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Obligatory First Featherweight Build Log (FeatherDozer)
Hi all who have taken time out of their busy lives to read another build log,
I am a long time lurker of this forum, but this is the first time I will contribute in an attempt to give back what this forum has helped me learn over the past few years. This, as you probably have worked out from the title is the build log of my first combat robot.
For the first entry, I will do a quick first introduction to me etc:
- Name: Sam Gad
- Current occupation: R&D Test Engineer for a Tier 1 supplier to the automotive industry
- Location: Essex
- Team Name: Just Send it Robotics
- Robot: FeatherDozer
As a first time builder but being already within my chosen field of work, I wanted to build a reliable first robot but also push my engineering skills. However, I will quickly mention that I am not great at coming up with names. As the robot is a featherweight and kind of looks like a bulldozer, I put two and two together :uhoh:...
The robot was designed and built in 2019 ready for the 2020 events, but due to the current difficulties we are all facing at the time of writing this :eek:, I only went to 2 events in 2020. We will go into these events in the not-to-distant future but so far, I would say that progress has been much better than expected!
In the next entry I will go over some of the design philosophy and CAD. Below is a quick CAD teaser of FeatherDozer Mk1.0 (Note that I am a very lazy CAD designer, therefore some elements and not modelled).
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Entry 2 - Design Philosophy & CAD
Design Philosophy & CAD
As was mentioned my in previous post, I wanted to build a reliable first build but apply the engineering knowledge gained at both university and in my day-to-day working environment. So, in its most basic form, FeatherDozer in a compact 2WD robot, armed with an electronic, rear hinged lifter.
Before this final design, there were many concept that ended up being shelved due to an aspect that I wanted to keep to: manufacturability. Due to my limited shed and tool capacity as well as my desire to make as much of the robot in house, I wanted to be sure I can achieve the design before starting the build.
Drive
Due to the compact design, it became clear that I did not have the space or the weight for conventional brushed motors. Therefore, the drive comes from 2 brushless outrunners connected to a live driveshaft via a single gear reduction. This was to limit the number of moving parts for each side of the drive as well as the inherent lack of space (maybe I should have just made it a bit bigger). The chosen wheels come from an industrial belt sander as they were an off the shelf part with have good grip qualities and a solid aluminium inner hub.
Front Scoop and Weapon Mechanism
The front “scoop†consists of 4 main sections:
- 1 main upper Hardox section
- 1 HDPE Front sacrificial panel
- 2 Lower HDPE “forksâ€/ side scoops
The “forks†are designed to not only get underneath opponents, but due to being made from HDPE, they can flex with both impacts and the floor to always be as low as possible. I decided to make the whole scoop lift as one as it seemed simpler to me at the time (not sure why now I think of it) as well as be able to act as a raised shield when required. This causes a number of issues which we will get to in later posts. When fully lifted, the front is protected by an inner HDPE impact panel. This is shown below.
The lifting mechanism is powered by a linear actuator, however after initial testing of off the shelf systems, I found a number of limitations such as weight, size and quality of materials used (due to being a mass-produced part).
Therefore, I chose build my own system using parts from a car scissor jack, a brushed motor with a planetary gearbox and a decent amount of hope. The leadscrew from the jack is retained in the centre of the design by the weapon motor and gearbox housing and the front plate that separates the fuse module from the rest of the machine. This was the first aspect of the design modelled which gives the robot its final structure characteristics. For now, this system will remain brushed as the electrical system can be basic (2 high power relays to create a H-bridge motor controller). The image below is in the early build phase (hence the mock up of the arm in wood) which shows the full final actuator mechanism in the robot.
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Chassis
With the weapon mechanism determined, the main chassis can be split into a left and right module. Each module consists of a main longitudinal bulkhead, inner bulkhead to support the weapon mechanism and a transverse bulkhead that acts as the battery separation from the wheels, driveshaft outer bearing carrier and retains the rear armour/ wheel guards. The two modules are then connected together by the rear bulkhead as well as a number of internal spacers (as shown in red in the picture below).
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Electronics and battery positioning
As the central part of the inner structure is taken up by the weapon system, the main electronics had to go either side of the module to keep the design balanced as well as be accessible between fights. Each side of the main inner structure houses a battery and drive speed controller. The electronics are protected by a HDPE curved cover that is shock mounted to dissipate the energy of blows from an overhead weapon (e.g. an axe).
