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Originally Posted by Henry_Mareck
We dont take weight in mind in design, after the design is chosen we add everything up and see where we are. We had some major weight problems a few days ago, our projected weigt was around 130.
in general we try and keep it low during build, but sometimes have to drop some funtion to be under 120.
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To expand on what Henry's saying about how we (418) deal with weight concerns, we don't think about weight during brainstorming - we certainly do when it comes to how specific components will be manufactured. After 2004 (before my time but I know the story well) when we were 20 lbs. overweight when the robot was finished, we make a point of weighing every component as we go, and estimating the weights of stuff yet to be built.
If your team has had weight trouble in the past, or if your design looks like it might have trouble when it's all done, it's a good idea to keep track of this during the build and not just deal with it all at the end, for a number of reasons - if you're weighing individual components, then not only do you later have references for how much each part weighs in the event that you need to remove functionality to make weight, but if you're coming up heavy at this stage then you know you've got problems. What we're doing that seems to be working quite well is keeping track of each subsystem on a weight board, and lightening every part as much as we can without losing structural stability before the robot is together - the other thing that we've spent a lot of time on is deciding what goes first if we're still too heavy; this is a big decision, and if people are really involved in their own parts of the robot, it can be a somewhat emotional one as well; give yourself time to discuss what you're willing to sacrifice if it should become neccesary to do so, but lighten as you go as well. Hopefully you won't have to sacrifice functionality, but if you talk about it early then when and if the time does come, you don't have to make the decision in the last few days before ship, which are already stressful enough.