Under or over weight?

[Adelle]

We are currently battling with our weight, sometimes we are overweight and sometimes we are underweight...it all depends on who is weighing it...funny how it works...

we are 10 pounds under....for now.... lol

[Chuck Merja]

Well that really depends upon which page of the documentation one reads. I no longer trust my 50+ yr old memory (which had remembered a 120# limit), so I had the kids look up the max weight to remind us of our goal. They brought me our notebook open to what I now realize was "FIRST Guidelines, Tips and Good Practices", page 5 of 38, wherein under 1.2 ROBOT Mechanincal 1.2.1 sub 1 it says "The robot weith limit is 130 pounds..."

We weighed our machine the other day, and were at 120, so we went on our merry way adding a hood, fan, etc. This AM I was tripping through the rules and see that under ROBOT, 5.3.2.1 <R08> says "...max allowed weight ...is 120 pounds". Page 8 of 29.

I guess the good part of this is that my memory isn't totally gone, but we put this thing in a crate yesteday, instead of drilling holes in frames etc. Needless to say, this is a bit frustrating - we coulda been drillin' holes instead of makin' extra parts.

Will probably uncrate and drill drill drill, but may ask for a waiver since were given conflicting info.

While I am at it, the timeline graphic on p 8 of 29 hopefully has some incorrect dates - since Feb 21 is not be a Thurs this year. What are the correct dates???

[Modeish]

We are currently 10 pounds under but are adding more that wasnt planned. Its gonna be close.

-The Mode

[Peter Matteson]

I took 177 to cover the spread and the under... err um we'll be 120 lbs by the end of inspection on Thurs of the UTC.

[razor95kds]

our team is trying to be underweight by 5 pounds so we can add counter weights so we won't fall over when lifting tetra or tetras.

[justbobdanish]

wow...underweight....ours is probably 5-10 lbs overweight...we know its .5" too wide, but we are fixing that....

WE LOVE WEIGHT HOLES!!!!

[sciguy125]

It hasn't been weighed yet, but our chassis/drivetrain with motors is in the area of 35lb. I'm not sure how much everything else weighs though. We're sure that the robot will be under weight before it enters its first match though.

[Warren Boudreau]

Right now, it looks like the robot will be about 10 lbs underweight. Unheard of for us. But don't worry. I'm sure that we can find about 10 lbs of stuff to add on between now and nect Tuesday.

[Julia Magoolia]

In the middle of last week, our robot was MASSIVELY overweight, but thanks to, as one mentor put it, "an aggressive weight loss program", we're only about 10lb off target. I have no doubt that we'll end up with yet another swiss cheesed robot.

[Jaine Perotti]

Originally, when I voted in this poll, I voted for "underweight".

Is there any way to change your vote?
Right now, our robot is breaking even, at 120 pounds. However, we are planning on adding more, such as outriggers, arm bracing, etc.

The big question now is this: where can we take out weight? A few days ago, our robot was 9 pounds overweight, so we drilled like crazy, and managed to lose it. But there isn't much left to take weight out!

Andy Brockway took home the gearbox for our arm last night to lighten up the gears, which should take out a tenth of a pound (I think).

We are using a telescoping arm tower, with a rotating tetra arm mounted on top. The outside towers (fixed) are made of aluminum, and the inner towers (which are raised and lowered) are made of UHMW plastic.

We are going to deepen the "rabbit" groove that we put into the UHMW plastic arm towers with a router. We are also contemplating the removal of some of the arm braces (currently there are 4, with 2 on the front, and 2 on the back, and we are thinking of just keeping the ones on the front.). We are also thinking of replacing some of the lexan shielding we are currently using with something thinner.

We have lexan bumpers spanning the front and back ends of our robot, but we are nervous to take weight out of them because of the high force impacts we expect them to take. We have already drilled out alot of our arm, and are concerned that drilling the UHMW any more will make the plastic bend too much and warp (leading to binding issues).

AND... we are wanting to add angle aluminum reinforcements to our UHMW arm, because in testing we found that it would bend under the weight of the tetra arm mounted on top of it. This will add about a pound of weight, but is necessary.

And there are the outriggers, which haven't even been built yet, but will add a minimum of 4 pounds. Our current plan of dealing with this is to build everything else first, drive our robot around, push it to it's limits, and see if outriggers will be necessary. If they are, we will need to figure out a way to add them. If not, we will leave them off.

I am sure we are not the only ones with this dilemma, but boy is it frustrating! Sometimes I feel like it is almost hopeless, but I know that we can pull through it, as we have in the past. We will find a way to do it... because that is what this challenge is all about.

Good luck to everyone!

-- Jaine

[Ein]

Somehow we're 20#s under. We wooped with glee and started adding compressors and other cool stuff.

[supersy77]

for the first time ever. Our robot has wieght to spare. The thing is almost completly done and it still is 5 pounds under. I dont understand how this is happining

[Peter Matteson]

Originally Posted by steve277

for the first time ever. Our robot has wieght to spare. The thing is almost completly done and it still is 5 pounds under. I dont understand how this is happining

By writing that here you just ensured that by the end of the UTC scrimage on Saturday, I'm assuming you'll be there as usual, you will need to add ten pounds to compensate for something you didn't think of.

We're just praying that we don't need to entirely rebuild our robot because we're so grossly overweight that we have to rethink our entire frame design. Not like that happened last year or anything.

Pete

[slickguy2007]

How far over weight were you guys? How badly does your robot need slimfast?

Our robot weighed 168lbs..... bring it on Trimspa!!!


GO 1403!!!