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Other aspects
From the images it might be apparent that the self-righting mechanism was a bit of an afterthought. This is because it was! :lol: From initial testing it became clear that without an additional structure at the rear of the lifting arm, the robot did not have the articulation to self-right. This system shown was limited due to time constraints and was added just before my first event. As a result it is a poor design. This has been changed in the latest version (Mk1.5) but is untested and seems to be a major limitation to this design which will be fixed in the next robot.
In the next entry I will go over some of the build process leading up to my first event in late July 2020.
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Entry 3 - Initial Build Part 1
Before we start I would like to thank all who have taken the time to read the log so far and the complements made :D.
Time to Build Part 1
As there are a vast number of aspects to cover during the build process, I will split this into a few posts.
The decision to start making combat robots came at a transition period for me as I gave up one hobby (restoring classic cars) to start this one. Therefore, I sold my track car to fund tools, the build etc. I chose to buy workshop tools tactically for this build and buy additional tools on demand. As a result some of the more complicated/ hard to make parts were water jet cut by our friends at K-Cut. These were:
- Front Hardox wedge/scoop section
- Outer drive bearing carriers (also made from Hardox)
- Rear aluminium bulkhead
- Centre transverse aluminium bulkheads (replaced later in the build by HDPE due to weight constrictions)
- Hardox arm scoop backplate
This meant that some main aspects of the chassis were built very quickly.
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Mock-up of a side module with the drive motor, gears and live axle.
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Chassis mock-up with wheels and weapon mechanism front plate.
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Weapon Arm Mock-up
Before investing the time in building the final arm mechanism out of a number of different materials, I wanted to check that the mechanism works as intended. Therefore the components were initially made out of MDF. These images also show how the front end of the robot is stiffened up by weapon mechanism front plate.
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Final Arm installed with the leadscrew mechanism to the side.
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The front impact plate & electronics covers both made from HDPE in 6mm and 8mm thickness respectively. Note that the electronics covers are shock mounted in 2 directions to be able to flex down during an impact but not too far to damage the electronics inside.
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So this is where I will leave this entry with most of the chassis, drive system and weapon arm made and semi assembled.
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The next entry will (hopefully) complete the Mk1.0 build leading up to the first event.
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Entry 4 - Initial Build Part 2
Time to Build Part 2
Scoop Build
As the scoop design is a combination of materials and manufacturing techniques, this aspect was a little more complicated than first expected. The most difficult aspect was that the lower scoop sections had to be at the same angle and height. After a couple of adjustments I was happy with the result once it was mocked up on the robot.
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Really starting to come towards the end of the mechanical assembly.
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Only main aspect left to do was the install of electronics ready for final assembly (with rear armour) and paint.
Electronics
This I knew was going to be the real challenge. Not because of a limited knowledge of electronics, but due to a lack of any space inside (as usual). Despite this, I wanted to have some form of order to the main loom so I can access most of the vital components (batteries, link etc.) without taking the whole machine apart.
To help simplify the electronics as much as I could, the robot has separate low and high power circuits. The low power loom feeds the battery eliminator circuit to the RX, power lights and weapon limit switches/ low power side of the relays. The high power circuit, feeds the drive ESC's and weapon high power relay circuit directly from the battery.
The drive speed controllers are Hobbyking F80 brushless speed controllers programed for bidirectional control via SimonK. I found SimonK to be limited way of flashing ESC's, but for my first play with brushless drive it was more of a set-and-forget job that was an already tried and tested method throughout the community.
The sides of the main arm assembly are dedicated to the two 4s (1500mAh) lipo batteries and drive speed controllers. The front section houses the main fuse, main power distribution and weapon motor wires. As is seen by the image below, this meant both internal and external wire routing around the main bulkhead as the "high power" wires of the weapon drive relays and link would not fit (note that the main fuse is not in the image below). The external wires are then protected (somewhat) by the front impact panel. Changes to Mk1.5 have been applied to help better protect these wires.
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Lifting Arm limit switches
As the arm electronics are "simple" it meant that the endpoints could be controlled in the same way that a conventional linear actuator works - limit switches at either end of the desired travel. As I had made my own system, I could position these limits wherever I wanted. This however had to be completed last to test the limits in real-time and adjust accordingly.
