Skipdiving Robotics

[harry hills]

Better than my first (and some of my recent) antweights

[daveimi]

haha thanks

[daveimi]

I've become a bit obsessed recently on the idea of a wooden heavyweight. I have 16 tons of ply and 2x2 / door frame that seems to be on a never ending supply. I have a half baked box section frame as well. Over the last 18 months I'd accumulated wheel chair running gear, batteries and an rx/tx, all I really needed was a speedo. So when deciding to call it a day with a heavy a load of family said I should give my wooden heavy idea a go. If it got mashed up at least I'd not really lost anything as I'd been planning to give the stuff away anyway. All it owes me is £50 for a pair of wheel chair motors and around £40 for the SLA's and their charger.

This got me to thinking about how to make a chassis strong enough, and if a robot were to be made entirely of wood you'd have to be really careful with the design. It would need metal skid plates and maybe bits of steel sheet as armour, but I'm about 60% convinced it will work. So I've made about 12 wooden chassis up to now and finally have something I can jump on and chuck about. The idea is pretty much just an invertable brick as it's all I can really build, I am toying with the idea of getting someone like Mario to weld me up a scoop. If this doesn't work I have money to start water jetting and getting stuff welded etc., but really wanted to see if I could get this to work. So, here is my wooden chassis, I will populate it with bits tonight and see if I can get another picture up.

[maddox10]

If a DeHaviland Mosquito could do what it did made from wood, a robot can do the job too.

But I would look up Dr wallis and geodesic design.

[Gabe01]

This is a good way or working up to a metal heavy. My thoughts are, if you're going to build a brick then it needs a scoop. This could be fabricated in wood and then you could bolt on metal plates! The its heavy we built was a cobbled together item, but we made it run and it got on the show. it was a bit crap, but the point is it was loads of fun.

[daveimi]

That's really cool. I've been a bit fascinated with how difficult it is to hammer through 12mm ply and snap it etc. It's obviously not hardox and wears icredibly fast when dragged along the floor but am hoping with ball transfers and strategic plating it can be ok lol.

[Mega Masher]

Best of luck with the build dave

[daveimi]

Thank you You too

[Mega Masher]

cheers

[daveimi]

Well been getting ideas again (which I know is always dangerous) so thought I'd sketch them and put them up in the usual manner. Dreamt up the idea of a feather weight grabber powered by drill motors and a linac. Would need making out of metal which is harder for me. And my fav idea so far that's just a Z shape with 4 wheel drive. I'm building a 4x4 robot for the champs and am building up a relationship with a local machine shop that supply steel but also cut and weld. It's pretty good as they're a pair of old blokes so I can take in a sketch with some dimensions and thicknesses and wave my arms around a bit and they sort of get the idea. My dad knew them from back in the day when he used to build racing cars for people in his spare time, they used to make all his cages and rads and various bracketrynesses. Having tried the wooden heavy I'm not especially convinced so am trying to talk these blokes into building me a heavy body that I can put running gear into. It's just an invert-able wedge (think heavyweight Endeavor). I dropped the sketches and sizes off today to let them umm and arr and go down the pub and have a think. I'm supposed to meet them in the pub tomo afternoon to discuss.

Please find ideas below. Oh and I'm gonna make my own feather wheels from now on. Was looking into Banebots wheels but the prices are lunacy. I ordered a family sized grab bag of 3/8 UNF brake pipe connectors so going to try them on a drill shaft tomorrow. My mum has also given me some old saucepans so I have an idea to build a thwack bot using them for wheels. And also erm my ant has been pulled to pieces to make it more like the original sketch. And I'm building a beetle! Ordering a sabertooth and 25mm motors next week. Have loads of time now my degree is finished lol.

Thanks for reading if you got to the end of all that!