Arena Floors

Well the problem refuses to go away with the plainly wooden arenas of present - the robots keep being built for flat floors but it seems this is often not what they end up performing on, which certainly doesnt help the battles.

The issue is I believe most prevalent among the feathers (as I can testify :sad:), their smaller size isnt much help for sure.

Maybe its worth looking to the US where I believe some EOs have used some form of laminate surface for lighter weight class arenas before (Chad may be of help here, or any other of you guys over the pond who look here now and again? What have you experienced before?).

What flooring solutions have been tried on the UK circuit besides the widely used MDF? Any ideas from anyone?

Thanks guys, Ewan

We use 25mm Plywood coated in polyurathane which is bolted down to steel frames. Never had a problem with featherweights as the floor is perfectly level every time. Our arena is the only arena ive not had a problem with Venom running aground during battles.

Its not the type of wood, its the way its held down that matters.

That may be true James and your floor is very good as is the XFM arena. But the problem is that neither of these arenas have heavies running around in them. Personally I have made a mod to my feather to better cope with uneven floors. If there was an easy cheap solution Im sure someone would have come up with it by now, amy suggestions.

20mm thick hardox floor :)

Its easy to make an arena for feathers as ed said- But youd be hard pressed to find an arena floor that would cope with THZ hitting it or spinners being flipped into it all the time.

Ewan- If your concerned about the flooring for the UK champs ive been told it will be alot better than normal.

The XFM arena was certainly not in its best condition last weekend, but hopefully that was just a bad hair day (!).

Polyurethane eh James? Sounds interesting (albeit probably suitable for feather arenas only). I must come and see the current state of the arena sometime soon - I havent really had a glimpse for a good while now. Have you any open feather shows in your sights for the near future?

Well a nice floor for the champs would be a bonus (are they using the bot crusade arena?) but it would be good to have an improvement maintained during the future.

This is quite ironic as now I notice a topic on the US forum about making uneven floors for more exciting action! (albeit more ATV terrain than wonky MDF :))

Ewan i may be putting on another social test day on aug 12th or 13th. give people a chance to test there bots in the arena in time for the uk champs. depending on what weapons want testing i can put the screens in. The polyurethane is in a thick paint form. If your interested in coming along let me know.

Ye getting an area floor to survive heavy weapons is near enough impossible lol. even with a steel floor a spinner hit would put a nice gouge in the floor which feathers would just bump into lol. only way of doing it really is with a wooden floor and to change the surface everytime it got damaged but then the costs spiral up.

Sounds good, Ill check if I can get a driver! I should have something to play with - or even the complete machine for the champs if I can get done what I want to in the next couple of weeks.

Perhaps heavy arenas are doomed to be as they are until the economies of scale of larger events come into play - theres still more that could be done with the feather ones though Im thinking, Ill be interested to see how yours is doing James.

The polyurethane is in a thick paint form.
so its painted wood?

why call it painted plywood when highly processed laminated natural structural buliding material of tree based origin, covering in a seperate uniform thickness layer of liquified polyurethane polymer in the solid state sounds better?

making it sound complicated doesnt mean it is. see how impressed everyone was to begin with? someone doing something clever with arena floors. its paint!

jeez

Oh shutup james