Our Robot weight woes.. to rebuild or not to rebuild

[coldfusion1279]

Silly questions to ask yourself first:

Are your scales calibrated?
Was your battery in place?
Bumpers on or off?

Moving on to my suggestions:

1. Allow me to reiterate the comment about wheels... Those look like they weight 6 pounds each! Replacing just 2 of them for omnis will save you several pounds. On this same note, omni's will improve your turning ability on carpet, which is a known problem with pneumatics.

2. Change out any aluminum for lighter gauge. Even your Al tubing looks thick. Change out the easy pieces first, then swiss cheese the rest!

3. Saw off the ends of bolts that are too long.

4. Tidy up wiring by trimming unnecessary slack.

If I think of anything else that's helpful, I'll edit my post.

Good Luck!

[BHS_STopping]

My team went through this exactly in 2006. 30 lbs overweight with only 2 days to fix it! I would suggest removing a couple of CIMs, maybe replace some of those wheels with lighter wheels. We originally had 4 powered wheels but then we decided to have it go to 2 with a pair of omni wheels in the back. We replaced several of our thick plates with thinner ones and cheese holed the heck out of everything. Replaced all of our lexan with some thin fiberglass stuff that was nasty to work with but a lot lighter. Try to think about what kind of functionality you wouldn't mind losing. A turret is good but not necessary for this year's game. If you took that off and then had a stationary shooter it looks like your robot will still work quite nicely. Also if you have any pvc rollers, go ahead and switch them to ABS. ABS is quite a lot lighter than pvc and strong enough for most FIRST applications.

Pictures of our rookie robot, after weight savings: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/23240

[wireties]

Originally Posted by viperred396

we aren't really sure where all the weight is coming from.. we think its the motors and electronics

4 CIMs
2 window
2 throttle
3 Banebot775

plus the electronics
cRio2
6 Jags
3 victor
2 spikes
Kinect
small laptop (for image processing

plus the 4 andymark pneumatic tires

the extraordinary piece (weight-wise) is the laptop and the Kinect! Is that necessary? Can you move vision-tracking to the cRIO? or remove it all together? (better than not playing at all)

Have you tried the Kinect on the robot? I thought teams were having trouble making that work as a rectangle tracker.

[wireties]

Originally Posted by DominickC

I laughed at that

SuperNerd has some pretty good ideas. I'd also consider swiss-cheesing your top aluminum plate, if not replacing it with polycarb/plywood. The polycarb would look wicked nice, but plywood weighs less.
?

Swiss-cheese that top plate, reasonable-thickness polycarb won't support that shooter.

[DampRobot]

We changed almost all our steel screws and nuts that held our frame together to steel rivirs, and saved 5 or so pounds. Steel is much heavier (about 3 times) than aluminuim. Keep in mind, if you do decide to redesign, lightening holes don't matter that much, unless they are huge, in steel or thick aluminuim. The best way to lose weight usually doesn't include holes, and does include thickness, material, design, or even strategy changes.

[EricH]

The cardboard concrete tubes... well, those things can be pretty heavy. Start there with lots and lots of holes or other patterns to lighten the robot.

[Captaindan]

The robot Jenny Craig diet.... Swiss cheese everything that isnt structural or making the robot function

[kevin.li.rit]

Swap out your #35 chain and sprockets for #25 chain and sprockets.

[caltemus]

Two hours left, I don't understand how that could have weighed 148, but that electronics plate looks way too beefy for what it's doing.

[KrazyCarl92]

Originally Posted by Captaindan

The robot Jenny Craig diet.... Swiss cheese everything that isnt structural or making the robot function

I think you mean "The robot Jenny Craig diet.... Take off everything that isnt structural or making the robot function"

[remulasce]

A little late now for quick repairs, but check how much the roller mountings weigh in picture 19. That piece holding the bearing onto the frame looks ridiculously overpowered, and way too heavy if it's anything but aluminum. As stated elsewhere, you have a lot of huge expanses of metal plate doing not much of anything. If you can replace the serial cable connecting the sidecar to the CRIO with a ribbon cable, that would be an easy shave of a few ounces. As said, you don't need that thick of chain powering your intake.