Frist timer FW build - unnamed

[NumberXVIII]

Hi everyone, I'm new here!

My name is Chris Williams and I’m 22 years old. I studied electronic engineering for 2 years at technical college, barely passing it due to laziness. This resulted in me failing to get a job in electronics. I then spent 6 months working for the Ministry of Defence, Followed by 2 years of sheet metalwork. Through a series of temporary and somewhat mind-numbing laboring jobs, I found my way back into electronics. I’m Starting a Physics degree in February and am currently working as an engineer for a scientific instrumentation company (I fix broken stuff). That’s my erratic background in engineering.


Somewhere around my 8th birthday was where this really started, and the desire to make machines that destroy other machines hasn’t faded. I only discovered that ‘Robot Wars’ still existed in August 2013 and now that I have the resources available to me, It’s time to live the fantasy I’ve had since seeing Mortis kick the living shit out of Leighbot in 1998.


LETS MAKE A ROBOT. YAY.


Thanks go out to sketchup for making a CAD program that idiots can use with minimal experience. My drawings are bad, I know this, I’m learning. Regardless, These are the half decent ideas that came of a few hours in sketchup. Featherweight class.

My rationale is that wedges are proven time and time again to be awesome, but I don’t want flipping things to be my primary mode of attack as would most other wedge-bots. I want to shred things – with flipping things as a secondary option. I’m probably making things unnecessarily difficult for myself but I like the proven effectiveness of the wedge shape and the destructive capabilities of the spinners. Trying to incorporate one into the other is a challenge to me and I can’t ever resist trying things at least once (see questionable teenage years).


As far as the body design goes, I theorise that the triangular cutout in the wedge will increase the chance of a robot getting stuck on top of mine. Its wheels won’t have anything to grip on (in theory) and I can maintain control of their movements. It could perhaps also funnel them into the weapons. I’m quite happy with this, and above all else, it looks like a pissed off shovel.
Now weapons, I’m totally undecided:

1. On the left I have a vertical spinner (flywheel-esque I guess) with the idea being to get underneath other bots and shred wheels/exposed bellies.
2. In the middle I have a horizontal spinner, similar in purpose to the vertical one but positioned in a place more likely to damage bodywork than wheels.
3. On the right, the barrel / lawnmower / tube.. thing.. I’m unsure of its name. As far as I’ve seen these can be either absolutely devastating, totally ineffective, or hilarious (watching bots fly around up on one side due to the inertia is really funny to me).

SO. That’s the idea spam so far. I’ll be posting this build diary on here whenever I have anything to report, and on my Build Blog (numberxviii.wordpress.com)

Any advice, suggestions, criticisms are absolutely welcome.

Chris – XVIII

edit - cant change the title to be spelled correctly. whoops :/

[Eventorizon]

First, welcome to the forum!

Not to jump on your enthusiasm but robot design has moved on vast amounts from when robotwars was around. Someone came along a few months ago with a almost identical design

See here: http://www.fightingrobots.co.uk/thre...aterials/page2

And Im afraid to say it was picked apart. My initial advice would be to look at all the youtube videos of the 2011, 2012 and 2013 championships on youtube. That will give you the best idea of what you will be competing against.

I myself had crazy ideas to begin with but these days you dedicate your machine to one mode of attack and stick to it. Your machine has a blend of elements that, although looking cool and logicically are plausible, never have time to pan out in the arena. Also with a weapon that small it will never make it through 4mm of wear steel that a lot of machine are made from.

I went through around 5 totally different robot designs before I made my first machine and I am now on version 3.14.2 of my 3rd machine. Development is key. Everyone here will help you resolve any hurdles and answer any questions.

Good luck! See you in the arena!

Edit: Here is my Build Diary: http://www.fightingrobots.co.uk/thre...on-build-diary
Its contains a huge number of questions and answer that happened when I was learning. You will find it very useful.
This is my favourite diary: http://www.fightingrobots.co.uk/thre...mini-hypnodisc
You want to know how to do something... look here!

[NumberXVIII]

Can't believe I haven't considered self righting..

I'll go into a ton more detail on these 3 designs tomorrow when I'm off work. Like I said, I welcome criticism with open arms in the name of not making a complete fool of myself. The left and middle ones are what I'm most seriously considering.

edit - for some reason I only saw the top half of your post initially. I've had a good look through the 2012/13 videos and I totally get where you're coming from. Does seem like more varied machines just get wrecked by dedicated flippers/spinners.

I'll play with my drawing in the evening and read through your diary whilst on lunchbreak. No harm in un-blending the ideas involved in this machine into several more dedicated ones.

Thankyou for the positive attitude towards my rookie errors.

[daveimi]

Like your robot drawings!

[Eventorizon]

Thankyou for the positive attitude towards my rookie errors.

We have all been rookies, dont worry. This was what happened to my first machine...

Conker 1 GSL 2012 Aftermath.jpg

My first machine had so many stupid flaws that seem obvious now. I used screws in plastic, I didn't leave enough tolerance for the machine to run upside down and worse... I drilled the hole for the disc so low that the weapon bounced across the arena floor!

I still am very inexperienced in comparison to some but after just 18 months I am at this stage...

20130522_121523.jpg Conker 3.14.2 Translucent.jpg

But look at the NST build diary and the Little Spinner diary and you will see just how high-tech this can get.

