways!


Maybe we can scrounge up all the parts we've had to remove in the past to make weight, and use them for ballast this year. :)

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

As of tonight my team is about 30 pounds underweight we have nothing else to add so we are looking for ways to add weight.

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

umm... we've had weight problems in the past but this year we managed an epic in weighing. we were 40 LBS UNDERWEIGHT!!! that's right, we weighed 80 pounds at prototype. we considered what to do with the extra weight, some ideas that were thrown around:
- a toaster
- boombox for metallica
- a vice clamp (the idea was that we wouldn't have to carry it onto the field)
- full sets of plate armor or chain mail (too heavy)
- various limbs of team members.

yeah, fun day.

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

112.6 lbs

Anyone have 6 lbs of lightening hole chips we can use? :D

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

3 days ago, we were 30 pounds under weight, and projected ourselves at finishing up at around 110 lbs.

Yesterday at noon, we weighed our robot, and we came in at 120 lbs without everything on board.

This morning, at 12:15 AM, we weighed ourselves again and came in at 110.5 lbs without a couple components, meaning we think we can make weight.

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

Take a good look at your design and you will be surprised how easily you can get weight off, we got 10 pounds off in 5 hours yesterday.

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

If you're really desperate for big weight savings start looking at places that you doubled up motors. I know last year we weighed in a 120.1 - 120.0 all season and if worse came to worse we could've always pulled the extra CIM out of our drive.

And if you're really desperate, start trimming those bolts! I know on our 'bot we could lose a half pound easy if we cut the excess threads off of every bolt.

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

Overweight? Install some of these:

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

Well in our case since we were epicall underweight last year... we thought that we wouldn't be over this year which means that we got cocky and now we are barely making the weight limit after "swiss-cheesing" the robot a bit, let's hope that the robot doesn't eat anything while being shipped

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

Our robot went on a low-density, swiss cheese diet last night, if you know what I mean ;>

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

We lost 34 pounds in one day by switching from massive 1/4" aluminum plates to lexan for our shooter.

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

Last year we came in at about 5 pounds underweight after everything was built and put on, so we didn't think we'd have a problem this year.

Wrong! At the start of Thursday we were 20-30 lbs overweight. So we swiss-cheesed our conveyor mechanism and everything else that wasn't structurally important, swapped some of our aluminum speedrail for PVC, removed 2-3 lbs of excess wiring, took off some of the lexan armor for our control system, switched some steel components for aluminum, swapped the door on our hopper for something waaaay lighter, and removed 8lbs of unnecessary support for our control board. Now we're at weight! :D

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

Take out cRIO modules yo!

Straight from the GDC

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

I'm epically overweight but it's so far so good on the robot.
More will be revealed on Monday, I suppose.

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

Suprisingly our robot turned out to be 3 pounds under the max...and i don't know how many of you have seen our frame, but it is solid.

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

We are 20 pounds under weight so we are going to add some propellers

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

We are 20 pounds under weight so we added a big steel (at least 12") sprocket :cool: . and some lead ballast. In 04 our team was 40 pounds over weight a week before ship.

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

I'm not epically overweight but I could always stand to lose a few.

We rolled up a slightly conservative weight budget on day 2 and added up to about 118, so I figured we were OK. We weighed yesterday fully loaded at 107.3 so we've got some margin to beef up a couple of gearbox and sprocket components, as well as shift CG a little.

<edit> Oh wait, that included the trailer hitch, which is excluded from the 120# limit. I guess we have a little more margin.

I've always wanted, if I had an underweight robot (this is only the second time in 12 years I've been there), to mount a toolkit somewhere on the robot with allen wrenches, combination wrenches, needle nose pliers, diagonal cutters, etc. so I don't have to hunt for them. Maybe we'll go there.

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

as of last week when we weighed it, this is the first year we have ever been underweight without have to make things "dissapear" :D

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

These posts about underweight must be making the guy who started this thread sick. We came in with our final robot at about 1/4 pound under. We new since we had our design about where we would be. A good thing to do is to cut off brackets that stick out into no where.

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

We have seen both ends of the spectrum over the years. For several years running, we were consistently underweight. We even went so far as to purchase a 27-pound block of lead from Small Parts (back when they were one of the only legal parts resources) that we used as ballast for the robot (suitably coated and protected, of course). Then there was our experience three years ago. Despite several warnings from the integration team, the individual subteams refused to stick to their weight budgets when building their sections of the robot. As things came together, the total weight became a bleaker and bleaker picture. Finally, two days before the shipping deadline, we weighed in at a massive 42 pounds overweight. Everyone finally got the message - time for a diet! At times like that, the only viable solutions tend to be rather drastic ones. So we took a quick run to Home Depot and picked up one of these:

It is amazing how much weight you can remove when you are really motivated (and it is interesting to have the entire team go through the "features that are 'highly desireable' vs those that are 'absolutely needed' exercize).

-dave





.

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

Dave,

I have a "jigsaw" blade that is about the size of that entire sawzall. 1/2" thick, one tooth per inch. I found it on a railroad siding, so it must be used on some machine to cut old ties. I used to use that as a reminder about being overweight. :P

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

You know Garrett, 30 pounds is only 5 pounds on the moon. Doesn't sound so bad now, does it?

