Build Log - Bread Dead Redemption (FW) - First Build.

[Mr Manuva27]

Some good fights there, nice work! Just thinking on the wheel hub problem, perhaps a nut with a plate on it which bolts to the wheel and then either a pin through that nut and shaft or a nyloc on the other side of the wheel might be more robust?

Thanks! I've already got the hub situation sorted. I ordered some threaded hubs from Nat which do exactly as you described. I think the trolley wheels have run their course though. I've already got a wheel designed for moulding my own wheels from polyurethane. Should be lighter and give more grip!

That fight against Luna-Tic was brilliant - can see why you enjoyed it. Lots of action, great driving on both sides and a well-deserved win. And well done for de-wheeling Reaver!

Thanks, although I think Reaver's wheel had been hanging on by a thread for most of the day, I just gave it a helpful nudge .

I can see what you mean about the speed dropping off over the day. It looked hard to control at low speed at the start, though maybe that's just me.

Not just you. It's a completely different animal! I hadn't done much practice driving (I think we finished the changes the day before) and it was very difficult to control. I'll need to do some tinkering with the ESCs and wheel sizes to bring it back in to line.

For anti-tipping features, I was quite pleased with the effectiveness of Wedgeley's springy bits of HDPE - not very aesthetic but they result in a huge (effective) footprint:

I forgot to mention that in the improvements section before the event. We added some angles to the back which will always rock the robot back over on to it's wheels. It's literally impossible to flip it backwards unless you launch it right over like Renegade did (As evidenced by the Euphoria fight).

By tip-back angle, I mean the angle you can lift the front of the robot while keeping the wheels still touching the floor. As things stand, it's probably about 10-20 degrees, which on a long robot like BDR doesn't take much lift to get all the wheels off the deck.

[COAESystems]

The first outing of my new featherweight at Robodojo this year definitely made me want to return next year! I can imagine it's the same with you and BDR.

[Mr Manuva27]

I haven't shared this progress here yet, plus with the first Dojo of the year next week it's probably a good time to do so.

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Bread Dead 2021 is go! .....kinda (that picture is a render).


Completely new with the exception of the faithful toaster, the dustpan has been changed to a Big Dill/Krusty Grab type lifter. Forks and bucket have already been cut from Hardox 400. Hoping for some big lifts and suplexes!

Internals are fully brushless 42mm outrunners running on 6S with custom polyurethane wheels.

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In terms of where we're at presently, the lifter isn't ready yet. So, the brushless drive system and wheels are being retrofitted in to the 2020 BDR chassis for the May Robodojo for a test run while the new chassis is being built.

All things going well, it should be complete in time for the June Robodojo Sportsman event!

[Ocracoke]

Looking good, liking the appearance of the forks on that. I guess the lifting mechanism is going to be brushless as well?

[Mr Manuva27]

Yep! Propdrive 750kv 4238s on the drive, 500kv 4258 on the lifter. Massively overkill for what I need, tbh. I saw that Dojo lifted their sportsman power limit on motors for this year and got a bit carried away haha!

[Ocracoke]

Hahahaha, neat, what sort of gear reduction are you expecting to use on it? Looking forwards to seeing it one day.

[Mr Manuva27]

Well, that's partly why the lifter has been delayed. Sorting out a suitable gearbox has been a bit of a pain. Originally had a Banebots 132:1 in to a 2:1 gear stage, but after some advice from Adam Hamilton of Team Immersion it seemed that was a bad idea because the latter stages of the BB box wouldn't take the torque.

I've now got a 64:1 Nema17 gearbox which will go in to a 3:1 spur stage for 192:1 to keep the speed down with loads of extra torque.

[Sam_Gad]

Hi Andy,

I look forward to seeing your initial improvements at the May Dojo event. Hope the final build of the lifter goes well as it sounds like it is going to be a beast (I would like to get a fight in before you suplex FeatherDozer out of the arena ).

[McMullet]

Looks great Andy. And sounds like it'll be a proper beast.

More importantly, have you got a toasting fork related pun lined up?

[Mr Manuva27]

Robodojo June 2021

Well, the May event didn't go to plan. Worked non-stop on the robot in the week building up to the event, only for the ESCs to blow up at 11:30pm on the evening before while I was adjusting some settings. Unfortunately had to drop out.

Fast forward to June! The scheduled Robodojo Sportsman event took place and I was there. Arrived nice and early and set up a pit space between Sam with FeatherDozer and James with Parasite. Felt so good to be back at events again.

