4WD Front Hinge Flipper - Featherweight

[dotDominic]

So I learned a whole load from speaking with roboteers and fighting spinners at the RoboChallenge champs last month. I feel now that V2 will have many of the same design problems as Venator, (Not enough ground clearance, no scrimech etc) so I'm going to put V2 on hold for a bit and start a more distinctive design with a proper weapon for next year.

I wanted to build something a little bit different, so have decided on a four wheel drive front-hinged flipper (don't think there are any of those about in the FW weight class). The 4WD overvolted 12v Argos drills + BotBitz 85A ESCs worked really well in Venator so I'll be using them again. I was also super impressed with the speed and power of Aegis' lifting scoop, so in a similar way I plan to use a linear actuator and swap out the stock motor for something with a bit more speed + oomph.

The whole robot will run on two of these:
https://hobbyking.com/en_us/turnigy-...pack-lihv.html Venator used 100mm wheels and was pretty hard to drive. The new build uses 80mm wheels and although I want something a bit more controllable I don't want it to be too slow. So these 15.2v packs are small enough to fit into the design whilst also hopefully being a decent middle ground in terms of speed.

The side bulkheads and side armour are both 15mm thick HDPE, whilst there will be 8mm hdpe heated up and bent around the rear. The front wedge is 3.2 mm Hardox, and the flipper is a 3.2mm Hardox frame/mounts with HDPE to reduce weight - fingers crossed that should be sturdy enough.

If I've done the sums right then the weight should be around 13kg. Might leave the hardox wedge until last to consider beefing it up a bit if I actually have the weight left over.

I think that's most of the details I've planned out so far - the CAD is a bit basic but hopefully you can get the idea. Similar to V2 there will be a sticker design which covers the whole robot, co-ordinating with whatever theme/name I go for. I also plan to update this thread with progress/problems more regularly than my other ones. (ie more than once a year )

New Robot 2.png New Robot 1.png New Robot 4.png New Robot 3.png

Any feedback or potential problems would be really appreciated, thanks!