Got Weight?

[Tom Bottiglieri]

Originally Posted by Chriszuma

Use a smaller font in the code.

C'mon now, thats just silly.

Everyone knows the weight of code is really influenced by how many non working sections you have commented out!

[Daru]

Get on your hands and knees with a file.

[Sgraff_SRHS06]

Advice to stay underweight:

Use ligher materials whenever possible, but use metal for things that have to be more robust, such as turrets, drive, and moving parts.
Use PVC for nonmoving parts, such as bins.
Weigh the parts of your robot, and your robot at each substage of building.
Don't use pneumatics.
Budget your weight and keep to your weight budget.
Remember, design each part with weight in mind. A well-designed, well-built robot should not have to deal with a weight problem.

Advice to get underweight if overwieght:

Make Swiss cheese (something that's already been said way too much)
Don't use more motors than you need.
Keep your frame simple.
Look for lighter alternatives to what you have. This invovles doing a bunch of research.
Remove unnecessary parts

[s_forbes]

Today we finally got a chance to weigh our robot, and much to our suprise we came in at an alarming 160 lbs. Didn't see that coming.

We weighed it with the battery, though, so we are only about 25 lbs overweight. 8 hours of drilling/punching/crying, we got rid of an excess 15 pounds or so, but we still have a ways to go. We may only have 2 motors for our drivetrain in the end...

Oh well, lesson learned.

[Steve S.]

Yeah, a little too much weight



Swiss Cheesing it.....overtime

[irishninja]

We weighed in five lbs over weight, but since we have a lexan tube surrounding our spiral, we will most likely be making it more air than actual material.

Hehehe drills.

For the random comment, anybody see the Strongbad where he drills Strongsads bellybutton? Its under an episode about how the stick got its place/name/something.

[Arkorobotics]

Our team was able to lose 10lbs off the robot in 1 day.. BEAT THAT JENNY CRAGE!

An antigravity generator...oh and a drill

[NeedMoreEngines]

Originally Posted by ryan_f

Switch the air in your tires with helium.

For real?

[Kims Robot]

We took off about 20lb in 6 hours on sunday... it was quite the feat, but we learned some interesting things...

Like did you know that it takes 6 2"dia holes in 1/8" lexan to take out 0.1lb?

And that 3 1 1/2" bolts with their washer & nut weigh 0.1lb?

But it takes 50+ 1/2" holes in 1/16" alumnum to take out 0.1lb! Thats a very overworked drillpress!

We took out as much unnecessary support, bolts, lexan, steel plate, etc as we could. Ashley kept track of how much we had lost each half hour, and it was cool to see the giant bucket of parts & hacked off pieces in the end.

Now our poor little robot is all skin and bones!

[Jack Jones]

It's a little to late for this tip I use, but I design my least favorite (aka risky, cute but not worth much, or complicated) components to be massive. That way I have one more excuse to get rid of them.

[Doc Wu]

Originally Posted by Tom Bottiglieri

Take the white space out of your program.

... and the comments. Nothing worse than weighty comments!

[JVN]

You could replace heavy steel sprockets with lightweight aluminum ones.
That might save a few pounds.

[Alekat]

Originally Posted by JVN

You could replace heavy steel sprockets with lightweight aluminum ones.
That might save a few pounds.

Or even nylon sprockets. We've been using them for our drive wheels the past two years. Just be careful about using them in very high torque areas.

[Richsgt]

One little piece of advice, look at the game footage from recent and try to prioritize what is most important, because if you design the robot and plan for 4 drive motors then only have 2, you might have problems as well as the system itself so look carefully before taking out portions of systems.
Otherwise, drill away as the omni bit is your friend