After 12 years as a fan, can I get a robot into the arena?

[harry hills]

Neat design. Polycarb might not be the greatest idea. Maybes look at nylon, UHMWPE or HDPE.

HTD 3 timing belts are nice things. You can get them from belting online. If you need any 225 belts let me know I have more than I can ever use. Or the green belting stuff seems pretty decent.

For a hardcore driven bot, I'd go for 2 30a botbitz or one 10a per motor. Some people use 10a for 4 or more motors but they aren't driven in anger. Or just heatsink the shit out of them and keep fingers crossed. You running 4s?

If you put the printed version in the arena... I think the printing will break and you will have an exploded robot. Won't tell you very much about the designs strengths.

[mark_m]

Thanks.
I need to look into those other plastics. I just happen to have a load of polycarbonate, but I am worried it will be brittle after machining.
What sizes of timing belt do you have? I'd like to keep some slip in the design, so I'll have a look at the green belting. I'm not sure how stretchy that is though. I might have to do a Gene and use a v groove on one part and timing teeth on the other pulley to still allow some slip.

I'm currently running 3s, so not even overvolting the motors. I thought I'd heard about people running one 10A per side, and the motors should only be ~6A stall, so I thought I'd be ok. I'm just looking now if I can squeeze 2 more ESCs in there. I think they'll fit, but wiring will be tight.

[Flag Captured]

Hdpe is what I'd go for. I don't really trust Polycarbonate unless it's for shock mounted armour panels - maybe that's just me, but it does seem to crack unlike HDPE or nylon which just chips or bends a little. Also I recall HDPE being a tiny little bit lighter than polycarbonate too so that's a thing that might be useful.

[mrsam]

Avoid using polycarb if you can it's not really up to the task anymore, i used a piece that was 10mm thick for the baseplate of my Feather and one relatively low speed hit from a spinner shattered it into 3 pieces. I'd go with Hdpe for sure, nylon if you can afford it but it is by far the more expensive option.