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

lol

Why are you constantly being an idiot. absolutly everthing we say you have to come and post something negative about it?

its not normal paint, its a light coat of polyurathane. Why dont you build an arena then you can come on here critisising, for god sake james grow up ive had enough of it.

back on topic. Anybody knwo how the battlebox stands up to heavies?

Battlebox was just painted steel? It was just the logistics of a relatively non-mobile large event arena that meant they could do that though.

im gonna steal something someone else created and pass it off as my own

Oh shutup james

just like you jc :)

on a serious not, id have said the same if someone else had posted the same. wasnt being personal, was just laughing at the creative description

on topic, the battlebots floor takes a hammering apparently, but then all floors do i suppose. maybe uneven floors are part of the challenge and instead of building fllors that let our robots run, we should build robots that run on most floors?

(Message edited by jamesb on July 26, 2006)

James, we would appreciate it that if you have a problem with us if you e-mail either james or I. I dont understand why your doing this but i would rather you didnt, and sort whatever it out off the forum!

incase you forget, jamess email is james@robochallenge.co.uk and mine is coop_bmx@msn.com

im sorry nobody can take a joke grant,

people made fun of dominators plasma nitride coated titanium as a creative way of making something sound better than it is. (my understanding was it was painted steel, but maybe we should call in the mythbusters on that one)

if i have anything to say to you or james i will.

back on topic,
maybe mentorn wanted robots to struggle with their ground clearance? that is why they has the assault course. uneven floors mean super low front ends have a disadvantage to counteract the obvious advantages? Venom has exactly this problem, by having a super low ground clearance you get stuck sometimes.

I was refering to quite a few more of your comments over the last year james. i dont see the funny side of them? The polyurethane is in a thick paint form this comment is a very brief explanation of what it really is!

Thats one reason venom doesnt fight much - he doesnt have the weight to make the adjustable front end.
We have used the same coating as dominator - its a form of case hardening that razer also has.

im gonna steal something someone else created and pass it off as my own

Oh shutup james

just like you jc

Sorry James im not seeing the funny side of your jokes, not even understanding what your above post ment? Constant critisism and going against everything we say isnt my idea of funny so i would appriciate it stopping.

so you see the joke now?
good
(posted before the above... sighs)

if the weight goes up to 13.6kg you could have an adjustable from end just like razers? good news eh? wed see you at more events.

you could always show up on your own grant, i believe ploughbot has no floor issues?

on another floor related point, the old ploughbot may have had problems on the XFM arena as it is now. it has a very grippy surface, and high grip 4wd robots struggle a bit, as i found out at farnborough. the new ploughbot should be fine, but floor grip is an issue i think, as much as smoothness?

(Message edited by jamesb on July 26, 2006)

and another floor related issue that maybe of interest.

If all arenas were low grip, would pushers still have an advantage? i believe so.
maybe we should look at possible benefits of slippy floors? such as safety (harder to get to top speed in the distance) reliability (harder to blow motors as wheels spin easily) and challenge (robots are trickier to control)

just an idea to improve the shows?

Im already powersliding on the Roaming robots floor with my feather, I dont need more slippery surfaces.

Slippy floors no thanks Baromot all ready spins its wheels on all existing arena floors

Not a good idea methinks, you need the grip for a good show - youve just got to build your machine for it. The current arenas are hardly grippy at all, especially with all the dust and rubbish that covers them half the time when theyre not brushed down and could be grippier.

You may want the slip for pay-to-drives but save it for them only (and if you do use ultra slippery wheels/floors for pay-to-drives the control is pretty sh*t, not that youd care obviously)

Ploughbot spins on fast turns in every arena i have been in, and so slippery floors would be a big no. Our pay-to-drives arena uses the same floor(slightly thinner plywood) than our large arena, and the same types of coating and they still run for a very long time with reasonable wheels on them so they drive fairly easily.
Our Kits are two wheel drive and so the batteries are not as effected as 4wheel robots would be.

Maybe have diffrent floor panels, some with more grip and others that are super slippy, like the ones surrounding the pit lol.

great idea