The front limit switch is positioned under the arm scoop spacer block and moves with the weapon mechanism. When the arm is lowered, the switch contacts the front inner impact panel to stop operation in that direction. The rear limit switch is positioned above the weapon gearbox and is switched by the arm link to the leadscrew. Both systems are shown below.
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Final Assembly
After a couple of setbacks which included robot weight reduction and self-righter last minute testing, FeatherDozer was ready for it's first event - Robodojo on 26/07/2020. I will go into minor details and analysis of the event in the coming entry. For now here is the completed build of FeatherDozer Mk1.0
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Entry 5 - First Event 26/07/20
Happy New Year! Lets hope that more events are given the go ahead in 2021.
Event 1 - Robodojo 26/07/20
I decided to start in the Sportsman class as I wanted to learn how the robot performs before it gets annihilated in the spinner heavy full combat.
Rather than going through the fights which can be found on Joe Brown's youtube channel, I will go over the event listing the good and bad parts of the robot. This will lead into the subsequent changes made for the second event on 26/09/20. Obviously the events last year were put on under difficult circumstances, but it was only due to the Robodojo team as well as competitor's obedience to the additional regulations that made them possible so thank you all.
Before the event, there was little to no time to practice driving the robot other than a quick functionality test. This was a definite issue as I wanted to be as prepared as possible before the event but did not prepare for one of the most important aspects - driving practice. Despite this, I packed the car and headed to Leeds not sure what to expect.
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My aims for the first event were pretty high based on the competitors that were there:
- Pass tech check
- Function in the arena
- Not break down from my own doing
- Win 1 fight
The robot passed the main tech check apart from initial weight check where the robot was 2 grams overweight! A quick removal of a bolt from the rear armour fixed this :lol:. As I was busy concentrating on maintenance throughout the event, I didn't get much of a chance to take many images post fights.
Below is a quick list of good and bad points of FeatherDozer Mk1.0 on its first outing:
- It works!
- Won a few fights - Better than expected
- Driving practice required!
- Rear ground clearance is a little bit too low as it did get stuck on the raised floor sections due to poor driving
- The robot is way too fast for the arena size but reasonably controllable when trimming the rates on the transmitter
- Last minute self-righter doesn't work - New one to be designed.
- When lifting, the robot tends to lift the rear (depending on the opponents weight distribution) meaning that it cannot move when lifted. This was a major flaw in the design that could only be found in real world testing.
So, to conclude, Featherdozer ended the day with 2 wins and 4 losses as well as still being fully functional. This is far better than I expected based on the level of the competition. Therefore I would give the robot's first performance as way above my expectations and with a few modifications, it could be much more competitive.
The images below are post event which showed very little damage caused. Note that the red paint used tended to peel off very easily, so if anyone from the event wondered where random red paint chunks came from......
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In the next entry I will go over the changes made for Mk1.5 to fix some of the issues listed above.
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Entry 6 - Mk1.5 Design & build
Time to Modify - Mk1.5
Despite a lot of successes from the first event, a number of changes were required. Apart from the obvious driving practice, I needed to focus on two of the issues:
- Unable to lift opponents without become unstable (lifting the rear wheels)
- Unable to self-right
Unfortunately the main reason for these limitations was the fact that a lot of the mass of the robot is in the lifting mechanism. So when the weapon operates, the centre of gravity changes significantly. However, as the robot baseline is a good, solid platform, only minor changes were required.
Lifting Issue Fix
The simplest way that I found to amend the limitation to Mk1, was to extend that front of the chassis with fixed forks. These forks are an extension of the front inner impact panel/ bulkhead brackets. When the robot is sitting on the floor, the fixed forks are lifted to reduce front contact patches (only the scoop is in contact). When the arm is lifted, the fixed forks stabilise the front to help prevent the rear from lifting. As the forks have to be very long to be effective and clear the scoop, lower bracing was added to the fork assembly. This is shown in the CAD images below.
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Fixed forks mocked up in the robot.
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Cut-outs were made to the inner impact panel to accommodate the forks. The image below and to the right shows the final assembly (without the front scoop).
