Corvis (temp bot name) rough ideas.

[daveimi]

Lol I want to build a huge mechanical snake!

http://www.snakerobots.com/S7.html

[Bacon Wizard]

And what exactly do you plan to do with that?

Frighten the girls away, ye will.

Here are some festo air-muscles in opposition to each other. Even a home-made muscle of that size can lift over 60k. These are rated to 6bar and are being pushed to new speeds (normally top speed is 100hz, or 50hz for home-made)

Festo ones are very expensive, but it's entirely possible to home-make air-muscles with decent performance quite cheaply and using kevlar braid instead of nylon which most use.



I highly recommend a search of "festo" on youtube, they've done some amazing vehicles and robots.

[james...venom]

Sounds like a great robot design, would love to see it going! If you have the technical ability then definitely go for it. Do Not Make A Brick!

[Bacon Wizard]

Thanks for the encouraging words! And nice to see you on the boards. Been a busy have we?

It is the story of my life that I know a bit about the weird and wonderful, cutting-edge stuff, but am a complete novice at the basic stuff that is the real foundations of it all. So lots of learning to be done.

And there was never any chance of this turning out as a brick!

[Ellis]

I'd say both ends of the opinions here are right. You will benefit hugely from building something simple and putting it in the ring to understand the physics involved. The bent m20 bolt that was mentioned was on the front of our robot. We're still learning by the millisecond, a year down the line and barely beyond our second robot. The other thing that matters, though, is to not discourage. Don't think the only way in this hobby is to build like the masses. Without people with wacky ideas we wouldn't have our hobby at all.

With that said, please go and build something weird and wonderful. If you're prepared to learn from it if it goes wrong then everything is to gain.

[james...venom]

Thanks for the encouraging words! And nice to see you on the boards. Been a busy have we?

It is the story of my life that I know a bit about the weird and wonderful, cutting-edge stuff, but am a complete novice at the basic stuff that is the real foundations of it all. So lots of learning to be done.

And there was never any chance of this turning out as a brick!

Yes very busy. Just designing my next machine called Goblin. That too will have Kevlar armour so long as tests look good. An to hit some test bits with predator to see how usable a material it is.

[team_mute]

We've used Kevlar on Mute for a long time and its still the same pieces on the side that were originally fitted, its 8mm thick stuff that was used as protection in Bank walls, we've recently fitted some new pieces to the top of Mute to stop the axes.
If the stuff does get cut (nothing has ever made it all the way through) we just add some hot clue and apply a slighty amount of pressure with a big hammer and its like new



Its the black stuff with white patches in middle of mutes side pods, the white is were is been hit by another bot and just skimmed the paint off

[Bacon Wizard]

Liking the look...

Yeah, don't worry. I know enough about composites to know full-well that kevlar armour would be just fine if applied properly. If it was a carbon fibre/kevalr composite, it could be made almost twice as thick without any weight considerations. And if sheer-thickening fluid was applied to a non-composite layer of fabric on the top, it'll stop absolutely anything.

[james...venom]

what resin would you recommend? im still pondering

[Bacon Wizard]

what resin would you recommend? im still pondering

Definitely epoxy laminating resin. It's more pricey but don't even think of using any anything else for combat. On paper it's brittle, but it has cross-linking properties with some but not all fibres. Kevlar and carbon, are both suitable. Much stronger than vinyl-based or basic fibre-glass material.

Spend money on a good hardener. Some of them have UV protection too ((UV degrades epoxy) and that's handy if you don't want to paint it.

You very much need to do it under vacuum-pressure (vacuum-bag kits) and I'm not sure I can recommend using pure kevlar for fight-bots (am still looking into this) but kevlar has no structural strength, only resistance to penetration and dispersion of forces. ie, you could end-up with the resin cracking from blunt-force trauma despite a weapon not actually getting through the stuff (think wire-re-enforced glass) Which is why I am thinking carbon-fibre/kevlar blend might be a better option anyway.

Carbon is actually slightly heavier than kevlar, but the added strength aught to mean you could include a core material/filler and get a thicker, lighter and yet stronger shell overall. (In theory!)



I am looking into polycarbonate composites which I thought sounded like a great idea but not too much luck so-far. Maybe Polycarb can be the core material if that plan turns out to be a good'un.