RogueTwo Robots

[RogueTwoRobots]

FYI thou not like i was ever bothered about u making a robot styled on my design

I know, but I just like reminding myself of the fact that I hadn't ever considered such a design until I saw the first test video you posted

with mine im just deciding whether to go down the route of having serous crushing power or down the route of grab and lift will see i spose

It's a bit of a toss-up I guess; if you go for the serious crushing power you could cause some brilliant damage, but on the downside you have to build the chassis strong enough to cope, and even then, most folk will probably tell you to back off before you get the chance to sink the claw in.
But with the grabber, the chassis doesn't have to be as much of a tank and you can pick people up at your leisure and dump them in the pit :P

[RogueTwoRobots]

2011 Update

I may not be able to do any major robot work until I get a job, but that doesn't stop me from planning.

First up, Drumroll II. I finally got round to fully dissecting it after the UK champs. This is the self-inflicted damage sustained in the first fight:



As you can see, the brushless motor ended up sitting quite wonky, and the shaft got bent which gave it a bit of a growl every time it spun after that. I did as much as I could in the pits afterwards to straighten it all out but didn't have much luck. So it ran almost that squint for the rest of the event; it's no surprise the belt kept jumping off.

With the old setup out, I started trying out the brushless motor/gearbox setup from 360 in the robot and, although it just fits in height-wise, the can of the brushless motor would be rubbing against top/bottom panel (whichever way up I mounted it) and the space was really tight. I've also concluded that UHMWPE, while good in its own right, is the wrong type of chassis material for running a brushless spinner.
So the plan for now is to go back to a Speed 900 and replace the bolts holding the teeth on with some higher tensile, larger diameter ones and get the machine running like that. It won't pack as much of a punch but it should be more reliable. I had very few issues with the drive at the champs, so combined with a more reliable weapon setup it should operate without wrecking itself.

That will be a stop-gap measure; to get the brushless setup running I want to go for a CNC-cut aluminium chassis and get the proper drum made. Add to that some lithium batteries and charging gear and the cost won't be cheap. So once I'm earning, that will be how Drumroll II develops. Until then, a brushed-motor weapon and UHMWPE chassis will suffice.

Carcinus has also been redesigned and is up for a rebuild but I'm now torn between what to do. Build Carcinus first, or finally make use of the Bosch 400 motor I've had for years and build an axe robot?

Introducing GROND (Hammer of the Underworld)





The name comes from the Lord of the Rings. For those of you who have seen the movies or read the book, the huge battering ram from the third film is named after Grond, who was known as the Hammer of the Underworld, hence why I thought it a fitting name for a hammer bot.

The CADs are pretty basic but show the intended aim. Two drill motors driving four wheels through timing belts and pulleys (not modelled), quite similar in that sense to Satan's Mutt. Bosch 400 driving an axe through sprockets and gears, controlled by a Victor 885. Operating voltage not decided on yet; the Bosch is 12V and a few folk say that roughly 18V is the most you can overvolt them to without burning them out. So I may stick with what has become the standard voltage in my machines of 19.2V. The axe reduction was originally planned to be one-stage, using a kart sprocket like most of the other axe robots, but when I tried one in the model, it looked pretty rubbish. I've got a few sprockets and some chain from when I first built Drumroll and was planning to have the drum chain driven. The parts amount to two reductions of 3:1 each, so the intention is to go two-stage with a total ratio of 9:1. This might change when I perform some calcs and see what sort of speeds the axe will be doing.
The middle bulkheads were originally 10mm ali that I was going to get machined but I quite fancy the challenge of doing most of it myself so 15mm in one of the stronger plastics might be the chosen option. It will be nice to try something different, and it can do as a robot for my dad to use until I get Carcinus rebuilt.

Beetleweight plans are still floating about, but I keep changing my mind on the design. For example, after seeing Mute on an episode of Extreme the other day, I want to change my Cassius II replica into a Mute replica, plus I've got ideas to make a couple of scaled-down versions of other heavyweights so it's a toss-up what to build. It probably doesn't help that I've bought no parts yet. The design will probably settle down once I do, but again that's something that is going to wait until employment

[psycho_fling]

all sounds promising

your axe design looks quite like one of my possible designs hahaah no bother though

i too was thinking 10mm ali and getting it cnced out nice

are you gonna have the axe bulkheads as close to each other as possible so there is little chance of the axe and other bits moving side to side ??

keep updates coming mate

[RogueTwoRobots]

your axe design looks quite like one of my possible designs hahaah no bother though

No plagiarism intended
I actually designed it as a featherweight Beta replica (my plan to make a mini-Terrorhurtz was scuppered by some Geordies ) but as the designed progressed, it changed slightly and now boasts, at most, only minor similarities.

are you gonna have the axe bulkheads as close to each other as possible so there is little chance of the axe and other bits moving side to side ??

