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Hi guys, as you've probably discerned I'm new to the sport. Initially at least I do not want to travel up and down the country and will restrict myself to local fights. I was wondering which weight classification is most popular and will guarantee me more local fights? Looking at the number of posts on this forum I would guess the featherweight category? If you could also take into account that I a complete newbie and have no idea what I'm doing that'd be great too. :crazy:
Many thanks.
Where are you based? I'd suggest featherweights if you are reasonably competent at working with hand/cordless tools. If your more restricted with tooling and need to be able to put it together on the kitchen table then antweight are probably more appropriate.
Hi Max, yeah I am reasonably competent, all my injuries have been relatively minor. ;) I'm based in Stafford in the West Midlands, it's just north of Birmingham, but am unable to travel very far currently due to health reasons. I just wanted to make sure I put my effort into a class that would increase my chances of having a fight locally, didn't want to turn up to find nobody else in this class!
In the Events page of the website, it often doesn't say which classes are fighting at the event. Do I assume that all are?
Also, has anyone got a rough (and I realise it will be very rough) guideline as to the cost on average building a robot in each class costs?
The featherweight UK champs are held at the NEC every April. The fighting can be brutal, but there's no better way to learn than to see which bits of your robot get chewed up!
A typical featherweight, depending materials/construction methods/design, could cost anything from £150 to £1500. I'd guess the average range is in the £300-600 sort of area.
I'll let others with experience comment about the other classes.
If your looking through at the events, generally all heavy events will feature featherweights and antweights. There are dedicated antweight events which only feature antweights. And i have never been to a featherweight event, but i assume for any event if there are enough people with ants, something can be organised.
I would not recommend starting with a heavyweight. And personally the investment made for a first ant, with all the radio gear and so on, is such i would personally rather a really bad feather. Then once i had learned the skills and decided this is what i want to do, then move onto building a good feather. This means you would not be able to enter the NEC (you could, its suicide). But it allows you a period where you are involved in the sport, but its not an ultra commitment. If you made the robot from say plywood you could change and evolve its design in the arena before moving onto making it from metal, which is the point where you would seriously commit, and the price goes up. Because then you would want the best of everything to compete at the NEC.
You can make a feather for less than £100. Especially if you got some spare materials lying around your willing to chop up. However, it will not be a competitive feather by any means, but it at least allows you to get a feeling of the sport without making a serious commitment, and you can use it as a launch pad to make a serious commitment latter. Ants are good fun, but the price compared to a cheap feather means id skip them initially, internally they are similar, but with a feather you need to be able to handle materials.
Feathers or Ants are a good starting point, and weirdly enough cost around a hundred quid a piece to get up n running (obviously not going to go for world domination). I build from stuff pinched from round the house (chopping boars, ply and 2x2 offcuts, box section, steel sheet from the sides of old PC's, baking trays etc.) and buy in the running gear and electrics as they're hard for me to make. So far I've only built a feather and just screw rubbish together for a bit of fun.
I would say that it's important to remember that some builders are fully trained machinists/fabricators/engineers, and others have basic diy skills like me. The robots that are regulars at events sort of reflect this, and the different events attract varying levels of robot accordingly. At some events I can plod round and have a giggle bashing into stuff, and I avoid others to save coming home in a bin bag.
I would advise building either an Beetle or a featherweight.
The tiny scale of antweight's means lots of the parts cost the same a beetle weight parts such as motors. They both can use the same ESC's, receiver and transmitter. The bigger size of a Beetle will make it much easier assemble and the materials cost wont be significantly different if you go for plastics thin metal. When you buy things there will likely be a minimum size (Usually 250mm x 250mm for plastics, no point in only using less than a quarter for an antweight.)
As mentioned, your first feather wont be "Competitive" in the typical sense that winning the champs ain't going to happen. But that's not to say you cant make the second round with a reliable and well built machine, or luck. A plastic 2WD pusher can be done for around £150 from scratch, including the trasmitter. Throw in a lifting arm so its not a brick and I can see it being £200.
My first machine was around £400. It had 4WD, a 1.4kg disc, lithium polymer batteries and was built from a mix of Nylon and HDPE. If I hadn't run into NST, the champ that year, It could have done another year's combat with limited modifications.
Some tips... CAD is your friend. That's is CARDBOARD aided design. If you can use Sketchup then that will be very helpful as well. Buy all your internal parts for your rough design before you design your chassis, that way you can accurately measure every part and make sure it all fits. (A good example is Lipos have the wires coming out the top and when most companies don't take that into account when they give you dimensions) Always use bolts, not screws. If you have to use threaded inserts. Lastly, make sure you are having fun!
Welcome to the forum! and just so you know… all the best featherweights come from the midlands regardless of what these noobs think ^ :) so you'll at least get to meet some other like minded brummies.
true :)Quote:
Originally Posted by mouldy
Haha, I'll keep that in mind! ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Mouldy
Thank you guys that's given me a good idea of where to start. Hopefully see some of you around in the near future.