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Self-Righting Issue Fix
A complete redesign was required from Mk1.0 as it was clear that the design was very flimsy and didn't work well. This task however proved to be a very difficult and lengthy process. I think I went through 5 different design concepts ranging from a completely separate arm linkage running from the weapon actuator, to a fixed anti tipping beam. But in the end the only design that came close to the aims of functionality and not look as if I had lost my mind ;), was to revisit the MK1.0 concept with better geometry. After 10 prototypes of various geometries, the design is shown below. The design is much sturdier as the main polycarbonate sections are now part of the main weapon arm assembly. The self-righter inner bracing is now much more optimised to stop flex when upside-down.
When testing, results were promising but once the robot self-rights in the arena I will deem this design as successful.
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As additional items were added, some additional weight reduction was required elsewhere. Most notable areas of weight reduction were:
- Front scoop mount (made from hardox) was replaced with an aluminium alternative of the same thickness.
- Main arm inner aluminium mounts reduced in length to use less fasteners.
- Cutouts in the self righting arm without compromising functionality.
Final assembly went smoothly ready for my second event on 26/09/20 (Robodojo again) which I will go through in the next post. For now, here are some images of the final assembly (FeatherDozer Mk1.5).
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Entry 6 - 2nd Event Robodojo 26/09/20
Event 2 - Robodojo 26/09/20
Confident in at least one of my modifications, I headed back up to Leeds for another dose of addictive, intense fun!
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As before I will go over some of the highlights from the event which can be found on Joe Brown's YouTube channel (link to full event below)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKYZ...annel=JoeBrown
As the day panned out, it was clear that the additional front forks worked as intended to be able to lift effectively resulting in 3 wins, 2 losses and an unofficial 4th place for the day. It is always good to see incremental improvements that are a direct result of a relatively simple modification.
The Hells Angel 2 Fight
This fight was by far the highlight of my day. Dave's formidable axebot can cause significant damage and is driven extremely well. Midway through the fight I was having drive problems due to the only non-loctited grubscrew in the entire robot (my bad) coming lose on the left side drive gear. What is clear when watching the fight back, is that I was relatively lucky winning this fight, as up to the very end when Hells Angel ended up out of the arena, I was taking damage and not driving well. The out of the arena came in the final few seconds of the fight and was my only real contribution, but a wins a win.
However I did not get away without a number of axe marks in the robot and it was nice to see that some of the hits were lessened by the use of the scoop as a shield.....
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Dave came VERY close to the link....
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Luckily all of the damage was superficial, so I swapped the lower scoop sections for the repaired ones from event 1 and kept going.
Despite the positives from this event, it was clear that still I need more practice with this robot as the main contributing factor to both my losses was my driving which resulted in getting stuck under the HDPE floor panels. This hopefully has been rectified in my improvements listed below.
Next Steps & further improvements
As a result of facing many powerful axes, it is clear that I needed to better protect the lifter relay wires as well as the area around the link before it gets sniped as was done to a certain toaster ;).
Therefore, I will be adding a guard to either side that needs to be substantial enough to take hits but not get in that way of either the lifter mechanism or accessibility to the link.
Also as I get more experience driving FeatherDozer, I have come to the conclusion that in addition to practice, I need more low speed control. The F80 speed controllers are a good starting point for brushless ESC's but are lacking in low speed control and with an unfriending way of making adjustments on the fly. So I have decided to have them on standby as spares and use an alternative speed controller setup.
I will go through these modifications in the next entry.
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Entry 7 - Fixes & Changes
Fixes & Changes
First item on the agenda post event 2 was to fix all areas of damage. The notable areas for repair included:
- Axe damage to arm & self-righter brackets (superficial)
- Axe damage to main bulkheads (superficial)
- Axe damage to electronics covers (superficial)
- General wear & tear of lower front scoops (superficial)
- General damage to fixed front forks - Spare set of forks to be made
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Robot teardown revealed no internal damage. I have included the image below is I think it is a good representation of the up to date condition & layout of main chassis as seen in previous posts.
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Relay & link outer protection
As with many other components on FeatherDozer, I wanted to add additional protection to the relays (and link on the right side) without compromising the look of the robot. These panels are easily removeable with just 2 bolts per side and do not interfere with either the lifting mechanism or the ability to install/ remove the link. Below is the CAD and installation of the protective panels.