[NumberXVIII]

Having read through 3 build diaries on my lunchbreak, I've got some more revised ideas now. I fear that my lack of knowledge/skill using CAD packages may hinder me somewhat once I get beyond the 'lets draw some pretty pictures' phase but I'll see about that once I'm happy with something.

There will likely be an update later tonight, though i suspect the inclusion of red wine will make for a more 'interesting' read.

[RogueTwoRobots]

I fear that my lack of knowledge/skill using CAD packages may hinder me somewhat once I get beyond the 'lets draw some pretty pictures' phase.

Don't let that put you off, CAD is not essential in the design of a robot. It can be useful to play around with shapes and ideas before cutting any material, but it's just as easy to get some basic parts (motors, wheels, batteries) and lay them out in various combinations until you get to something that you feel happy with. The alternate CAD (cardboard-aided design) comes in extremely handing for making mock-ups of parts or body shapes.

The Sabretooth build diary has some good examples of cardboard and MDF prototypes to establish the body shape: http://www.fightingrobots.co.uk/thre...n-as-a-feather

[NumberXVIII]

It’s 6pm on Friday, I’m just home from work, I've read your advice and will now try to make use of it.. The main thing I’ve taken from you guys thus far has been ‘Your design is doing 2 things at once, Simplify it.’ It’s time to drink wine and redesign.


Re-Design #1: Vertical Flywheel
So this is a rethink of the leftmost model previously made. Vertical spinner on a small wedge but with a non-box body. I quite like this one but it does feel like a bit of a ripoff of the vertical spinner design used by Conker and Inertia.


Re-Design #2: Horizontal Flywheel
This takes the same destructive principle (pretty much) but with some distinct advantages. Though I would have a more traditional shape with this kind of machine, I have something that isn’t defeated by the ‘oh shit I’m upside-down’ situation. However I once again feel like I’m ripping peoples designs off. I know NST uses a blade rather than a disk but still..

Now this one gave me a brief lightbulb moment. Can I draw an invert-able vertical spinner that doesn’t look really dull and that isn’t a straight up Tornado clone?


Re-Design #1.1: Vertical Flywheel + Inversion
Short answer: No.

Long answer: All I could make were tall pyramids laying on the side, or poorly drawn Tornado’s. This seems to come down to the ratio of wheel size to disk size. When the disk is vertical, The front end is at an increasingly strange angle. To compensate for this and make the machine look good you either have to have massive wheels or a tiny disk. I could design a competent invert-able spinner, but it would look like I pushed the Eiffel Tower on its side and fitted a flywheel between it’s legs.


I’m going to spend the rest of the evening looking at making the first idea self-right. I’ve got one free channel on my transmitter, so I’m thinking maybe actuators out of the sides but I get the feeling this is way too OTT for a featherweight. Regardless of that, I’m going to pretty up the drawings for these two anyway. I think they’re both more practical than my first batch and look kinda cool.

As before, This has also been posted on the build blog - numberxviii.wordpress.com
Chris – XVIII

[typhoon_driver]

invertible vertical disc? Made one years ago. Look for pictures of hornet 2, similar idea to S3 from robot wars.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNyI9890iI8

With your vertical design i'd chuck the wedge in front of the disc as you need a machine to run up it before they get injured ie you are protecting your opponents from your disc!

[NumberXVIII]

With your vertical design i'd chuck the wedge in front of the disc as you need a machine to run up it before they get injured ie you are protecting your opponents from your disc!

Can you clarify this? Is that not what I've done in my first design? I'm not sure I fully understand what you mean.

EDIT: I'm an idiot. I missread. I'll shorten it a good way, and post it in a bit. It's dinnertime.

[NumberXVIII]

Bought my radio gear, totally forgot to get any crystals. Derp.

[typhoon_driver]

2.4gig doesn't need crystals

[NumberXVIII]

o.O then the control has the capability to run at other freq's/modes. Redundant and useless to me but fairly cool, Reading manuals is useful

[NumberXVIII]

A friend of mine used to be in love with the robot ‘Razer’ from the TV show. Having looked through all the featherweight footage I could find on the web, It seems like nobody has managed to make a machine similar to Razer. I assume this is down to hydraulics being far too heavy for featherweights. Now, I know absolutely nothing about hydraulics and I’m not about to try and innovate or rip someone off with something blindly in the name of looking cool. But it gave me an idea.


In my last batch of designs I had a vertical spinner that wasn’t invert-able, but I thought would be fairly decent. Why not make something with the looks inspired somewhat by Razer, but put in the proven featherweight vertical spinner? (once again, I am absolutely terrible at CAD)

It’s a first draft of an idea, but one that I really like the look of. It seems functional and isn’t just a box with a weapon. I need to change the claw above the spinner so as to not get flying things caught on it, as my mechanical minded friend pointed out how badly that could cause jams. I’ll alter it next time I do a drawing pass. That and the little spikes at the bottom are there for aesthetic value more than anything else since I’m really trying to draw something a little less standard.


However, Now that I have this:

I can start playing with electronic stuff at work and get something of actual physical substance done. I plan to go to the local boot-sale on Sunday and start gathering cordless drills for experimentation. Once I’ve started a few fires in my living room, I’ll report in again.

[NumberXVIII]

10 minutes on and I've already re-drawn it. Tried to anyway, Ditched the claw entirely, made it invert-able, retained the (sort of) non standard shape. I'll have a friend with a decent CAD hand draw it up soon.