I've just watched a clip of the featherweight champs and wow, you guys are brutal! I must admit I got a bit bored of Robot Wars in the later years and looking at other robot combat clips online some of the fights could be quite dull, but boy you guys have build some hard hitting robots!
I've noticed a big difference between robot combat in the US and over here as well, watching US videos the american's either build bots that fall apart easily or built bots that rip others apart easily! Whereas over here there's rarely a bot in pieces by the end it seems, still exciting though watching the featherweights, look like there's some really professionally built robots there.
This was in April this year. Next year, as ever, the machines will be even more intense!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_zDLNbwK3k
Thanks for the advice guys, just a couple more questions if I may. I've just realised that the UK Antweights are a lot lighter than the US Antweights, I read Servo Magazine so had been used to seeing US antweights. Watching the UK Antweights they seem to small/light for my liking, it's more like a sumo contest and as Eventorizon pointed out, a Beetleweight would cost around the same amount, so may as well go for a Beetle or Feather.
Someone mentioned that the Featherweights are more professional and that I am likely to get destroyed, therefore would I be more competitive as a beginner in the Beetleweight class for now? I'm tending towards the idea of starting Beetleweight then one day upgrading to Featherweight.
Also, is there no Hobbyweight class (12 pounds/ 5.44kg) in the UK? It seems a nice inbetween weight and seems to be used quite a lot in the US?
Only thing close to hobbyweights in Europe are the Raptorweights (6kg) in Holland, Germany and Belgium.
If you go to either Robot Wars or Robots Live events, your feather should not get destroyed. Its only likely if you enter the uk champs.
There are several feathers which compete regularly at these events, which do not have the strongest of armors (even seen plywood being used), and yet whilst they get a few chips, they are certainly not destroyed.
To be honest, even if you enter the UK Champs, there's only a miniscule likelihood of your robot being destroyed. You may receive damage, yes, but considering how many spinners are out there and the power of them, there are actually very few machines that come out in several pieces.
I'd say I've probably received more damage in Robots Live/Robot Wars whiteboards than I've ever done at a UK champs. What with the floor flipper, house robots and overall a faster paced battle, repairs are usually always on the cards. It's never really obvious damage, just things like motors, gearboxes, bits of bent chassis etc, but still a lot more than you think you'd get for 'friendly' fights.
ill stand corrected :)
I'm sure No Toy would disagree eh JamieQuote:
Originally Posted by RogueTwoRobots
Both years we have been we've come away with fairly serious damage but I have always put that down to not building the robots right, and my stupid driving. :P
There is no faster way to learn how to make a solid robot than to enter the champs. It'll be 2 years since we entered our first robot come April and I feel if we had shied away from the spinner events the latest builds would be very different.
Sorry, I probably should have worded my question better, I'm not so worried about being destroyed, more worried about not being competitive. I briefly tried radio control car racing as a teenager at a local club. I thought they would split the races into different classes so there would be one for stock standard Tamiya's, but there wasn't so my car was incredibly slow compared to everybody else's with their super fast motors etc, which was really frustrating and frankly boring.
So I don't want to build a robot and get to a competition only to find that it's vastly inferior and I don't stand a chance. I know I'm not going to be winning any time soon but having a good scrap is what I'm looking for, so I was just wondering am I likely to be any more competitive in the beetleweight than the featherweight, or does it not really matter?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8aE1iJEiLM
Proof that you can build a robot out of little more than scrap and not only be competitive but win :)
What's Blitza built out of? Can I see aluminium tubing forming the chassis?
Well, because the beetleweight category over here as far as I'm aware is still in its infancy, I don't think people have quite perfected things yet so I guess there'd be more of a chance of being competitive there if you happen to get a setup that works well, but on the other hand people know what works with featherweights and you'll be able to borrow ideas from established machines and make a decent go of it right from the start and know you'll be relatively competitive from the off
Really, it doesn't matter too much I'd say. Go with whichever you'd prefer!
I prefer the featherweights. Big enough to work on without being a surgeon, small and light enough to carry alone with ease.
On the other hand, the 6 kg Raptor class is fun in its own right.
From scratch? Neither category would be advantageous.
Robot Combat is a bit like rock paper scissors. One design betters another but worse with a third. With that in mind, how high tech the opposing machine can be largely irrelevant to the result.
You'll learn bucketloads per robot regardless of class and design, but the number of events you can attend (there are rumble style non-spinner events almost biweekly these days) with a feather vastly outnumbers the number of events for beetles. That said it would be really great to see the beetle class grow.
As for not being competitive, I'm not sure it really works like that. In combat, as shown by the video above, you can have a beautifully made powerhouse built by a team with years and years of experience lose a fight to a newcomer, and that isn't a rare thing at all. Anything can happen, making it quite a level playing field, just in this case some players have more titanium than others. If your bot can move and take a few knocks (if you document your build the forum will help in terms of making the best of what tool/material access you have) then it can win fights.
I think most will agree, though, rush-fixing a robot after a hard fight is just as great, or better, than winning. Saying that I have yet to do much winning so who knows! :P