HardWired - Upgrades and general build diary

[Flag Captured]

Greetings, one and all!

My name is Matt, and I have no idea what I'm doing. Still, I managed to build my own FeatherWeight, HardWired (assuming nobody has that name already) which was...
Well, let's just say I battled it against an old DVD player, and the DVD player won. Here it is in its current state -


I will get some more photos up when I can but my camera is battery-less at the minute...

I made the entire thing for around £60, taking inspiration from the likes of Bitza and Sumpthing. Unlike Bitza or Sumpthing, however, HardWired isn't really competitive at all. That's where this build diary comes in!
I figured that I might as well post my ideas and plans for the robot here, as well as the progress so that you can see how I'm building it and indeed, how often I'll need the fire extinguisher. Looking at some of the build diaries here and there, there's been some great bits of advice exchanged, and I was rather hoping that this could be the same, since I literally have no idea what I'm doing. I'm a decent enough driver, but when it comes to building the thing...

So, specs. The robot is made from a single aluminium box -yep, no chassis, it's just one great big piece of aluminium that's been bent into shape - and it's about 2mm thick. Got two 12v B&Q Drill motors + gearboxes directly mounted into it, with wooden wheels w/ bike tyres directly onto the drill shaft. It's using some awful, awful homemade speed controllers that are basically bits of servo and microswitch glued together, and it runs on 12v at the minute. The wedge did lift up, once. Then, the plywood broke.

Plan is to made a steel (?) box section frame for the robot to add some weight and to make it a lot tougher, and then mount that inside an aluminium box, as well as have a more tough baseplate to mount some Gimson 24v motors onto, with some chunkier wheels too, maybe upgrade to 4WD through some chains/belts or something. Obviously have 24V batteries in there as well, but I'm hoping to add a linear actuator or something to be able to lift up the wedge at the front, which will also have a tougher frame on it to stand up against the spinners out there.

I am in two minds though, I'm changing that many things in it, that I might as well call the new machine HardWired II and enter the old setup as Hardwired I in a competition, have it get taken apart by a spinner, because it'll definitely look good!

Probably should mention too, I'm going a video build diary on Youtube for a 'rebuild' of the first HardWired, as well as the second, sort of in a comedic fashion i.e. Top Gear and the idea of the first one was for it to get absolutely destroyed afterwards in a competition, hence leading on to the second one... That was the plan in any case, whether or not it happens is another thing completely.

So yeah, just going to be documenting any plans or building work here, any advice at any point is greatly appreciated!

[MudnuK]

Glad to see this. It can be daunting when experienced people make fantastic and complicated machines, and it`s reassuring to see other people who `don`t know what they`re doing`!

[PJ-27]

Glad you found the Bitza thesis inspiring! Very impressed you made a working machine for £60.

[Bacon Wizard]

Yeah, well done, mon!

Not knowing what you're doing can be an advantage because er.. um....

Because er...

[Flag Captured]

Thanks!
MudnuK, it definitely is... I mean, seeing some of the engineering skill that goes into some of these machines can be flat out terrifying! Hopefully this project will show that it's something that anyone can get involved with though, I know that's what made me apprehensive about building one at first!

PJ, I definitely did! Bitza's a very well made robot, and it was the build diary that made me realise I'd be able to build something on the limited budget I had! As it turns out, I did get a bit of help with that £60 (Aluminium was donated, reused a lot of wires from other items, wheels were recycled and so on) but I'm quite proud of the fact that I've done it! Thanks!

And Bacon Wizard - it definitely is an advantage in many ways. Get to see so many cool light shows and bits of fire when I wire things up wrong! Thanks, appreciate it!

[PJ-27]

We definitely found it's do-able on a budget, but to make something 'effective' is proving a real challenge. Then again we only attend the full combat events really so that really is the best of the best.
EDIT:
That reads like I'm saying WE'RE the best, I'm not, I'm all the other machines are!

