So, bear with me here because this may sound rather strange.

For as long as I can remember I've been a fan of robot wars, it's one of the programs I grew up with and ever since watching the first series in 1998 I've had a little sketchbook of ideas. Now this got forgotten about for a long time but last year I dug it out again and saw that time and time again I'd gone back to make revisions to one particular idea.

I shan't go into detail about what the design is, although I will say that it's a spinner with a difference and with a solution to the problem of a spinner being able to be neutralised by a robot closing them down before their weapon is up to speed.

Back then I was a kid who had no idea how it all worked really, but now I'm a Mechanical Engineering graduate who knows enough to have a crack at building it. So I've spent the last few months putting together a proper design and have hit the point where at least from a design point of view things are pretty much finalised.

However even with a sufficient level of armor the entire bot is projected to come in around the 80kg mark, well within heavyweight restrictions, which led me onto a thought.

Would it be possible to build a competitive robot without any welding? As I have enough spare weight capacity to design the bot so that instead of welds structures are held together through the use of bracing plates on the joints. Reason why I'm wondering about this is because I like to do things a bit differently, and to me the idea of a bot where individual bits of the structure, even down to the frame, can simply be unbolted and replaced if damaged appeals.

So people of FRA, am I being completely daft to think that a robot could be built to withstand combat without any welding at all?