Wooden Robot Class

[Eventorizon]

We are going to try and get a wooden machine going for the Armories event in leeds. It will weigh the full 13.6kg.
The design includes space for twin wood saw blades driven by a Speed 900 but if people dont want to fight a spinner we can take the blades off.
In terms or armour thickness it has two layers of 18mm MDF at the back and sides with a 18mm bulk head then a 5mm scoop at the front, also MDF.
But there is no metal in the chassis or armour at all, that is why its so thick. I had planned to paint the surface of the inner layer so that I could tell how far people had cut in and if necessary throw in the towel.

For the rules I think that if its wood; hard, soft, man-made, it should be allowed. Yes some hard wood are VERY hard but its expensive. If you want to spend a load of money on an completely Ash or Maple machine then fine but after a few rounds in the arena with even a simple wood saw, or worse a chainsaw, it will be have to be replaced.

[attachment=0:3n5yw2it]Hard Woods.gif[/attachment:3n5yw2it]

Weapons. The blades to go on our machine were going to be Ti but now we are getting some 3mm Alu so they will probably be cut from that. As you will all know, MDF is very easy to cut so even with Ali blades, at 6000 rpm, it wont matter; they will make a nice mess. Heck, you could cut it from an old piece of pine floor board and that would make a mess of MDF.

Bitzawood I think is a brilliant example. Yes it has 3 blades but in that way its almost comical. Its like going back to series 1 of robotwars; remember Scrapper or Tracie. A Tracie style machine with 4 drill bits sticking out would be cool.

Idea... what do you think would happen if you awarded points for a machine being 'in the spirit' if the class. You still won 4 points for a KO, 3 for 1st etc... but before combat people voted, out of say 10, for all the machines on how interesting or unique the robot was. This was then added to the points of its victories. This would mean that even if you lost all your fights then you could still get through the qualifiers because your machine was built in the spirt if the class.

Does that make any sense or am I just talking rubbish?

-Edit: Sorry, idea diarrhea...