Mmm dovetail joints! What do you think about a flat square but so that one corner is the front? Erm so I suppose its a diamond. So one corner is your ramming point etc., would the 45 degree angles sloping away deflect or just give a spinner a nice big juicy corner?
Can you put up a picture of what you mean?
That would give you an ideal getting-hit edge for horizontals, and verts will get hits regardless. Also with anything but a flat front you won't be able to push a thing as nothing will stay in front of you, which will get frustrating fast. That isn't to say spinners will deflect, only way to deflect is with angled faces, hence wedges being so popular.
Finger joints, dado/rabbet joints etc are all good but as mentioned aren't easy to cut and get the full benefits. And nothing I know of sticks properly to HDPE. A finger joint which is bolted well would be pretty strong.
Can't glue HDPE effectively. It can be "welded" or in other words melted together. I'm a bit dubious about the strength but some have had great success with it.
The robot on the right here looks like a good shape for fighting spinners?
http://www.robowars.org/wikka/SchmackOff
Obviously with covered wheels and some other changes etc.
That shape would work well at deflecting spinners i think, only problem i can see is if say a vertical gets underneath and tears your shell up it would be very difficult to bend it back into the original shape.
At this rate we'll soon be looking into ceramic armour to beat the spinners... boron carbide, silicon carbide, aluminium oxide etc...
maybe a porcelain tile could do the trick who knows!
Wow, haven't seen that photo in a long time! The robot on the right is Knightrous Wedge (formerly called Schmackhed), however that is a very, very old photo, mid construction actually.Originally Posted by daveimi
This is a "clean" finished photo of it from a couple of years back
It's good against spinners, the shape and armour make it very hard to damage. It pretty much out wedges everything which allows it to control and win matches despite being an exceptionally boring robot. It should be a lot faster, but has traction issues on MDF floors like we use here but goes like a rocket on concrete.
Chris, why bother with the hugely expensive stuff if cheap stuff like natures own carbonfibre will do the job as consumable armor as well.
Even the best spinner wil chew on a telephone book for a while before the function is lost.
With 3 machines in full Hardox armor as experience and a few others with HDPE, I'm leaning to a combo.
And Explosion is a prime example of that combo.
Mario has a point, a hardox frame with some sort of consumable armour e.g hdpe is very effective. Not exactly cheap but when you look at how long explosion has lasted it's well worth the money.
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