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

42 pounds is the most I've heard of. That's impressive.

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

i think we are like 2 pounds under when we wieght today..

still not done, but our school is just so dumb, they invest money in this program and basically give up at the end..

Just great...

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

We weighed in with 16 pounds left, not including control or decorations... So I don't really know where we are now... either way, thats why we rivetted random pieces of aluminium angle on the robot, makes lightening easier. We are making sure to pack the good old hole saw though.

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

We've had mixed experiences over the years.

2003, our first year, we added a boat anchor chain for ballast.

2005, we removed a stage to our multi-stage lift to make weight.

This year we were about 20 lbs overwight. Every time we thought we took 10 lbs off, we ended up 5 lbs lighter! Right now we're hovering around 120. That camera isn't looking so important any more!

Anyone notice that their robot gains weight from the time it ships 'til weigh-in at the Regional? Just part of the magic of FIRST I guess.

-Chip

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

With battery and bumpers, we weighed in at 105 Lbs. yesterday.

If someone is +20 Lbs. over, can you send us your extra weight??:rolleyes:

Seriously, we are adding at leat 12 Lbs of 1X2 in. aluminum bars just to get our weight up a little.

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

How the heck can a team be that Underweight?
Show us some pics. :D

This thread can easily be applied to both robot and/or mentor.
Hard to stay underweight. :p

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

Or drive base with our harvester weighs about 70-80 pounds and all we have to add is a shooter, which shouldn't weigh too much.

Last year we got tipped twice at GSR and on Saturday we added around 20 pounds of weight to make us heavier.

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

Same for us in 06 shipped 20 lbs over the SVR machine shop was the main reason we were able to compete lol we are under by about 10

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

For once 612 isn't over weight. Last year we were a good 8lbs over when we showed up to our first regional.

But this year sorry, we are 20lbs under :rolleyes: . Switch to aluminum bolts, they save weight!

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

Pictures in this thread. Ours is the first bot shown, as you would expect. This includes six motors, a camera and two servos.

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

We weighed in 33 lbs over today, which is our last work day. And that's without our compressor and other pneumatic components. Then to make matters worse, we had to crate it today, since we won't have any more time to work before ship day.

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

I'm pretty sure that we're a few pounds under. Our head coordinator is so happy about that too cuz she wants to decorate the robot. Since I've been on the team (Since last year haha) we haven't had any weight to spare. Last year we couldn't decorate, and I'm pretty sure the year before they couldn't. This year she's happy cuz she gets her chance. She's already started painting the robot :)

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

We had been at least 20 pounds over weight a week ago, so we decided that our robot should go on a diet plan and have liposuction, we lost 34 pounds. We still needed to add stuff. We went from 1/4 inch thick metal side plates for our shooter to some lexan, went from 26 pounds to 7.5(and that didn't have any of the holes drilled out or corners cut off). We were all happy once we got rid of that weight. :)

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

We were at 126 a few days ago so we had to go from 4 wheel crab drive to 3 wheels like so / \ and took off 1 motor
|

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

current weight - 157 (subtract battery after that).

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

2004- Somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 pounds over. Our chassis was way overbuilt, and of course very difficult to get to. We also Sawzalled a good portion of our hopper off, which in retrospect may have been a bad choice. We also drilled 1/2 holes everywhere we could fit a a drill, and holesawed everywhere we possibly could. We ended up just under.

2005- Still not quite sure how we ended up under on this one. We drilled all of the holes before we assembled the robot so they looked all nice, and ended up just under. This one certainly looks the heaviest of all the robots we've built.

2006- Hovered right at 120.

2007- Our ramps didn't work out so well, so we dumped them. Our arm didn't work out so well either, so we pinned it up at six feet and added 10 pounds of steel.

2008-Ended up under, and added about 5 pounds of counterweight for our arm.

2009- Right at 120. We might be a little over, but it's nothing we can't take care of in half an hour on Thursday. *knock on wood*

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

My team is also underweight. Much better than last year, we had to drill holes all over to be underwieght, good luck to you and your team, you will figure out a way to make it work. :)

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

We're about 1/10th of a pound overweight this year, but we won't worry about it until competition. Once they officially flag us on weight (or maybe their scale doesn't read to tenths of a pound.. who knows) we'll bust out a drill, but right now we're not worried.

We knew we'd be about 1-2lb over from our inventor drawing, but through some pre-emptive cheese hole-ing we are pretty much good to go.

Last year we were severely underweight, but thats due to a bot with basically no manipulator and a severe in-ability to drive. 2 years ago we were overweight due to our tank of a drive system (literally, we had some beasty treads) and 8020 lift system.

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

We are actually underweight so we are trying to find ways to add weight to ours without going over.

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

steel bars/ any other heavier stock maybe?

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

Yeah that and maybe surround it a bit with lexan

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

Is lexan lighter than plexiglass?

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

I'm not sure of that answer, but PLEASE, do not use plexiglass. Stick to polycarbonate. Please.