The day started out with bugbears in the new drive, but gradually with the help of several roboteers and a bit of trial and error, the drive got up to expected standards by the end of the day.

Video for the fights is below:

Spoilers/Analysis below:

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Finished watching? Ok, good.


So I knew the new drive wasn't 100% going in to this. The right hand side was cogging on startup, which effectively meant I was on one side of drive. Over the course of the day, Sam suggested that the acceleration ramp may be too high. This advice worked! The cogging gradually improved over the course of the event as I dropped the max acceleration down to an eventual 1.8% per millisecond.

Fights-wise, BDR understandably started badly. After a mugging at the hands of EWC and Jean-Luc Pick-Hard, then a survival mission against Ogrelord, the drive improved enough to start getting some wins! To try and help the drive with ground clearance, the trademark dustpan was swapped out for a "Buttering Ram" (which was half of the new BDR bucket screwed on to some HDPE). This ram turned out to be super fun! It felt like driving a bumper car and was much more effective than I expected, although I don't expect it to become a permanent fixture.

Fight 4 was a proper catastrophe. After a very strong start against PBOCD, a slam in to the wall dislodged the receiver. This then found it's way in to the drive belt, wound itself around the front drive shaft and pulled all of the wires out of both ESCs and the BEC. One ESC was totally ruined, but the other ESC, BEC and Rx were able to be salvaged thanks to some kind donations of Bind Plugs and Servos by Dave Weston to scrounge the connectors from (Thanks Dave!). Bread Dead only made it to working condition 3 minutes before it was due back in the arena for it's 5th fight. Talk about a close call!

I wasn't expecting much from the day, with so many things being changed. Therefore I was pleasantly surprised when I got the call to an 8-9th place playoff fight against Pressure Point! Pressure Point and Alan have been my benchmark and a robot/roboteer I've looked up to since I started at Dojo, using our fights as an indicator of how I've progressed as a builder and driver.
It was a great fight to end the day with and I was buzzing to finally get the win after so many attempts!


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So yeah, 3-3 overall for the day and a point to the yearly Sportsman Championship! Plenty of things learned, with changes to the drive being made for the new version. Not sure I'll have the new one ready for August due to planning for BotFest/Robodojo Beetles on the 24th and 25th (Busy weekend!). At least with the FRA Championships not happening this year that takes the pressure off a bit.

[McMullet]

BDR is one scary chonk now Andy. You could really see the effect of swapping out the dustpans and tuning up the motors by the end - I miss the pans but the Buttering Ram is a great pun and seems surprisingly effective.

I confess I was relieved that you had some traction issues in that first fight as well as us, we'd never have scraped the decision otherwise!

[Mr Manuva27]

Well, I've not updated this for a while.....

Honestly, BDR hasn't changed much since I last updated. The brushless drive has been dialled in over time and works well (although my hatred for the ESCs has grown).

During that time, BDR has finished just outside the overall top 3 in the Dojo Sportsman 2021 Championship plus competing at BEVS Robonerd with a top 8 finish (which was SO much fun). I'll post the videos for the 4 events below.

However, all things must end. BDR1 has been run to the point it cannot continue and requires too much work to fix compared to starting work on BDR2. I've also learned a lot more since I last posted a render of "Bread Dead 2021", so those plans have changed too.

I'm pleased to announce I'll be going to FightFest in July. I'm on the reserve list as things stand, but I'll be bringing something extra toasty

Until then!

[Sam_Gad]

It's quite amazing that over all the events we were both at in the last year, we only go to fight twice (October Dojo & Robonerd whiteboard).

Is there a full list of the finishing positions for the Dojo championship? I've only seen top 3 published.

I look forward to seeing and getting beaten by your new build

[Mr Manuva27]

My old account got archived, so I think it's fitting to bring this thread to a close as Bread Dead is now officially retired and it's successor has now made it's competition debut.

After literal years of design revisions and building, here is Bread Dead Redemption 2:
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Originally designed for FightFest this year but had to drop out due to personal issues, Parcelforce losing the Hardox for a week and other mess. It made it's debut at RoboNerd in the BBB BEVs competition and made some other toasting friends as well (Pictured).

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Running the same drive setup as BDR1, but now with hardox armour and modular weaponry that can be set up as a lifter, grabber and potential for others in future (cheeky hammersaw, maybe....)

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Competition video from Robonerd is here:

So yeah, thank you to all of those that have followed my journey of building and developing my first robot. I hope you have found it useful. Particular thanks to those that have taken me under their wing, given advice and helped me grow to the roboteer I am now.

See you at an event