About being overweight and exceeding your size requirements – the need for reinspecti

[eugenebrooks]

Flat bed scales are notorious for being sensitive to the weight
distribution of the object placed on them. We use a hanging
scale when we weigh our robot, or parts, in the shop. One
gets a much more consistent reading that way.

Eugene

Originally Posted by DeepWater

FWIW: I really question the calibration of the competition scales sometimes. Last year we weighed in during initial inspection at 19.4 so we added a short piece of 1" x 1/16" wall aluminum box tube just to add a little more protection for our RC. It brought our total weight to 119.8. We never added or subtracted anything else from our robot the entire competition. When we re-weighed in before eliminations the robot was 118.7. Somehow we magically lost over 1 lb. I just can't see how that could have been anything other than the calibration of the scale. The scale was moved from the original inspection area to the queuing area before the start of eliminations. Scales of this precision require extremely good calibration and don't like to be moved. I have also noticed that, believe it or not, how the robot is placed on a scale changes the reading. We have a fairly good scale here at work used by our shipping department. It is probably calibrated once or twice a year. Last year we weighed our robot on it and the weight varied as much as 5 lbs depending on how the robot was placed on the scale.