Anyone interested in Robot Combat?

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Chris McDonald

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Mar 28, 2021, 9:43:27 AM3/28/21
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Hey Guys, 

Lately I've been watching a fair bit of battle bots and it's sparked my interest in robot combat once again. I'm thinking about building some beetle weight(3lbs) robots for some small scale inexpensive combat. 

Anyone else interested in building bots?

Beetle weight is nice because you can build a bot for a few hundred dollars and afford to have it destroyed in the box. 3d printing seems to be ideal at this scale. So it's fairly easy to build custom parts. 

Some day I'd like to build a heavy weight and go to battle bots, but that is likely a $50,000 endeavour. 

Norwalk Havoc has some decent coverage on youtube:

This guy is on team blood sport but has lots of beetle weight content on his channel:

Baha Baydar

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Mar 28, 2021, 12:55:49 PM3/28/21
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I'd be interested. 

What did you think of Chomp's latest incarnation? 

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hunter.michael.david

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Mar 28, 2021, 1:10:52 PM3/28/21
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My son would enter a team. He is only 11, but they did First Lego League robotics and made it to the provincial competition.

I would supervise for them.

Hunter

Chris McDonald

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Mar 28, 2021, 1:25:43 PM3/28/21
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Hey Baha,

Chomp is cool but ineffective as a combat robot. Even on wheels he wasn't very effective. 

For hammer bots, I'm a bigger fan of shatter. But they just don't deliver on the damage the spinners and high powered flippers can deliver.  

My top picks in no particular order are End game, Whiplash and Tantrum. Whiplash might be my favorite design, combining lifter and vertical spinner. Whiplash also has one of the best drivers. 

Depending on the interest level, we could plan a small event for the summer. I could host a small event here at the garage. If this takes off, maybe Discovery Centre could host a larger event after COVID is behind us. The biggest hurdle for hosting is dealing with lipo fires. Even a small bots's batteries can be quite hazardous. It may have to be an outdoor event.

Chris
 

Shawn Wilson

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Mar 28, 2021, 3:42:52 PM3/28/21
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I would dearly love to do this, but won't have time for at least 6 months.  I would love to see what you come up with, though.

Baha Baydar

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Mar 28, 2021, 5:38:19 PM3/28/21
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Pretty much my thinking about Chomp. Beautifully designed and machined, but not at all effective. I'm not sure what sort of weapon would have worked on that turret configuration. I also like the attempts at innovation that Huge and Mammoth brought to the game.

Byte Force, Uppercut and Endgame have shown that vertical spinners are very effective designs so I think we'll start to see more of those. Whiplash is a great bot but I think the weapon arm is a significant weakness. 

Minotaur was one of my favs but they didn't compete this/last year. 

There's a lot of good info on the upcoming season here: https://www.reddit.com/r/battlebots/comments/m9sy9n/the_battlebots_season_6_rumor_mill/ 

As for our local endeavour, are there rules and design documents for the "beetle" class that you mentioned? 


Chris McDonald

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Mar 28, 2021, 6:10:57 PM3/28/21
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I’m thinking we should adopt Norwalk havoc’s rules as they really are not that far away, so bots built to compete here can compete there.

The 8x8’ arena isn’t all that expensive to build, but after watching their fights, the wood deck really gets chewed up. Steel would hold up better but would damage bot’s weapons. I guess it’s just a consumable that will need to replaced.

 I might check the price of polycarbonate this week and see where it’s at. All clear plastics have been way up due to COVID but are slowly coming back down. 1/8 was only $114 a sheet when I priced it a week or to ago. So 1/4”shouldn’t be quite double that.

It’s kinda neat to see mini versions of many of the heavy weights fighting at Norwalk. Huge, smeeeeeeee, mammoth are all there. Then there are lots of tomb stone clones. 

I’ve got a novel design in mind that I’m interested in trying out. But I may start out with a drum spinner.

I need to find some time to do some CAD work this week. I might even be able to get a chassis printing. 

Chris

Chris McDonald

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Mar 28, 2021, 6:27:34 PM3/28/21
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Chris McDonald

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Mar 28, 2021, 7:00:42 PM3/28/21
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