As the finished Bot comes together we are starting to worry about the 120 pound max.
Any other teams having weight problems ?
We are fine I picked up the bot today and estimate its only around 40 pounds. But we also have a somewhat short bot compared to many this year.
Last we measured, we should be hitting somewhere around 100-110 pounds (and we’re 77" tall).
We are 77 " tall and we will weight the bot with all components tomorrow. We should be about 110-115 pounds.
Definitely. We’re about 72" tall, and we’re about 128lbs, 8lbs over the limit, and thats not even counting 2 other CIM motors we’re planning on using.
Not really. Prototype was only 85lbs and we only plan to add 25lbs more weight to the competition bot.
yeah, it’s going to be close this year.
Yeah, we’re worried about weight. “Hey, we got any ballast around here, and where we gonna put it?”
The practice bot and a bunch of parts for it hit the scale at under 90 lbs today.
We’re a little heavy for the first time ever. We started figuring out the robot’s diet plan tonight.
We weighed today, and yes, it’s going to be close. Closer than I think we’ve had in a long time (usually we’re looking to add some weight around this point in the season). So, we started a couple of small projects to shave some weight.
We’re going to save about 2 lbs (up high, no less!) replacing some 1" angle diagonal cross members (only there to keep things square) with some cables that’ll do the same job while in tension - it’s a difference of about 150g per cross member, and there are 6 of them.
Another couple of lbs will be shed by replacing some polycarb side shields with corrugated plastic (The shields are mostly there for sponsor stickers and branding purposes).
We’re hoping to get the weight low enough to allow us to add some simple bumpers on 2, possibly three sides (attached in <60 seconds on the field). The two sides would help with concerns over an alliance member hitting the side plates and affecting our drive train, and the third one is mostly for visual appeal, although it would add a little extra protection for our battery.
Same situation. All heavy systems are in place and we’re at ~97 lbs. Add a few more pounds for air tanks and tubing and that brings us to around 105. Actually first time in the team’s history weight hasn’t been an issue. Yay CAD model!
Our drivebase was 49lbs in CAD, but only 43lbs in real life. It’s really weird.
However, on the whole we are cutting it pretty close.
Eh we’ll be fine. CAD says 85 and I think it’s close. Should probably get a scale though…
My team cuts it close every season, so we expect to lose some weight. At the moment, we are at around 114 I think, and with some of the things we want to add, we may be hovering at 118-120 like usual.
Hope this helps, Allen.
Yes, a bit. 129 before powder coat…119.9 after weight loss day. Hope we don’t need to add much more this week. We don’t have much more to give up without sacrificing functions.
Over the limit and you powder-coated it anyway? That stuff isn’t exactly light, because of how thick it goes on.
Well, we are overweight during build season most years (except for last year), during week 4 the total weight of all our components was over 160! But, after revisions and weight loss we are just under 120 which is good considering the number of mechanisms we have;)
What is the best way to weigh the robot? Last year we used a small bathroom scale with a piece of plywood (for the robot to sit on), but we had a lot of trouble reading the scale since it was all the way underneath the plywood and robot. Are there any better ways of doing this, or do you just have to live with a hard to read display?
There are two good methods I’ve used. The first requires you to get a scale with a display on a cord - this way you can see the display even when the entire robot is under the scale. Of course, that means you have to buy a new scale.
Perhaps easier, get two scales. You can then balance the robot between them, and have the display sticking out over the side. It’s worked for us for a number of years!