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

I don't think it matters. What's important is that the armour doesn't shatter when a ball hits it. (That's assuming it survives the cutting, drilling, attaching processes.)

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

Or something else...

In 2005, my team had one acrylic (plexiglass) panel, out of 4 surrounding our mast. The other three, as well as defensive wedges on the sides, were polycarbonate (lexan). Guess which one cracked under a robot hit at our first event? It was replaced with the other material.

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

Yeah last year we used lexan and it worked really well but our experience with plexiglass has not been a pleasent one

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

Guesshat? We weighed in at the Sussex Mini-Regional, and we somehow lost 10 pounds. I'm not sure how, but now we're only 20 pounds over. We think we can also lose the CIM motor powering the insanly heavy and high tension belt system. That could be another 5 pounds right there.

Unfortunatly we blew out the fuse on our cRIO while there so ALL we did was get weighed. LOL? Argh.

Seeing all these teams that are significantly underwight doesn't make me sick, It just means they had much beter planning than our team did.

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

ya, somehow we keep ending upunderweight the past few years... in 07' we had soo much extra weight, we had to put a 15 pound steel bar on the back of our robot... last i heard, this years robot was still a bit underweight too...

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

Mentors last year and this year told you guys to watch weight.
Last year you were 7-8 pounds overweight 3 days before ship.
This year you are 30 pounds overweight 2 days before ship date.
Next year is it going to be 60 pounds overweight 1 day before ship date?

Should of listened to mentors sooner.

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

You probably mean that you make everything too big and strong, which is kind of the opposite of over engineering it. Engineering means designing, and the art of design is to do the most with the least....so a well engineered robot will be light, simple, inexpensive, easy to build, work well, etc.

It sounds like you didn't do enough engineering.

(the term "over engineer" is a pet peeve of mine)

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

We were 5 pounds over weight last night. but we put our robot on the south beach diet drilling some holes all night. every ounce counts ;)
we ended up losing a couple extra just to know we were safe incase we needed to add some small other things.

Cindi

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

i know you guys will all hate us for this but we are 40lbs under:D time to add normal force.

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

Wisdom.

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

We too are slightly overwieght but we came up with a better plan, we are going to convince the judge that Dean meant 120 lbs on the moon, so 740 on earth, we will let you know how it works.

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

I think you'll find that the legal definition of a pound actually describes a mass, not a force. That's why spring scales, which measure force, often bear the caption "not legal for trade". Balance scales and calibrated masses are not affected by gravity.

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

We are 10 underweight

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

We've redesigned our systems are are estimating to be within 1-2 lbs overweight. Then we get out the step drill. :D

Also, the mentors didn't really plan for weight - no one did. We were just trying to finish the design.

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

We were 3 pounds over and we've been putting cheese holes everywhere we can. We also lost a full pound by removing 3 unused cRIO modules.

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

1902 finds the word 'potato' funny as well.

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

We're 25 lbs UNDER weight and we ended up adding 10lb weights to the back of each side.

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

we ended up modifying our entire ball collection and delivery system, and now the robot weighs 121 pounds lol


upside is the camera now aims our shooter and our harvesting system dosent jam anymore:D

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

The pound is considered both a measurement of weight, and of mass, therefore, it is slightly ambiguous to the pedantic eye.

However, unless you plan on getting the scale off earth, 1 lb(weight)==1lb(mass)

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

The scale said 118.9 when it was about ready to go in the crate....I guess we got lucky, because we sure didn't have a weight budget this year.

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

We have yet to weigh the robot as a whole, but so far we r about 6 lb under (last time i checked) we still have some stuff to add, therefore, we r looking at hitting weight near perfectly.

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

make that 3 lb

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

UPDATE! We lost ~55 pounds and are now 15 pounds under weight! And the bot still works!!

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

We seem to be about two pounds over, I think we'll make it.

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

We're sitting at 95lbs night before ship...we're considering ballast at competiton.:cool:

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

116.5! First time we aren't adding speed holes the night before we ship! In fact it was packed up by 9 pm tonight! No all nighter for 836 this year!

Let the games begin!

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

Last year, as first year rookies, we were 30 pounds over weight without any special manipulator. We used 2x2 80/20 and our robot was a TANK. We could shuttle at least several people on it back and forth. It was like 2x2 80/20 around the base, bolted with quarter inch (at least) thick plates that had about 20 bolts to each plate on each corner, etc. We had this hunk of metal at the top that could knock the balls down which was little over 20 lbs. We were 20 lb overweight so guess what went, the 20 lb thing that knocked the balls down. That was like 1am on the day of shipping and we hated that night so much that his year we've been weighing at least twice a week. We're just around the weight limit with a decent implementation of picker/shooter.

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

We've redesigned, crunched the numbers, and are looking at a total estimated weight of 117lbs. I'm guessing we're using that weight up with what we are going to add, so I think we'll still have to do some drilling. To make room for the camera.

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

Whoot! Yay!

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

We track weight every Friday and in CAD. It helps knowing where you are.

Re: Are You EPICALLY overweight?
 

You took the robot to have a liposuction. Congratulations a 30 pound weight loss in 2 days. See you at the Wisconsin Regional.