@Mark: Ive had a look at your calculator before and I found it very rough.

You dont go specific enough into each part selection. Small drill motor... Is that a Handy Worx drill? An XU1 drill? A GMC 2-speed drill? All of them are smaller then a Dewalt. The Handworx drills are around 200g, the XU1 is around 350g and the GMC is around 680g... So by your calculator... You can be any where from 25% to 50% out on a designs weight in just the drive train alone.

To assume the chassis, how are you doing this? are you just putting a box around the estimated volume of all the parts and using that? Which is okay if we all built boxs... What about wedges, and multi teir shapes?

I dont mind being the target of this weight factor, because I havent been challenged in my word since Nick left But your calculator seems very off. I cant get it to match a single real robot yet.. There just isnt enough selection in parts, chassis shapes/designs, armor types/thickness/combinations.

I generally design my vapourbots in Rhino3D, but I admit I have become careless in the last year or so with renders because even when I had proved the weight was within +/- 10% of the limit, people like Alex (No Offence) were being allowed to enter with no real showing of weight... So why bother putting in 5-8 hours work in Rhino 3D, and explaining technical parts when I can just throw some stats up in 30mins and bollox my way like 98% of the other entrants

Yeah, Im probably a bit over in places, but Id like to see you find one fanfic bot in this forum that isnt over in some perspective.

Bring on the lively debate