Probably just wide enough to fit the axe arm, sprocket and bearings. I'm going for a rotating shaft rather than fixed shaft, so there will be bearings mounted into the bulkheads and the shaft will be secured with the supplied grub screws. This should minimise side-to-side movement.

[Mouldy]

Going back to brushed weapon motors?

Jamie i thought better of you lol Why not make it exactly how you want it and take time over it instead of rushing it just to get it done?

[RogueTwoRobots]

Why not make it exactly how you want it and take time over it instead of rushing it just to get it done?

Probably because currently I have no working robots and I miss having something to muck around with
Taking time over it is something I should have done back in the summer, in the sense that I should have just persevered with the original Drumroll until I could build Drumroll II fully as planned. But the niggling little things about the original Drumroll just made me want to get version II running as soon as possible, even if I had to make compromises in places.

At the time I was blinded by the urge to make the new one without looking ahead properly and considering what would happen after some wear-and-tear set in, as well as damage. As a result, I now regard the current Drumroll II to be a test model/prototype. It's allowed me to see that the majority of it works, but also highlights areas for improvement. Looking back, it was perhaps an expensive mistake in rushing it considering what I think of it now. But with only a spinner event or two a year the urge to make the most of opportunities sometimes overrules logic. I don't yet know what my job situation is going to be over the coming year but because the current version is still arena-worthy (with the addition of a Speed 900) it means I can get it running with an active weapon and use it to compete in the event that getting the 'proper' one built doesn't happen until, say, 2012.

So basically hindsight is a wonderful thing

[death robotics]

Hey there Jamie, im liking the Grond CAD (I also love Lord of the Rings)

Have you done any updates on that Cassius look-a-like?

[RogueTwoRobots]

Thanks Lian. There hasn't been any progress with the mini Cassius beetleweight. Mainly because I don't have any beetleweight parts yet, the plastic I've used is actually Perspex rather than polycarb, and I'm not 100% sure I want to build a Cassius replica first. I've got various designs still spinning about my head so I probably won't settle on one and get it built until I've got the parts needed.

Update

I have been doing a bit of work on Drumroll II the past couple of days though. It was in a bit of a sorry state after the champs so it's been good to get it looking a bit better.

I decided, after finding maintenance at the champs to be hassle, that version II needed to go the same way as the original Drumroll. By that I mean having everything needed for the robot to run fitted to the baseplate inside the bulkheads so that the outer frame can just be unbolted and lifted off in order to access the components. The aim is to have everything contained within this removable section so it can be driven separately from the main body. With Drumroll, I never planned for that to happen - it just ended up being like that - but boy does it make maintaining the machine so much easier.

So the bulkhead that the weapon motor attaches to needed to be fitted mainly to the baseplate rather than the sides, and the drill motors needed to be separated from the bulkheads they were mounted in yet still remain in the same place. A quick blast with the jigsaw was the simplest, albeit a little crude, method and they got bolted down:



Then the Victor 885 got fitted for when I get another Speed 900, and the batteries were held in place with a polycarb restraint that bolted to the base panel. Previously I had a spar going across the robot from bulkhead to bulkhead that held the batteries in place, but that meant that when the outer shell was removed, the batteries would be loose. The new restraint also served as a handy mounting point for the Scorpion XL, moved from the front in a box with a fan to the back minus the box and (now broken) fan:



One benefit of being skint means that I'm more likely to try and make something from scratch rather than paying for a pre-made one. And while Sam Smith's Deans mounting blocks are very nice, I thought I'd try my hand at making my own, which actually turned out much better than expected:



And with the connector in place:



While it's a snug fit, it does pull through a little bit when I'm removing the link so I might have to spoil it by putting some hot glue on the underside to hold it in place. That aside, I'm pretty chuffed with it and am now wondering why I didn't bother trying to make one before. Oh well

And finally, with the power distribution bolts relocated:



I might trim that bit of HDPE, as it's a little wider that needs be, and space is a premium in this robot!
All I need to do is fit the LED, get and install a Speed 900 and refit the teeth to the drum with bigger, stronger bolts (finally managed to get the broken ones out) and it will be ready to roll again. Oh, and will probably need to change to blue wheels as well, my home-made jobbies just aren't as great

[rallikas]

Maybe you could use a little screw to hold the deans in place?

[calumco]

Looking tidy jamie

with your axe robot i've gotta say thou i kinda agree with dave with what he says dont just rush it for the sake of rushing it so you get it finished, if you take your time it'd be better and fingers crossed generally last longer etc - like my ali feather took a year to make and i changed the design that many times whilst i was making it all because i didn't think things through properly and to begin with i just wanted to rush it and get fighting it. But now a year later its all done i can't think of anything i could do any different and im 100% happy with it at the minute -- just my thoughts anyway

and thats a good soloution about the deans connector lol