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New drive speed controllers
After using a basic recalibration of the Hobbyking F80 speed controllers for 2 events, I decided I wanted more adjustability of settings with a high emphasis to low speed control. In an ideal world, I would be moving into motors and escs with direct feedback from the motor via a position sensor to have better low speed control (e.g. VESCs), however, I do not (as usual) have the space in this design but I wanted to try an alternative.
The speed controllers I have been testing are 80 amp BLHeli_s ESCs designed for high performance drones. From what I have seen, this type of controller is common within bettleweights but not with featherweights. As the setup can be changed without modification via an Arduino, I can now make setup changes quickly as well as play with numerous settings with lower risks. These speed controllers are not prefect as current limiting functionality is not available :-|. However I thought I would give them a go and early testing of gyro assisted drive setup was relatively unsuccessful. To try to help these speed controllers survive, I have added a larger heatsink and more shock damping (fire resistant foam).
Early load testing (pushing me along with my office chair) have been positive and I now have better control at low speed with may help some of the lack of control I was having. The F80 speed controllers will become spares in case of issues in real combat with the new ESCs.
Below is a comparison of the old ESC on the right and the new one with is much smaller and lighter.
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New Lifter motor
As the final event of 2020 was cancelled due to lockdown, I have had some additional time to change the motor in the lifting mechanism as the arm operation is a bit slower than I wanted. The original motor is a standard 18V 775 brushed motor that came with the gearbox from Gimson robotics. As the robot is currently running on 4s lipos, the full capability of this motor is not being utilised. Therefore the new motor is a Vex 775 pro as it is a 12V version of the same motor size. I am hoping that the full speed and torque range can be used with the lower voltage motor. Alternatively I am also considering a brushless setup alternative for the future but it will require a motor of a high KV rating to increase the speed of the mechanism.
For now, this bring us up to date (early 2021) as we are all experiencing the joys of national lockdown. When the next event happens I will be ready and the meantime, I will continue drive testing and practice.
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Event 3 - Robodojo 31/05/21
Event 3 - Robodojo 31/05/21
It's been a while!
In the time I have not been posting, 2 events have come and gone for FeatherDozer.
Due to other commitments, I will be unable to attend either Robodojo Sportsman events in August so what better time to get up to date with this build/ event/ blog diary. As before, I will evaluate each event as well as any repairs/ changes towards the fading path of combat robotic perfection (FYI there isn’t one otherwise things would get very dull, very quickly).
The first event of the year for me was Robodojo Sportsman 31/05/21. The event videos can be found on the Team Tilly YouTube channel. Thank you Shane for recording and uploading the videos!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdi...lLOyHa4xe3JiWA
I thought I would slightly adjust my event summaries based on how well the changes made between events faired up against real testing/ combat.
Relay & link outer protection
These were a great success! They took direct hits from Hells Angel 2 that could have rendered the bot/weapon immobile but did their job. They also helped to tuck away the link from most overhead attacks which is an added bonus. Though, in future events, I will probably bring spares as they are intended to be sacrificial. The image below is the best hit they took which really showed how affective they can be to protect one of the major possible failure points.
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New drive speed controllers
Put simply, driving FeatherDozer was a real joy to drive during this event. Taking the time to dial the drive made a world of difference, which meant that I could go on that attack and play to the robots strengths. Practice is still required (the first fight with no barriers against Panda is proof of this), but I found that running the current setup on 4S works well with these BLHeli_S ESCs.
New Lifter motor
This upgrade was relatively underwhelming to be honest. Yes, the weapon was slightly faster and had the power but it is still too slow which resulted in a number of judges decisions which could have contributed to being placed 6th for the day (Still very good points though!).
Damage during event
Over the course of the event, FeatherDozer did sustain its first non-superficial damage during the closely fought fight with Hells Angel 2 (which ended in a close judges decision win for me). I also realise that I had foreshadowed myself as an axe blow to the left side drive gear resulted in significant tooth damage to both the motor pinion and drive gear. However, the whole drive assembly is a live axle retained by a nyloc nut. This nut had sufficient play to shift the assembly meaning that the gears could still rotate to complete the fight. After the fight I had to take the drive side off and hand file the material away to continue the event.
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The very last fight of the day for FeatherDozer was against Red Hot 2 (again). Midway through this fight some of the drive gremlins returned to the already damaged left side which worked the motor and ESC so hard that the ESC melted the protective heatshrink around it. Though this was a worry, everything was still fully functional and is still used in the robot today (with new heatshrink).
