New Build/CAD Advice request.

[maddox10]

Why do I feel I'm seen as a newbee by you, Lostdreamer?

It's still Robot wars, not Barbie Bumpercars.


With a good drivetrain stall is rare.
Only mechanical failure wil do that. Shattered magnets due shockdamage is the most common atm.
A good second is jammed gears/chain after huge impacts.

Battledamage is battledamage.

With a load of fuses everywere you just going to protect the fiddly bits untill the disk goes trough those after the fuse did do the protecting.

I rather fry a £250motor than lose a battle because a £ 0.3 fuse went early.

Oh, of course, not to forget, electronic components getting ripped off the PCB is another common failure in our machines.
Again, purely mechanical, due the G-loading during the impacts.
Most spectacular are big LiPo's with a good charge in them. Short those and you have a nice smokescreen going. if the short happens in the cells, or before any fuse, (in the few cm of wire comming out of the pack), your £0.3 fuse could survive.

But that's me.

For the rest. Cannibalising scooter motors is a way to go.
But it's a lot easier to buy the now common MY1020 scootermotors (in any powerflavor you wish) from Ebay or simular sites.

If you want cheap power, look at older startermotors.(difficult to control tough)

Weight of a heavyweight shell.
The bodyshell of Bullfrog is 1000mm long, 500m wide and 180mm high. Weight, around 25 kg, all Hardox 450 3.2mm thick.
The drives have own armor, and each drive is 14.8kg.

[Lostdreamer]

Why do I feel I'm seen as a newbee by you, Lostdreamer?

Oh hell no.

And I never ment to even imply that.

The problem is, I very much AM.

I think part of the appeal is that you look at these things and go 'I want a go at that!'.

...but I havn't a clue what I am doing. So i'm asking a whole load of stupid questions as I try to understand what is actually involved. Because I don't know, and asking here and chatting to people seemed as good a first step as any. All I know so far is what I've seen on TV and, well, real life and TV are not known to be on the best of speaking terms.

I'd like to try and avoid making any obvious mistakes, which only adds to the number of stupid questions as I try to work out what they are and how to avoid them. So yeah, I'm doing stupid things like looking at $100 dollar cordless drill motors and going:

'Ok, that looks like a starting point. 300A peak current? Won't I be flat out for most of the match? How the hell do I power that?!'
to which the answer is 'You won't be drawing peak current.'
Which leads to 'Ok, so why are people still blowing motors? Can't you just put a fuse inline so you ain't replacing £500 components every fight?'
To which the answer is 'It's more complicated than that.'
Which I suspected. But it's nice to have a bit more info on how.



I clearly don't have the budget to compete with many of the massive kinetic energy weapons etc out there currently. And I can't anyway if I want to use it somewhere other than robot wars.

But maybe I don't have to. Most fights don't last for 5 mins. Maybe If I can make something that can take being thrown around the area like a rag doll for five mins and spend the whole five mins going flat out for the other guy I can take the judges decision at the end of it.

So there will be a lot of questions about what breaks and why because the concept I am trying to figure out at the moment isn't focusing on breaking the other competitors in half. It's working out how I stop that happening to me.

I'm sorry I'm not doing the best job of explaining myself.