Middleweight project

First, let me (very briefly) introduce myself:
My name is Iestyn, I'm from the Netherlands and have so far built two featherweights together with my brother-in-law.

Now on to the important stuff:
A few weeks ago, I started working on a heavyweight when I got the opportunity to buy the drive system form an old Dutch robot wars competitor, Scraptosaur 1.
Since Heavyweight events mainly take place in the UK, I figured it would be a good idea to start a topic on the FRA forum to get advice and post updates for those of you who are interested.

What I've got so far:

-2x 24V 150W wheelchair motors with 200mm wheels attached to the gearbox
-2x 40A speedcontrollers
-A chassis that came with the drive, the previous owner had plans to build a House Robot for the DRG featherweight arena but never got round to it. Still, it's useful for testing purposes.

Having taken it for a test drive, I'm now in the process of designing an entirely new robot around the existing components.

https://youtu.be/3v4Sy-yLMrw

ah yes i saw this get suggested to be me on you-tube, only thing to be aware about is that parts of this robot could be rather out of data, also looking at it some of construction it could bend badly, i would highly suggest you look though build logs here and on Facebook

Update:

Since my last post i've worked on countless designs for a heavyweight, before i finally settled on something i'm happy with.

The idea is to use a hardox pipe as armor and build a torque-reaction thwackbot. To make transporting and storing it easier (or at least less problematic), i'm designing it to be modular and relatively easy to take apart.

One issue i did have with this design is that it was turning out to be very light for a heavyweight at around 65-70 kg. Rather than making it a lot bigger or adding a lot of dead weight, i decided to scale it down to around 50kg instead, making it a middleweight.

However...
There's not much point in making a middleweight if there are no events held for this weight class anymore. From what i've read on this forum there seem to have been a bunch of middleweights built in the last few years, but does anyone know how many of them are still active nowadays?

Lots I predict there were 10 regular attendees, then half a dozen ones that ocasionally turned up plus definately 2 or 3 new ones for this year from other known builders which we have seen metalwork cut for. So lots of robots a thwackbot would be good as we need non spinner middleweight robots for robots live if we want our own fights!!

They most certainly do exist. ;) It can be hard to get our own fights at events simply because of the lack of numbers but hey, it'll happen. :P

Is there a way to relocate this thread and change the name, since it's no longer going to be a heavyweight?

Send a PM to one of the admins? I don't think a user can relocate a thread onve posted

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ocracoke

Send a PM to one of the admins? I don't think a user can relocate a thread onve posted

---

Perhaps it's a stupid questing, but who are the admins? I tried sending a PM to 'fra", assuming that was the shared profile of the admins, but never got a reply. When i tried sending another message just now i got an error saying that fra can't be contacted via PM. I've looked through the entire members list, but everyone on that list is either a roboteer or a member so i don't know who to contact about relocating this thread.

I would have said the fra user as well. Try "kane" as well.

Update:

The design is now about 99% done. I've had to ditch the idea to use a hardox pipe as the body, and came up with a more aesthetically pleasing (but probably less durable) "rollcage" design.

Attachment 9866


The blue parts are going to be 3D-printed out of flexible filament, the gaps between the bars are about 18mm so unless someone brings a robot armed with a highly accurate sharpened screwdriver or somenting like that, i'm not too worried about it.


Before buying the expensive materials for the chassis, i'm going to make a mockup using mostly 3d-printed parts, and am currently in the process of printing the parts i need. (veeeery sloooowly...)
It may take a while.


Also, i'm torn between two potential names for the robot: Rollcage and Somersault. Any thoughts?

Design looks good, will be interested in the 3D prints, what material is the filament? I'd go with Rollcage personally.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ocracoke

Design looks good, will be interested in the 3D prints, what material is the filament? I'd go with Rollcage personally.

---

The material for the "shell" i'm planning to use is semi-flexible TPE, and cheap and cheerful PLA for most of the mockup parts, as well as for the internal mounting points for the ESc's, batteries etc.

Update:

After a lot of trial and error, I finally managed to print al the parts in needed to build the prototype. I still need to install the electronics, but hey, at last there's actual (visible) progress!


https://youtu.be/kMhN9ilrT3I

Looking good, can't wait to see it rolling about soon ;)

Interesting ideas thought I would show an old picture of Saint Hammer during its first build. about 2008 I think
Attachment 9937

Update:

I'll be honest, not alot has happened since my last post over a year ago. This is mainly due to me being involved in starting up an indi game studio, which is jolly exciting but does eat up a lot of spare time.

Recently I've started to assemble the electronics but found that the 20-someting-year-old ESC's are just too big and end up pretty much crushing the rest of the components and tearing out the wires when I tried to assemble the frame around it.

So the next step is to see if I can get hold of some smaller, more modern ESC's (the old ones are 35A controllers that are about half the size of a brick each) and see if that will work.

Attachment 10014
Attachment 10013


To be continued...