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Unread 12-12-2011, 08:41
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AKA: Isaac Rife
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Re: Tips on loosing weight (Not spam)

Using thinner materials is the most frequent weight reduction I see. Often teams will use 1/8" plate where 1/16" will do (be it plastics, aluminum, or whatever...).

This is especially true wih Body panels. I frequently will see teams with large 1/8" body panels. Often 1/16" or even 0.030" thick polycarb will work just as well. In fact the 0.030" polycarb and access to a vinyl cutter make your robot looks classy, and add protection for very little weight.

When working with sheet-metal, use "shape" to add stiffness, not thickness. Adding in flanges can often increase the stiffness of a panel with very little (+10-20%) additional weight. Adding thickness will often do very little (compared to flanges), and increases the weight proportionally. Adding thickness and then removing material via a CNC, looks cool, and functionally may work well, but does require a fair amount of work or tooling.

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The pneuaire.com accumulators are a great way to reduce weight and add air volume. I saw a bunch of these on 1503 last year and got the manufacturer from them. We used several on our robot, and i had a whole bunch of spares that we donated to another team that had around 10 metal accumulators on their machine.

Be careful with aluminum gears. When done right, there are some significant weight savings opportunities, but know that is is difficult to do them right. Aluminum has several properties that are quite poor for gears. Many gear experts would recommend to NEVER use aluminum. I do think they have their place, but you should be extremely careful and really need to know what you are doing.
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Beware of the attitude that "its too late to replace...". I have heard teams say this before, only to remove functional mechanisms at competition in order to make weight.
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