Corvis (temp bot name) rough ideas.

[james...venom]

Thanks for the encouraging words! And nice to see you on the boards. Been a busy have we?

It is the story of my life that I know a bit about the weird and wonderful, cutting-edge stuff, but am a complete novice at the basic stuff that is the real foundations of it all. So lots of learning to be done.

And there was never any chance of this turning out as a brick!

Yes very busy. Just designing my next machine called Goblin. That too will have Kevlar armour so long as tests look good. An to hit some test bits with predator to see how usable a material it is.

[team_mute]

We've used Kevlar on Mute for a long time and its still the same pieces on the side that were originally fitted, its 8mm thick stuff that was used as protection in Bank walls, we've recently fitted some new pieces to the top of Mute to stop the axes.
If the stuff does get cut (nothing has ever made it all the way through) we just add some hot clue and apply a slighty amount of pressure with a big hammer and its like new



Its the black stuff with white patches in middle of mutes side pods, the white is were is been hit by another bot and just skimmed the paint off

[Bacon Wizard]

Liking the look...

Yeah, don't worry. I know enough about composites to know full-well that kevlar armour would be just fine if applied properly. If it was a carbon fibre/kevalr composite, it could be made almost twice as thick without any weight considerations. And if sheer-thickening fluid was applied to a non-composite layer of fabric on the top, it'll stop absolutely anything.

[james...venom]

what resin would you recommend? im still pondering

[Bacon Wizard]

what resin would you recommend? im still pondering

Definitely epoxy laminating resin. It's more pricey but don't even think of using any anything else for combat. On paper it's brittle, but it has cross-linking properties with some but not all fibres. Kevlar and carbon, are both suitable. Much stronger than vinyl-based or basic fibre-glass material.

Spend money on a good hardener. Some of them have UV protection too ((UV degrades epoxy) and that's handy if you don't want to paint it.

You very much need to do it under vacuum-pressure (vacuum-bag kits) and I'm not sure I can recommend using pure kevlar for fight-bots (am still looking into this) but kevlar has no structural strength, only resistance to penetration and dispersion of forces. ie, you could end-up with the resin cracking from blunt-force trauma despite a weapon not actually getting through the stuff (think wire-re-enforced glass) Which is why I am thinking carbon-fibre/kevlar blend might be a better option anyway.

Carbon is actually slightly heavier than kevlar, but the added strength aught to mean you could include a core material/filler and get a thicker, lighter and yet stronger shell overall. (In theory!)



I am looking into polycarbonate composites which I thought sounded like a great idea but not too much luck so-far. Maybe Polycarb can be the core material if that plan turns out to be a good'un.

[Bacon Wizard]

Forgot to mention, of the layering epoxies, the more of a pain it is to work with the better.

You get some that need baking. Others room temp. Guarantee that the one you'd ideally like is impossible to do without special kit. Which is why I'm more likely to save-up and get a firm to do it for me

[Bacon Wizard]

Right, have finally got some proper figures for my proposed X-bow style actuated "captive bolt" or spear type weapon.

A collector I've been able to reasearch has a hand-held arbalest which weighs 18lb and has a draw-weight of 1200lb (5,200N)

There were larger and heavier ones that went up to x 5 this power for use from ramparts.

These were using spring-steel whereas we have carbon fibre, and the weight includes a large stock which I will not require at all. We also now have the reverse-energy configuration and compound-bow technology.

I am confident that I can seriously hurt an opponent bot with this arrangement, and possibly the first move should be a simple FW (not a walker) with this kind of weapon on-board for testing. I need to know how effective it is before designing the rest of a HW walker, because the entire bot will need to work around the size, shape and weight of the weapon.

It WON'T be top-mounted though, it'll need to be housed within the body somehow. "Reverse-energy" type arrangement will help make this possible, but it's still a concern.

[Max]

My plan for my hw is to have a high pressure pneumatic ram with a spike on the end, it should make 1000kg of force which I'm hoping will be enough.
I know a lot of people have advised against weapons like this in the past but I hope it will be able to do something and at least it is not another flipper!!

[typhoon_driver]

I would gladly take a shot gun to any of my machines. A tethered projectile weapon will do little damage

[Bacon Wizard]

I would gladly take a shot gun to any of my machines. A tethered projectile weapon will do little damage

No wonder: a shotgun is unlikely to deliver much more than 3500 fp. Far less than what I am now proposing.

An Axe is just a projectile tethered by a handle. Its merely a question of how you generate force. I suspect you think this is gonna be an arrow on a bit of wire. It's a linear ram, but not pneumatic.

You store energy up in a spinning fly-weight and release it upon contact using a spear-tip or "tooth"

I'm planning to store energy using modern materials used as springs (steel won't do the job, it's too heavy and sluggish) and release it upon contact using a spear-tip.

It all comes down to how much energy you can store.

It's not been tried before as far as I can tell, but the figures stack-up. So I'll trial it and if it doesn't do the job I'll move to plans B and C.

At the worst, I'll turn it into a straight crossbow without using it in a robot at all.

[plargen]

sorry but i can't really see this being an effective weapon, all it will do is push the 2 robots away from each other or at best a small dent in thin metal

even with some of the heavyweights on robot wars they either made a small hole in thin armour or pushed the robots away from each other and they had 100kg of weight absorbing the force where as feather have such a small amount of weight and less grip on the floor

this is assuming i have it correct and your building a feather

[Bacon Wizard]

Plargen, I will most likely be building a series of very standard almost off-the-peg feathers on which to test certain concepts, but corvis is eventually to be a heavy. I will have 200k to play with.

[james...venom]

If you have the technical ability to create it that's great. Its really good to see some different designs and thinking outside the box. As an event organiser, if you could send some technical drawings of how the projectile will be tethered and the mass of the object being fired we can make sure it is safe to contain in the arenas. It may well be if its anywhere near as effective as you suggest, and you seem to know what your talking about, we may want to arrange some testing of your machine at our workshop to be sure it's safe to contain inside the arenas

[Bacon Wizard]

If you have the technical ability to create it that's great. Its really good to see some different designs and thinking outside the box. As an event organiser, if you could send some technical drawings of how the projectile will be tethered and the mass of the object being fired we can make sure it is safe to contain in the arenas. It may well be if its anywhere near as effective as you suggest, and you seem to know what your talking about, we may want to arrange some testing of your machine at our workshop to be sure it's safe to contain inside the arenas

Lemme build the damn thing first!

It's not a projectile, it's a ram. But would be more than happy to provide drawings, video of it working etc before attending anything, and let you test it, sure.

[plargen]

the 200kg version sounds like it could have potential