Brand new heavy.

Hello all, thanks for any response in advance.

I recently posted a thread on hardox and whether it's necessary....unanimously it seems it is. So cheers for all of your input on that

Ive got a couple more questions regarding our first build (HW 4wd rammer/wedge)

1. We are currently using 16mm Bright mild steel shaft for our dead axles. The axle will be secured on two internal walls of the chassis. Axle length is 170mm with the bearings on each side of the wheel hub covering 100mm,leaving 35mm each side of the bearing to the int. wall. Is this material strong enough to withstand deformation?.....(not really sure what most axles are made from)

2. Another chassis one. I had a thought on fabricating the entire chassis with the wedge as a whole (except lid) out of 10mm aluminium then basically cladding it with a wraparound of 3mm hardox. Possibly some shock absorbing material in between. Anyone done this? Or would it be more effective to use 5-6mm hardox all over the shop?

Any ideas or knowledge on this subject would be much appreciated.

Cheers, Pep.

.......I'll get me coat.

Well, at Robogames this year Last Rites bent 1" thick AR400 which is essentially hardox... so either way if you're wanting to fight spinners you'll take insane damage at some point. I'd certainly go the shock absorption route but I'd probably go for something like a full 5-6mm hardox chassis and then maybe 15-20mm HDPE all over, maybe even more where you can afford the weight. If you're only doing non-spinner live events 4mm hardox should be near enough bulletproof for most things you'll fight, and stick a bit of HDPE on top for fighting the nasty axes like like Thor, Gabriel and Terrorhurtz

The first question that comes to mind, are you wanting to try and enter the TV show with your bot or stick to live events?

Yeah that's the plan eventually, hopefully if it continues to air that is.

Imho very very unlikely to get on tv with a wedge unless your team has an angle or it's a walker wedge......

Rambots generally are considered 'boring' by the producers. There isn't a 'wow' factor when they come onto the arena with an active weapon spinning, hitting, etc. Storm 2 was rather infamously hit with a bit of controversy from producers after perceived bias against it due to this. An article about that is written here; http://robotwars.wikia.com/wiki/Storm_2/Controversy - it's a rather good read, but i just love reading up on everything...

Don't let that put you off though, if you look the part, even with just an amazingly artistic paintjob or something, that'll improve your chances. It's probably a case of, they won't put more than 1 or 2 of that specific type in a series on TV, and give more to the more 'impressive' flippers & spinners, but if you can make a name for yourself or even just look the part, you'll probably have just as much chance as any other to get on there.

You wont get a pure wedge on telly - active weapons are a must

If you havent listened to inside the bot its a good series. Here is Henry (one of the producers) along with the Cooper's talking about rule changes in Series 2 and what's interesting

https://soundcloud.com/insidethebot/...r-james-cooper