Skirts and a big fan

If one were to build a robot that was along the lines of Dr Inferno Jr, like a four wheel drive box with skirts, how would you build the skirts? The problem seems to have two elements, the hinges and the skirts them selves. So the first question is what would you make the skirts from, ie to glance off spinners, and the second is which hinges? Or would something custom made be better?

I get the skirts are steel I spose, but it's the hinges man!

I also need a big fan with motor and speedo finding off hobby kind as the website makes no sense to me. It needs to be under 12" dia and have a massive amount of push.

for the skirts a simple way to do it would be just bolting the plates on and having the bolts fairly loose with the holes for the bolts oversize, so the plates can move a bit, and then gravity will just drop them to the floor. its what some people do with their front wedge, or at least I do

I guess most people just weld or bolt on three or so big door hinges for each plate, and put them on the inside so they don't get ripped off. I suppose you could put some torsion springs on too if you were worried about them getting stuck too far upwards. Storm 2 in Series 7 had three hinges to each plate by the looks of things, and they held on pretty well. Panic Attack however looks like it used big long hinges that ran the length of the robot.

Probably the best way to do it is a bit like was said above by andy.

Hinges arent gonna work, way too weak for combat. What I would do is use angled alu blocks tapped and counterbored with shoulderbolts (that have a plain hardened portion as well as a threaded) and oversized slots on a hardox plate. All loose to be ground scraping but way more manly than a hinge. 10 min drawing of what i mean is attached

Drawn is 5mm hardox @45 degrees. Should take hits from horizontals all day but the verts will bend it. Make spare skirts is probably the best option


R.E. motor and esc. This is to create aditional downforce like many antweight pushers, correct? Neat idea but it will take a bit of work to get it effective. Would need spec on your proposed fanblade design and ideal ballpark of force generated before a motor can be suggested. ESC and motor will need to be manly as youre basically just constanly straining the motor and i doubt youre going to get amazing performance without running 10-12s lipo to get the current to a managable level.

+1 for not using commercially available hinges. I used 'heavy duty' hinges from B&Q back in 2011 and they barely lasted 30 seconds. Just not designed for the rough and tumble of combat robots. Harry's CAD design is probably the best way to implement them effectively and robustly.

Just as a bit of info systems like this draw a MONSTROUS amount of power. You need a lot of battery to even feed it. I had several antweight versions and the largest which was able to increase its effective weight about 3 times would draw up to 20A... In an ant.

With the hinged skirts you'll also be dramatically increasing friction and your robot may not be able to move.

Yeah i wanted to build a pusher but with the skirts to ride along the ground and a big fan to pull it into the floor. Thank you for the drawing it's very much appreciated, I realise i need to up my game with robot building as people watch my thread and if we're trying to draw people in we need to set the example as the ones who have been competing for a while. I want to move up to featherweight and have a 4x4 drive train picked out that I don't think any one has used yet, but feel that sometimes making a robot invert able limits you to the usual brick designs.

i wanted to build something interesting so was thinking well how do you fight wedges without being invertable.