Weight

[Swampdude]

For some strange reason we've never built a robot more than 135 pounds (prior to seriously considering weight reduction). Usually the kit material puts you in a standard range for extra robot material to wind up around 130-135 pounds, it's some kind of natural law. Anyhow, I have faithfully thrown my back out every year carrying these things on and off playing fields. But I still would like to see it go to 135. It has been our magic number.
This year we were really on the ball with weight reduction in the design (120 lbs) but, at the comps we had to beef her up to take the punishment everyone was dishing out, and wound up 131 minus shavings to 129.999.
The thing is, years past without trying too hard we got around 135, then this year we went overboard and got 120. It's not a big difference. Experience has taught me how to do a lot with 5 lbs - true. But inexperience and 5 extra pounds would make making robots (which is extremely stressful) much easier.
It would be good to see a weight study showing what the kit material puts you at for a typical bot configuration. Then see what kind of weight/mass ratio is left over. I bet it's not much.