Wooden Robot Class

So I mentioned this briefly in amongst the active weapon debate but thought I'd get people's opinions and thoughts on the matter.

The idea is simple, for structure and armour your robot may only use wood. With the use of space age materials like Ti and Hardox becoming so prolific most fights seem to turn into ¼ber boxes bashing into each other. This is particularly noticeable at HW events and in FW's at non-spinner events, and sparked the whole active weapon debate. Now this is the basic premise and is open for discussion.

I often going to Banger racing and Destruction Derby shows and the fun and entertainment for the audience is in the crashes, the destruction and the speed. The car's don't have active weaponary, and in most cases don't resemble cars anymore, or are dark blue Ford Modeos with all the trim taken out.... The point is it's fun to watch because it's loud, it's fast and you see stuff get destroyed and that's it! There's no music, special effects, lighting, on going commentating, the race speaks for itself and entertains. Furthermore special events are held such as Caravan Destruction Derbys where each car has to tow a caravan to the death, and this is even more fun.

So linking back to robots, if a few people make robots out of wood then they would be easy to destroy, easy to fix, not expensive to build and puts everyone on an even playing field. I'm not suggesting everyone should make one, or even stop the current robots, the already have their place, I'm suggesting a side category.

Additional advantages are wood is easy to work with, using very common tools, and can be destroyed quite spectacularly by common tools. Drills, Saws, Chainsaws etc......

All the expensive bits can be kept in a metal box in the heart of the robot, while the outside is destroyed for a laugh and entertainment.

Thoughts?

Well, wood isn't really that weak. I mean, laminated, 20mm thick wood is tougher than HDPE if anything. You could make a seriously solid robot with wood. Would there be much more destruction than usual?

Well Wood and Glue is nothing like Hardox and Welds. Plus the weight of wood will heavily limit the potential thickness. Wood is also an ablative armour, so although it'll hold up for a while, it will all along be losing bits.

Plus if we encourage destruction (so people make intentionally weak robots) and the use of certain weapons that would normally be useless against metal armours but great against wood then we have destruction.

It'll be interesting to see how the pool evolves.

1. Steal Australian rules
2. Add Rex's Robot Challenge for inspiration
3. ???
4. Profit!!!

Looks good (Australian Rules that is). I think Jamie has a photobucket account with all the Rex's RC images scanned in.

Profit?

I for one like the idea :D

Plus slow spinners with no arena so we could do less slow spinners with an arena...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnXmHCpFjhY

Haha, I've seen that video before and if it proves anything it's that fighting robots WITHOUT a polycarb surround is a bad idea!

I'm thinking things like cicular saws, jig saws, drills, anything that's designed to work wood!

At the moment they are counted as spinning weapons, but there is clear distinction between a 6kg spinning block of Hardox at several thousand RPM and a 100g blade on an angle grinder and that needs to be realised.

Your right though, slow spinners could work, especially if it's just putting something in a drill chuck, would be nice and easy to create and wouldn't have to be as potent as the current spinners to be effective.

Glad you like it Craig!

Personally, I don't really think re-introducing spinners is an option available to us

I think its a good idea... depending on if jonno/robotslive would be able to run them in there arena's... if standard saw blades were used and all exsterior parts were wood (aka no steel brakets on the outside)

would be much more apealing to new people who want to start in the sport who dont have access to metal working tools....most blokes have wood working tools in there garage, and the materials are easy and cheap enough to pick up.