Best Weight Classification for a Newbie?

[Fatfrank69]

Hi guys, as you've probably discerned I'm new to the sport. Initially at least I do not want to travel up and down the country and will restrict myself to local fights. I was wondering which weight classification is most popular and will guarantee me more local fights? Looking at the number of posts on this forum I would guess the featherweight category? If you could also take into account that I a complete newbie and have no idea what I'm doing that'd be great too.

Many thanks.

[Max]

Where are you based? I'd suggest featherweights if you are reasonably competent at working with hand/cordless tools. If your more restricted with tooling and need to be able to put it together on the kitchen table then antweight are probably more appropriate.

[Fatfrank69]

Hi Max, yeah I am reasonably competent, all my injuries have been relatively minor. I'm based in Stafford in the West Midlands, it's just north of Birmingham, but am unable to travel very far currently due to health reasons. I just wanted to make sure I put my effort into a class that would increase my chances of having a fight locally, didn't want to turn up to find nobody else in this class!

In the Events page of the website, it often doesn't say which classes are fighting at the event. Do I assume that all are?

Also, has anyone got a rough (and I realise it will be very rough) guideline as to the cost on average building a robot in each class costs?

[Ellis]

The featherweight UK champs are held at the NEC every April. The fighting can be brutal, but there's no better way to learn than to see which bits of your robot get chewed up!

A typical featherweight, depending materials/construction methods/design, could cost anything from £150 to £1500. I'd guess the average range is in the £300-600 sort of area.

I'll let others with experience comment about the other classes.

[Garfie489]

If your looking through at the events, generally all heavy events will feature featherweights and antweights. There are dedicated antweight events which only feature antweights. And i have never been to a featherweight event, but i assume for any event if there are enough people with ants, something can be organised.

I would not recommend starting with a heavyweight. And personally the investment made for a first ant, with all the radio gear and so on, is such i would personally rather a really bad feather. Then once i had learned the skills and decided this is what i want to do, then move onto building a good feather. This means you would not be able to enter the NEC (you could, its suicide). But it allows you a period where you are involved in the sport, but its not an ultra commitment. If you made the robot from say plywood you could change and evolve its design in the arena before moving onto making it from metal, which is the point where you would seriously commit, and the price goes up. Because then you would want the best of everything to compete at the NEC.

You can make a feather for less than £100. Especially if you got some spare materials lying around your willing to chop up. However, it will not be a competitive feather by any means, but it at least allows you to get a feeling of the sport without making a serious commitment, and you can use it as a launch pad to make a serious commitment latter. Ants are good fun, but the price compared to a cheap feather means id skip them initially, internally they are similar, but with a feather you need to be able to handle materials.

[daveimi]

Feathers or Ants are a good starting point, and weirdly enough cost around a hundred quid a piece to get up n running (obviously not going to go for world domination). I build from stuff pinched from round the house (chopping boars, ply and 2x2 offcuts, box section, steel sheet from the sides of old PC's, baking trays etc.) and buy in the running gear and electrics as they're hard for me to make. So far I've only built a feather and just screw rubbish together for a bit of fun.

I would say that it's important to remember that some builders are fully trained machinists/fabricators/engineers, and others have basic diy skills like me. The robots that are regulars at events sort of reflect this, and the different events attract varying levels of robot accordingly. At some events I can plod round and have a giggle bashing into stuff, and I avoid others to save coming home in a bin bag.

[Eventorizon]

I would advise building either an Beetle or a featherweight.

The tiny scale of antweight's means lots of the parts cost the same a beetle weight parts such as motors. They both can use the same ESC's, receiver and transmitter. The bigger size of a Beetle will make it much easier assemble and the materials cost wont be significantly different if you go for plastics thin metal. When you buy things there will likely be a minimum size (Usually 250mm x 250mm for plastics, no point in only using less than a quarter for an antweight.)

As mentioned, your first feather wont be "Competitive" in the typical sense that winning the champs ain't going to happen. But that's not to say you cant make the second round with a reliable and well built machine, or luck. A plastic 2WD pusher can be done for around £150 from scratch, including the trasmitter. Throw in a lifting arm so its not a brick and I can see it being £200.

My first machine was around £400. It had 4WD, a 1.4kg disc, lithium polymer batteries and was built from a mix of Nylon and HDPE. If I hadn't run into NST, the champ that year, It could have done another year's combat with limited modifications.

Some tips... CAD is your friend. That's is CARDBOARD aided design. If you can use Sketchup then that will be very helpful as well. Buy all your internal parts for your rough design before you design your chassis, that way you can accurately measure every part and make sure it all fits. (A good example is Lipos have the wires coming out the top and when most companies don't take that into account when they give you dimensions) Always use bolts, not screws. If you have to use threaded inserts. Lastly, make sure you are having fun!

[Mouldy]

Welcome to the forum! and just so you know… all the best featherweights come from the midlands regardless of what these noobs think ^ so you'll at least get to meet some other like minded brummies.

[beast]

welcome to the forum! And just so you know… all the best featherweights come from the midlands regardless of what these noobs think ^ so you'll at least get to meet some other like minded brummies.

true

[Fatfrank69]

Welcome to the forum! and just so you know… all the best featherweights come from the midlands regardless of what these noobs think ^ so you'll at least get to meet some other like minded brummies.

Haha, I'll keep that in mind!

Thank you guys that's given me a good idea of where to start. Hopefully see some of you around in the near future.

[Fatfrank69]

I've just watched a clip of the featherweight champs and wow, you guys are brutal! I must admit I got a bit bored of Robot Wars in the later years and looking at other robot combat clips online some of the fights could be quite dull, but boy you guys have build some hard hitting robots!

I've noticed a big difference between robot combat in the US and over here as well, watching US videos the american's either build bots that fall apart easily or built bots that rip others apart easily! Whereas over here there's rarely a bot in pieces by the end it seems, still exciting though watching the featherweights, look like there's some really professionally built robots there.

[Ellis]

This was in April this year. Next year, as ever, the machines will be even more intense!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_zDLNbwK3k

[Fatfrank69]

Thanks for the advice guys, just a couple more questions if I may. I've just realised that the UK Antweights are a lot lighter than the US Antweights, I read Servo Magazine so had been used to seeing US antweights. Watching the UK Antweights they seem to small/light for my liking, it's more like a sumo contest and as Eventorizon pointed out, a Beetleweight would cost around the same amount, so may as well go for a Beetle or Feather.

Someone mentioned that the Featherweights are more professional and that I am likely to get destroyed, therefore would I be more competitive as a beginner in the Beetleweight class for now? I'm tending towards the idea of starting Beetleweight then one day upgrading to Featherweight.

Also, is there no Hobbyweight class (12 pounds/ 5.44kg) in the UK? It seems a nice inbetween weight and seems to be used quite a lot in the US?

[razerdave]

Only thing close to hobbyweights in Europe are the Raptorweights (6kg) in Holland, Germany and Belgium.

[Garfie489]

If you go to either Robot Wars or Robots Live events, your feather should not get destroyed. Its only likely if you enter the uk champs.

There are several feathers which compete regularly at these events, which do not have the strongest of armors (even seen plywood being used), and yet whilst they get a few chips, they are certainly not destroyed.