Wood would be another useful material in this case. Easy to repair and a nightmare for spinners to get through or damage in the thicknesses you could put on a robot (think 2 inch all around the outside)
Oh wow I can do wood! Grandad is a scultpor so I have endless supplies of 12mm ply and 2x2. So do you reckon a wooden brick with a steel wedge bolted on the front? I could make a few spare wedges?
HDPE inner chassis, wood outer armour and steel wedge, 4WD with 4 drills... I bet that'd be a very tough little machine! Not sure I'd go for an all wood machine in full competition, since it does splinter but that sounds a great idea on the whole. Makes repairs easier too with a bolt on portion of wooden armour instead of having to take apart your chassis. Especially with spinners being what they are now, I'm not sure I'd trust wood on it's own...
When Block of Wood and Johnny 2x4 entered the champs how did they do?
Usually came out in pieces from memory but they were mostly wood. Make the substructure from steel and strap 2 inch wood all around and you should have a decent go at it.
A lot of good advice going around, the thing is with spinners is that they are now so powerful it's not enough to have just a complete Hardox brick, it's better to use Hdpe/wood or something similar as a bolted together chassis that you can easily remove and replace a damaged panel from. As tough as Hardwired 2 was a massive hit from 720 basically wrote the chassis off, whereas Loki took a huge amount of punishment and managed to still come 2nd in the annihilator.
To answer your question as well, Hatchet was end tapped with high tensile m6 bolts ( 50mm long if i remember right) and that fought a dangerous spinner in every qualifying fight and took no significant structural damage, the Hdpe got ground away and torn up but the overall chassis is still being used. I used some 3mm aluminium angle brackets around the back corners to reinforce as well, took a huge hit from Drumroll which threw Hatchet a good 2 feet in the air and upside down and the end tapped corner didn't budge.
At this year champs Endeavour had thick wooden blocks on the sides to fight spinners and whilst they got torn up the actual chassis of the machine took no damage that i could see, might be something you could look at.
Last edited by mrsam; 11th June 2014 at 15:05.
Its not that simple. The machine came out of every fight in one piece. But since I have been the one who is repairing and upgrading its armour I have to say that its not the machine it came to the champs as. None of the machine is square anymore. Every original bulkhead is twisted. The whole machine is on slant from left to right. The chain that once ran straight is now at a slight angle.Originally Posted by mrsam
I would suggest a core metal structure of welded steel (Box or sheet) with thick HDPE outer armour which is attached by countersunk M8 or M10 bolts and can be easily replaced. So long as the core remains undamaged then you will be good to go for many, many fights.
Oh god really i had no idea it was so bad, having said that i hadn't taken it fully apart since the champs. Whilst it may be the case that the whole chassis is now twisted IMO the chassis could still have been used in that condition, i still think it's a testament to Hdpe to take that amount of damage and still be in one piece albeit a little worse for wear.
We are using it anyway. Its still fine. Just not straight. hehe
Got some pics of the damage to Hatchet after my 2nd fight with Binky, it looks quite bad but that chassis is still being used quite happily.
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