[Flag Captured]

Aye, that is always a problem... It puts things like high-power motors and hardox armour out of the question, so you need to get a bit more creative with what materials you use and how... that's why I'm trying to use more cheap, recycled materials and just design a frame that can take the shock of getting hit my a spinner or something. I did want to design a rolling frame that would just absorb the hit from a spinning weapon, something in the style of a FBS but obviously not powered, if that makes any sense... I don't know how successful that'd be though, especially on this design

And I know what you mean! I can imagine it is a congregation of the best, the championships... definitely seems it!

[Bacon Wizard]

I did want to design a rolling frame that would just absorb the hit from a spinning weapon, something in the style of a FBS but obviously not powered, if that makes any sense... I don't know how successful that'd be though, especially on this design

As a concept, I think that's a cracking idea. It's the whole arms-race thing innit: weapons and armour are both pretty serious now, so we have to try and out-design current bots with new ideas: I'm working on armour that absorbs the impact using bushes and springs etc, load-spreading etc, rather than just resisting the blow as best as possible.

[Flag Captured]

Thanks! It was an idea I'd had when I saw HypnoDisc vs Splinter - following the spin of the disc can dramatically reduce the damage, so why not make a frame that does essentially the same thing? It'll take a lot of engineering with the spinners we have in the competition now, but I'll give it a go! Might only be good for horizontal spinners though...

That does sound a great idea too, love to see how that turns out! I think impact absorbing will be the way forward for armour, Hardox is expensive and heavy - something like that will definitely open up possibilities for more weapons and designs!

[PJ-27]

To be honest you could easily get some 8mm mild steel, weld up a box and make a robot that is spinner proof and cheap.

But it's not interesting, it's not remotely aggressive and just wouldn't be fun.

The real challenge is making something that's effective and on a budget.
It can be quite disheartening though when you see other machines that have hundreds of pounds spent on them, tools that you simply don't have and engineering skills you'd only obtain from working in the industry. But that isn't the only road to success.

Take Guilherme and his machine Galactus. Fastest spinning weapon at the champs this year. The brushless setup cost him ~£50 new. Design smart, buy smart.

[Eventorizon]

Take Guilherme and his machine Galactus. Fastest spinning weapon at the champs this year. The brushless setup cost him ~£50 new. Design smart, buy smart.

I thought David and 720 held that record with a theoretical top speed of 12'000 rpm?

I am stunned and impressed by your £60 budget. Conker 1 was built, excluding mistakes, for around £800 and it left the champs on 3 wheels and in 6 pieces.

How much does Hardwired 1 weigh approximately? I am guessing nowhere near the 13.6kg limit.

I reckon you should start on paper. Get the dimensions of the parts you want to use and then do side, front and top views of the internals by hand with a ruler. At 1:1 if you can. That will help you get a proper sense of scale to the machine. From there you can plan how best to pack the items together. What has made my last 2 robots so difficult was that I forgot to plan where I would lay the wires around the machine. The result was a spaghetti that was near impossible to repair when things started blowing up.

If you can, try and angle the corners or lean the armour in slightly, this will help against both vertical and horizontal spinners. Cos that is what everyone is afraid of! Even I am and our team has 2 of them!

Can wait to see those plans!

[PJ-27]

I thought David and 720 held that record with a theoretical top speed of 12'000 rpm?

I believe Guilherme's on paper speed was 13.5K.

[Mouldy]

Galactus is on paper is about 13krpm, 720 in practise is actual 13600rpm

[Flag Captured]

It can be quite disheartening though when you see other machines that have hundreds of pounds spent on them, tools that you simply don't have and engineering skills you'd only obtain from working in the industry. But that isn't the only road to success.

Take Guilherme and his machine Galactus. Fastest spinning weapon at the champs this year. The brushless setup cost him ~£50 new. Design smart, buy smart.

