Heavyweight limit

[cold*fusion]

The limit for weight in the categories in this forum is 100kg. In the new tv series it is 110kg. Why the discrepancy and is it going to be matched?

[maddox10]

Why the discripancy. Just to be "annoying" I guess. Maybe hoping that the heavier machines are more spectacular.

For the curret crop of flippers it doesn't make any difference.

And if it is up to me, I would like to lower the weight of heavies to the original 80 kg.

[cold*fusion]

Don't the people who wrote the RW tv rules also have something to do with the live shows?

[maddox10]

One of the groups working on the "new" TV show is one of the bigger EO's, specialised in the 13.6kg featherweight class.

The BBC and Mentorn Scotland are 2 other groups participating.

[typhoon_driver]

I believe it will be discussed post robot wars production whether the limit for all heavies will increase or stay the same. Too early to speculate either way.

[terry]

110kg is to heavy, I wouldn't bother building that heavy. Having to lift the robot on my own at home 100kg is too much anyway

[grant_ploughbot]

the weight limit went up for a few reasons, the main 2 being that very few machines are built to 100kg, and utilise the extra 2% allowance incase of scale error as extra weight limit. Therefore for robot wars they would all be over weight if we enforced the 100kg rule. Another reason is that the majority of live event robots applied for RW, and most of them have been designed around the same parts, shape, style as each other and for a TV show you need character and style as well as the functionality. This extra weight allowed people to make adjustments and improvements to their machine without having to start again with a very short time to do it in.

[maddox10]

The timeframe is not the fault of the roboteers. And what adjustments can be made in the short timeframe that make the machines more interesting?
8 kg of fur and flamables or a boatload LED's is a lot to make a show.
As I was told, it wasn't ment to slab on a few kg of high end armor plate.

I feel it was an attempt to make the "Dedicated TV machines" unusable for the Live Events.
And give the old machines a disadvantage to the newer, specificaly for this TV show enginered machines.

10% more weight is a HUGE amount.

On the other hand, I know I have more than a touch of paranoïa.

[blazerbotics]

FYI we'll be running 110kg at Robots Live events from now on

[leorcc]

Not so sure I like that idea. It made sense for the TV show to give the current machines a makeover but I'd prefer to have the heavies stay the same weight and back to 100kg next year on RW. With Lipo/Life and more optimized drives we already have a huge increase in power to weight ratio in the last couple of years. Adding 10% for free to that I feel is not helping anyone.

[maddox10]

If Robots Live changes to the BBC/Mentorn 110kg, the FRA insurance doesn't cover the Robots Live events.

[terry]

So the 110kg robots can only drive at robots live events ? Or Jonno will have to increase aswell

[Eventorizon]

Despite not owning a HW, I don't think the Live events should up the weight limit to 110Kg. Keep it at 100Kg.

The Mods done to the regular 100kg bots to make them 110kg that I have seen haven't been to major; a few extra parts welded on, slightly bigger tanks, more batteries etc. I am assuming that teams kept the original parts so they could easily swap the parts out again to bring them in line.

Weight limits have been going up incrementally in quite a few weight classes (BW, FW, HW) for various reasons and it needs to stop IMO. They are dangerously powerful now without giving teams even more weight to play with.

[grant_ploughbot]

Your completely wrong in your thoughts there Mario. We dice coded on the weight increase for the reasons I gave above. Most of the machines that turn up to
Live events wouldn't have been able to remove 2-4kg off their machines to make it useable to an enforced 100kg limit, and the show certainly wouldn't have had any of the interesting adaptations we have seen from many of the top machines. It HAS made a big difference to the quality of the show and not there to stop people attending live events. Alan was part of that decision making with us and he's certainly not wanting to stop robots attending his events. If a weight limit is correctly enforced, there's a maximum of 8kg allowed.

[cold*fusion]

I designed from scratch for the tv show aiming to come in at under 110kg and I ended up at 108kg. The robot came apart for transport into three manageable sections. To reduce it to 100kg would not fit in with my development plans. A lot of robots seem to come with their own scissor lift trolleys. Even 100kg is way above manual handling limits. I agree in principle that there shouldn't be continuous creep so who is going to call time on weight increases?