Team Smoothie! Build Diary

I worry about spinners. I think the more intricate and cool your design is the more likely it is to get damaged by a spinner. For instance if you made a really cool pair of jaws, they'd get ripped straight off at the first spinner that clipped them lol. I've been thinking about spinners and what it would take to not only survive, but also fight back. I think the basic gist is to have something angled you can stuff in the blade that will stop the blade, but also deflect a lot of the energy. I think I have a good idea for this, and also for drums since most drums spin upwards. I'll sketch what I mean later and stick it up here lol.

I find that spinners are really overpowered but mega cool but i like a challenge and will never make a featherweight spinner. i want to see if my robots are really well designed and built and how better to test this then to another robot that has the upper hand. I would never build a spinner but i encourage anyone to as they are great robots to use.

I've made the brackets to hold the lid on today, and am going to order the battery now. Umming and arring whether to get a 12v flight pack or get two 7.2v tamiya packs and wire them together for 14.4v. Things will be a lot cleaner and better designed with a simple single pack.

Well it's done, 2 x 7.2v Tamiya packs and a intelli-charger on it's way. Just moving some more money to Paypal to get a Tamiya discharger that's saved in my watch list. Now all I really have left is to get a radio set.

Some other bits got done over the weekend so I thought I'd stick some pictures up. You can see the battery in the corner now, and in the later pictures the angle ally that will hold the lid on. All in weight at the minute is 4kg so I'm on target for the cluster bot I'm looking to build lol. At the minute I like the idea of the Saucepan of Doom or the Pressure Cooker of Doom. I'm also entertaining ideas for the Wok of Doom.

From the batty workshops of Team Smoothie! please enjoy lol.


http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w...ps89fe0689.jpg


http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w...psc631ce51.jpg


http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w...ps666da912.jpg



Edit: I also thought that putting up the basic wiring diagram might also help folks out if they ever stumble across this and are looking to do anything similar to the way we've done it.


http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w...ps1d520c82.jpg

I've been worried about the lack of a decent weapon for the roasting dish and that it only weighed 4kg. Whilst wandering about I've come across these 2x 5mm steel plates (4kg each) and they have pre-cut edges on and everything. So I've decided to somehow turn them into an articulated bull dozer blade for the front with a corresponding box section framework I'm gonna build into the rest of the robot. I have a picture of the plates I found, and if I can dream up a way of turning them into a dozer blade I'll bung up a sketch.



http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w...ps7ebc82bd.jpg

We have serious designs on the go but I keep getting this massive urge to have a policy of building combat robots only from already existing household objects. And also to buy a pair of Jaws of Life.

Making them out of house hold objects would be cooler, make it more interesting to watch, as adds more diversity to the robots, I made my first bot out of a grass collected off an old lawn mower, and I plan to eventually re use to body and make a new robot out if it as I think it would be cool. So I like the idea of house hold stuff! Could use 4 small woks and make a mini stinger out of it...

That's such a good idea! I started with my Dad last summer on the road to building robots. Since then he's had a heart attack and not really all that interested in taking part anymore. So after loads of delays I joined up myself and started with the Roasting Dish cause it was easy to build. But it's been so much fun recycling loads of stuff to bolt on to it I'm thinking of having like a team ethos whereby I'll only build robots out of old items or premade things I've found from skip diving lol. I suppose building a heavyweight this way is my ultimate challenge lol.

I don't know your age, but you can build cool and competitive robot using basic tools and material, such as HDPE.
The roasting dish is a good way to learn, but i think that if you take it to an event, it might get into pieces even against a speedy wedge.
You already have some good components, such as your motors and speed controllers, building an electric lifter is simple and easy, why not go that way?
I think people here in the forum would help you in what they could.

Don't take my words in the wrong way, i personally love homemade/rudimentary/low-tech robots.