Definitely! Hardwired was made out of the absolute basics, with the absolute basics (minus the joins on the aluminium box, but they were done already) so I'm just going to have to get a bit more creative here and there!
I think the main thing I'm focusing on at the minute is armour - something that can at least stand up to the spinners for some manner of time, because 2mm aluminium... not really got a chance, has it really? I like the idea of a wooden bot with the obvious bonus of wood being generally lighter than steel and what have you so you can have more of it. Not sure how that'll help, but it's something... I really need to do my research and/or actually fight I think first!

Wow, £50 too? That's very impressive - I don't suppose there's a build diary for Galactus anywhere? I'm not feeling comfortable building a full on spinner (yet) but I could definitely use a powerful setup for the lifter on Hardwired, and a lot of the more powerful brushless motors I've seen are pretty expensive, though again it might just be my inexperience there. Brushless might not even be the way to go for lifters, I really don't know! D: Thanks for the advice!

I am stunned and impressed by your £60 budget. Conker 1 was built, excluding mistakes, for around £800 and it left the champs on 3 wheels and in 6 pieces.

How much does Hardwired 1 weigh approximately? I am guessing nowhere near the 13.6kg limit.

I reckon you should start on paper. Get the dimensions of the parts you want to use and then do side, front and top views of the internals by hand with a ruler. At 1:1 if you can. That will help you get a proper sense of scale to the machine. From there you can plan how best to pack the items together. What has made my last 2 robots so difficult was that I forgot to plan where I would lay the wires around the machine. The result was a spaghetti that was near impossible to repair when things started blowing up.

If you can, try and angle the corners or lean the armour in slightly, this will help against both vertical and horizontal spinners. Cos that is what everyone is afraid of! Even I am and our team has 2 of them!

Can wait to see those plans!

Thank you! I think the £60 is only that low because the aluminium box was donated (was scrap) otherwise it'd be up a fair bit I'd think... It's not got proper speed controllers nor batteries in it either - I've reused as much as I could from the two drills, and it runs on servoes which means it's about as easy to maneouver as a small planet...
If I were to make it competitive though, I'll need a lot more than that £60! Rest assured too, if I entered Hardwired in the champs, I'm sure it'd probably come out of the arena as a thin paste... I'm hoping to make something that can be easily repaired to that degree as well for now... I know that's kind of an oxymoron, but I'd love to have a design whereby parts can easily be taken out and replaced if damaged - at least until I get experienced enough to build something that can stand up to the damage better... It's the worry of buying a couple of hundred quid's worth of electrical parts and to have them get broken because of sub-par armour, that's the thing!

And nah, definitely not... It's about 4kg in its current state, but I have just taken a lot out of it, namely the old spinner system on the back that was quite unsuccessful (powered by a small motor and makeshift belt, managed to get about 300 rpm from it at the most...), as well as the extra batteries and scaffolding to go with it - it was much closer to the 9/10kg mark with that in.

Aye, that does sound a very good idea - might crack on with that soon, thinking about it - I want to use the existing HardWired design for now, but I'll get all that sketched out to play around with where everything's going to go. I'm not sure on the actual parts yet though, I want to keep everything cheap but I need upgrades now... Practically building a new machine from scratch, in all honesty. I like the general design at the minute though, so I'll use that as a basis and expand on it, hopefully I'll get somewhere with that! Definitely get some angled armour in there too - that does sound like it'll help a lot! I can't blame them being scared of those spinners though, I mean - the amount of energy stored up in those things must be absolutely incredible!

Thanks, shall get those posted fairly soon-ish!

Galactus is on paper is about 13krpm, 720 in practise is actual 13600rpm

Well, that's me not getting any sleep tonight!
Seriously though, that is insane! No wonder 720 does all its crazy breakdancing moves with that sort of speed! How heavy's the drum on it?

[Max]

Galactus is on paper is about 13krpm, 720 in practise is actual 13600rpm

Doesn't that mean it only gets 0.1mm of "bite" - surely that would be pretty useless? I must be missing something as the champs showed it was far from useless!