What scales to weight robot?

[Manoel]

In 2002 we took the robot to the airport and used the luggage check-in scales, they're pretty accurate and, if you have nothing better closer to you, it's a very good option.
In 2003 we didn't weight the robot - ended up adding ballast to increase traction, a robot builder's dream
This year we only had to take a pound off the robot, despite our somewhat "ghetto" weigh in techniques...

[Denman]

another answer :
Dont!
Wait until the competition then find out your massivly overweight (yes, we did that lol, had to remove our forklift mechanism....) ..
proper planning etc.....

[Wetzel]

Originally Posted by Cory

The funny thing is the scales were never off by the same amount. It always got progressively worse as you added weight.

Scales tend to be off by percentages rather then x amount, so that makes sense.

Wetzel

[MikeDubreuil]

Heh, I think we must have the most ghetto way of weighing a robot...

We use a digital bathroom scale with someone carrying the robot while standing on the scale. Then we subtract the person's weight and we have the robot's weight.

[Gabe Salas Jr.]

We use a digital scale that that measures up to the hundredth place in pounds. Really nice since the plate is about three feet by three feet.

I would not really rely on bathroom scales because of the very small weighing surface area. I would even recommend bringing your robot to Publix and have it weighed in their spiffy scale (accurate to half a pound).

[Arefin Bari]

Originally Posted by Denman

another answer :
Dont!
Wait until the competition then find out your massivly overweight (yes, we did that lol, had to remove our forklift mechanism....) ..
proper planning etc.....

Speaking of weight, we found out that we were 138 on thursday night at florida regional... feel the stress?

we use a scale that motorola has in thier facility... its aobut 5 ft. by 5 ft. and its digital...

[JVN]

Originally Posted by Manoel

This year we only had to take a pound off the robot, despite our somewhat "ghetto" weigh in techniques...

That... is... awesome.

I never thought about using a balance type scale to compare the "new" robot weight to that of an old (hypothetically 130lb) robot.

I'm sure it's not the most tremendously accurate method, but heck... I give it bonus points for ingenuity.

JV

[Nathan Pell]

We got this really cool industrial scale from a local surplus supply shop. It is great, it measures weight to the 100ths of a pound and has a nice large surface area.

The funniest thing we did when we first got it was that members of the team, would weigh themselves, go to the bathroom and then weigh themselves again (a mentor started this) and see how much weight they lost from going to the bathroom.

Pretty crazy if you ask me.

[kevin.li.rit]

Vernier Force Scale type deal.

[M. Hicken]

we use the scale from our wresteling team, it reads to the thousands place so its accurate for our purposes, hell, one of the guys sneezed on it and i weighet .012 lbs

lol

[Jay H 237]

Originally Posted by M. Hicken

it reads to the thousands place, hell, one of the guys sneezed on it and i weighet .012 lbs

I just want to thank you for that mental image!

You should have waited 'till later to post this. Like when I'm eating dinner.

[Jaine Perotti]

Originally Posted by M. Hicken

we use the scale from our wresteling team, it reads to the thousands place so its accurate for our purposes, hell, one of the guys sneezed on it and i weighet .012 lbs

lol

I didn't know they were that accurate
We "steal" our school's wrestling team's scale much to their consternation...
but it is the most accurate scale we have available. We also tried using this REALLY old one that came out of BD (one of our sponsors), but it ended up being WAY off once we double checked it with the aforementioned scale. This caused us some problems, as we were suddenly overweight...
it is a good idea to use multiple scales to check. Better safe than sorry

[kevin.li.rit]

Originally Posted by M. Hicken

we use the scale from our wresteling team, it reads to the thousands place so its accurate for our purposes, hell, one of the guys sneezed on it and i weighet .012 lbs

lol

lol That's even more accurate than the FIRST scales.

[Joe Matt]

We use our wresting team's scale for weighting. It's free, it's easy to use, and it's always available. But I wouldn't be the fool to have to tell them we broke it, I mean, they *ARE* wrestlers!

[n0cturnalxb]

Originally Posted by Cory

We found out we had to shave 30 lbs off our bot last year. It looked like swiss cheese when we were done

We'd used a bathroom scale to weigh our robot..

That was after we'd drilled a ton of holes in it, too. We thought we were underweight (good thing!) but when we went to regionals and used their scale, we were still a good couple of pounds overweight (baaad!).

We ended up spending the periods between each practice round on the practice day filing the robot like mad, and trying to drill more holes wherever we could. Our area was full of aluminum shavings. It was fun

After some very tedious work, though.. we'd finally gotten it down to EXACTLY 130 lbs. I think we're gonna pay much more attention to the weight factor while designing and building this year than before