We show up to Kettering Week 1 at 150 lbs (team needs a new scale!). After removing our climb and color wheel, we were able to compete. Now the challenge is to get lighter. Going to Neo’s, thinner wall stock and redo intake and ball shooter. We’ll show an after photo to see how the diet went! Any other teams have great tips for losing weight?
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I don’t know what kind of wheels you are using but in 2019 we switched from metal rims to plastic and lost a few pounds
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How thick of wall is your upper structure? If it’s 1/8" you can definitely go down to 1/16" and it will still hold up fine and it’ll cut a lot of weight
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Post some more pictures of the inside of your robot, and we can draw some red lines through parts you don’t need. 
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Keep the color wheel off for now, that’s for sure. Put climb on.
Agreed, need more pics.
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What kind of hardware are you using? Is there anything that’s 1/4” that could be 10-32, or even riveted? Fastener weight can add up sneaky fast.
How does your climber stack up relative to an Everybot climber? They’re quick to fabricate and are based around pretty lightweight things.
I’m not a fan of pure Swiss cheese, but anything you can make a big pocket in is valuable. Those white plates merit scrutiny.
For anything else, definitely going to need more interior pics.
The arm on the left was our last minute try to climb for the finals…didn’t work so good. This was pushed up with a large stroke pneumatic.
Oh yeah, all those CIMs can be NEOs. That alone will take a huge chunk of weight off.
Just to reiterate a few things that have been mentioned already:
- Take a look at your material thicknesses. A lot of 1/8" tube can be changed out for 1/16". 1/4" plate can easily be 3/16" instead, or even 1/8" depending on the application.
- 1/4-20 bolts are overkill for most FRC applications. Swapping out for 10-32 hardware will save a surprising amount of weight.
- Do you have any steel gears or sprockets that aren’t seeing a lot of force? Those can probably be aluminum instead.
- I see you have a 57 Sport gearbox, can it be a VP instead? What about a VP Lite? Could you use a NEO 550 and an Ultraplanetary?
- Do you have any excessive lengths of wire anywhere? Wire is copper and copper is heavy.
- Do the feeder wheels on the bottom of the shooter need to be that wide?
If things get really bad, you can remove your intake and load from the human player station. Also (unless you’re in the top ~20% of teams) a climb is probably more valuable than the shooter if things get really really bad.
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I’ll check the fasteners, we have 1/4 on a few things, typically where we thought we needed the extra hold power (climb brackets, etc…)
I’ll check into the Everybot climber. New to the FRC language, so not sure on all the terms and what we use.
You can cut a bit of weight off the chassis. It looks like your using the KoP (which is heavy). Try drilling more holes in it.
EDIT: @Billfred makes a good point (see reply). Should have checked the math before posting. My bad.
I think we are going to go lighter on the wheels and switch the green stack (our indexing) to belts (along with the chains). Any negatives to making these switches?
Belts are lighter than chain, but they can skip teeth a bit easier and you need to get the center-center distances juuust right.
Do you really need 6 CIMs on your drivetrain? Remove one from each side and the related motor controllers and you’ve saved 6 lbs.
In stock form, the Everybot climber would prevent you from going under the control panel. If it’s control panel or climb, I know which one I’m picking.
Stop right there. While there are certainly lighter drivetrains than the AM14U4, I would not Swiss cheese it for multiple reasons:
- Overdoing it and having a compromised drivetrain is the pits.
- A 1/2" hole drilled in 1/8" 5052 aluminum will shave you…wait for it… 0.304 ounces.
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Do you really need those electronics? 
In all seriousness, take a look at those and if you have stuff thats small and lighter, you might want to use that
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We had to pull the LED’s cause that was another pound, to the kids disappointment.
We’ll look into the copper and motors to see what we can lose. This all makes sense when you start to add things up!
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Use thinner materials. Our robot is made from only 1/16" aluminum. Bends make things really strong.
Thick plastic sheet is heavier than you think
Do you really need all of those wheels?
TBH, your robot doesn’t look that heavy… I’m not sure where all the weight is going
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We said the same…the robot on picture was 125. We had to remove one of our competition sponsor panels (they weighed in at 11 oz each). Once we start to replace the motors hopefully we find the 10 lb weight that someone left in there!