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So, all-in-all, a great start to events in 2021! This also helped to determine the way forward for upgrades etc.
In the next entry (which will be ASAP) I will go through repairs, upgrades and bad decisions building up to the next dojo at the end of June.
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Repairs & Brushless Lifter Take 1
Repairs & Brushless Lifter Take 1
So, there is a lot to cover and now the 2021/22 Robodojo season is complete, it’s time to get this build log up to date. For this post we are going all the way back to May/ June 2021.
Drive Geartrain Protection
As the gears took a direct axe hit in the previous event, it was clear that like the relay wires to the weapon, addition protection was required. Damage to both the pinion gear and axle gear are shown below.
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Luckily, there is plenty of bolt holes that can be used to mount the upper drive gear covers which, of course needed to complex due to the tight packaging and weight restrictions.
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With the repairs out of the way, we can get onto the fun part: Brushless lifter.
Brushless Lifter Shenanigans
This is still (as of April 2022) an ongoing upgrade but, it is still worth going through how we got to the present setup.
To get the most benefit out of this upgrade, the setup needed to be as fast as I saw comfortable (or at least faster to full lift than the brushed setup). The existing brushed motor (Vex 775Pro) has a max RPM of 18730 which is then overvolted slightly. The brushless motor chosen therefore had to be faster with the same output shaft to mate to the existing gearbox. The motor chosen was an 1800KV outrunner motor usually used in helicopters. The original motor I wanted was out of stock at the time so this much cheaper motor was the alternative. This gave a max RPM of around 30000RPM on a fully charged 4S lipo (16.8V). This gives a lot of leeway should I need to down the final speed.
The next stage was to battle harden the magnets in the motor and attach the pinion for the planetary gearbox. The is a surprisingly easy process once you get over the fear of possibly ruining a motor just after you bought it. After this success I went back and battle hardened the drive motors.
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The switch from brushed to brushless resulted in a much smaller package and a nearly 500g weight saving.
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Early testing looked very promising with plenty of speed and power. I decided for the first iteration to use that same speed controllers as the drive as I had spares plus, they can be swapped between the systems easily.
However, it became very clear the use of limit switches would more critical than ever to stop the design for tearing itself apart. Luckily, an off-the-shelf solution was made available which would work with a speed controller to set the PWM output to centre-point (usually 1.5ms) when a limit switch was pressed.
So, with the first iteration of fully brushless FeatherDozer complete, it was time to reassemble ready for the next event that was on 26/06/21.
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Event 4 – Robodojo 26/06/21
Event 4 – Robodojo 26/06/21
So where to begin with this event.......
As before I will quickly summarise the event with the good, bad and ugly damage caused. Unfortunately, not all fights are available for viewing but where required, I will attach images.
Brushless Lifter – It was all going so well
After initial testing, I knew that a major change in a short time might come back to bite me. But the main thing to take away was that the mechanism is indeed a lot quicker. What I found was in order to get a “proper lift”, I needed to set aside my mechanical sympathy and just push the stick on the transmitter as quickly as possible. In the future I will be playing with acceleration settings to better utilise the power.
Now to address the elephant in the room. The lifter functioned for around one and a half fights which turned out to be due to the intermediate limit switch board. I will go into this in a later post as it is something I am still looking to rectify. This meant that I did not have a weapon for the remainder of the event.
The Ogrelord Fight
As most may know, Sam Price makes some pretty good, destructive robots. With the allowed inclusion over overhead saws in sportsman for this year, we were all looking forward to finding out how destructive the weapon type could be.
This fight happened to be the one that the lifter failed. I got one lift in, reset the arm and it never moved again. This wasn’t the main event of this fight however due to the gourmet damage inflicted on FeatherDozer that was great to watch (probably). This is one of the fights that I unfortunately do not have recordings for, but the damage is clear to see.
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As you can just see in the image above, Ogrelord just got to the ESC, but did not fully sever the power wires so it kept working.
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Once it was clear that Ogrelord could go through Hardox with ease, Sam let off slightly (Ogrelord be scary).
Despite the damage and lack of a weapon, I manged to win a couple of fights and place 7th overall for the day which isn’t too bad considering.
So, in the next post we will be going over the many repairs from this event and the further testing on what went wrong to the brushless lifter mechanism.
