Over weight robot

[Gregor]

Last year, we lost about 4 lbs drilling out all the holes we weren't using on the kit frame. That's a start. It looks like your shooter is plywood lined with (1/8"?) aluminium plate. Drill holes into anything that doesn't contact the frisbee. You can easily shed 10 lbs with just drilling holes, don't do anything drastic.

[Maxzillian]

As said before, start by taking metal out of your feeder chute. You only need rails along the outside edges to hold the frisbees, keeping a pair of rails 2" wide while taking out sections in the middle will help. Same goes for the piece of plywood on your shooter. There is a lot of material and weight you don't need, especially in that plywood seeing as how it is covered in a sheet of metal for the frisbee to slide against.

Look at hogging out holes in the inner frame rails. You need strength on the other rail (that forms the perimeter of the chassis) to take hits from other robots, but the inner rails that support the inside of the wheels don't take near as much force. You could place many large holes in the vertical span of those channels and sacrifice little strength.

It's hard to tell from the photo, but how thick is your electronics platform?

Hardware is another place. I see a couple frame joints that have 3 bolts per leg. Take out the third bolt on each leg and if it is still stiff enough, cut off the excess length from the joint (where the third bolt would have resided).

[Littleboy]

You could also try replacing the CIMs in your shooter with something smaller like a Bag of MiniCim. It won't get you the 10 lbs, but it will help.

[Gregor]

Have you checked this out?

[Priyesh69]

Thank you, we have figured out the stuff to do for reducing the weight. We are taking out the manifold and the compressor plus some holes and cut out some piece. Queston: will we have enough air

[vhcook]

Did you release your compressed air before weighing? That can also make a noticeable difference.

[Shane 2429]

drill anything not structural and if that doesn't help any drill more holes between those holes also look for anything not entirely necessarily and see if can removed

so in short drill holes drill holes and drill more holes

[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by Shane 2429

drill anything not structural and if that doesn't help any drill more holes between those holes also look for anything not entirely necessarily and see if can removed

so in short drill holes drill holes and drill more holes

Calculate the mass of the holes before you drill any. Use the volume of a cylindrical hole times the density of the material you're thinking of drilling. This should only take a few minutes to estimate.

Additionally, some cost-benefit analysis of your mechanisms and drilled holes is in order. Are you better of by sacrificing a mechanism and just getting the robot finished, or by taking the next day or so to drill holes in things?

And this goes without saying: everyone participating in your decision must understand the weight limits in the rules.

[Mk.32]

Oh also, make sure your scale isn't to blame. Get a student that knows her/his weight to stand on it to check or object. You never know!

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by Mk.32

Oh also, make sure your scale isn't to blame. Get a student that knows her/his weight to stand on it to check or object. You never know!

Additionally, make sure you are using a scale that goes up in small increments.

[DonRotolo]

Originally Posted by Priyesh69

We are taking out the manifold and the compressor

Queston: will we have enough air

Enough air for what? If you have 2 plastic tanks and one cylinder like in the photo, probably yes, for one time. If you have 2 cylinders and others, then maybe not. TRY IT AND SEE.

[giantmidget31]

We were very overweight, so we took off our shooter! It wasn't working that well, and we were easily able to turn our disc lifter into a level 1 dumper, which may even score more points than the level 3 shooter, and we still have our climber.

[Swampdog]

Holes Help. We lost 3 lbs last night. Do you have Aluminum gears in your gear boxes? That can be .4-.8 lbs depending on gear boxes.Do you have the small compressor? Do you need to motors on your shooter? How many drive sims? If 4 do you really need 4? Are you sure about your scale? Are you picking up off the floor? Do you have to? Seems like we have a fat robot every year usually don't name him until he is under. 119.9 is all it takes. Good luck.

[Jibri Wright]

Try replacing a compressor with a mini compressor, use a smaller c-Rio (we normally use the 4-block one), attach electronics to polycarbonate and Velcro them on.

[Jeffy]

A few things:
-Replace all of the sheet metal with similar thickness polycarbonate.
-I can't see your battery mount, but based around the way the bot is built, it's probably overbuilt, but easy to modify
-Drop all the clips that hold in the pneumatic tanks and use 3-4 zipties.

Best of luck!