Robots

RoboWars Returns – 15/01/2023 – Day 2

Posted on by Half Done Things

RoboWars Returns – 15/01/2023 – Day 2

With minimal damage taken on the first day, the battery was topped up, all the fasteners were checked over and it was go time.

Fight 3: Zenghiaro

First fight of the exhibition matches against Zenghiaro. This time The Verdict got to show off what it could do. It pushed Zenghiaro around, rammed it up the wall, hammered it, got flipped over and had to self right (completely untested!!!) and continued to give them them a tour of all the walls.

Towards the end the weapon was a little lazy on the hits, but I assume that was the controller getting on the thermal limits.

Result: Win by Judges Decision
Watch the fight here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptN-_YCyVCU

Fight 4: Zapper

Next exhibition match was against Zapper, another full fat featherweight, but with the weapon slowed down to the speed limits for sportsmen.

This would either go well or bad.

The first clash went in my favor with Zapper bouncing up onto The Verdict.
The next the drum hit bounced me back, the next few dances I was able to push it from the side and then jammed the front into the drum, trapped it against the wall, then pound it with the hammer like it owed me money.

More dancing and then I trapped it against the wall again, 10+ hits and Zapper stopped moving, with the whole top plate caved in.

Result: Win by KO.
Watch the fight here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytW84sRQSE4

The damage done to Zapper, the top lid was pounded into oblivion, jamming down onto a drive motor.

Fight 5 – The Verdict VS Gigablue VS Raptor VS Clunk.
While giving the grand finalists as much time as possible to get ready for their match, we through in 3-4 bots per round and sent it.

No story here, just watch the video!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MS0VtTlGeE

What a hoot! Shortly after we sat down and watched the finals where a very close fight between Citizen Flips and Saw & Order lead to a new champion.

SAW & ORDER!

With the event completed, it was pack up time, then to hit up a bar for food and booze, then talk shit with all the other builders till we couldn’t stand.

Next time, we talk about what when well and what could have been done better!

PS: The Legnum did this 1800km trip without any issue.

RoboWars Returns – 14/01/2023 – Day 1

Posted on by Half Done Things

RoboWars Returns – 14/01/2023 – Day 1

In December RoboWars announced a Sportsmen event to be held in Hamilton, Queensland. Below is a collection of photos and diary of the event from my fuzzy memory.

 

Fight 1: PotHead

Other than driving The Verdict for 30 seconds prior to leaving for the event a day before, I was going into this one blind. And it really showed. I’m super rusty with my driving, doing a lot of weaving instead of straight driving, spinning in circles from over shooting when turning (Really should have put some steering rates into the radio) and I noticed one side was a little bound up compared to the other (it pulled to one side when going forward).

There was a lot of dancing around as I tried to pin Pothead to the wall so I could wail on it with the hammer, but it was actually hard to push to the wall without it slipping off the front. Eventually I managed to get a few decent hits, mangling the pot easily.

Pothead’s saw was scratching the paint in the corners when we collided but did nothing more then that which was nice. However by the timer ran out, the judges has decided the winner was Pothead. It went the full three minutes and didn’t fail, so I consider that a good start to the event. Back in the pits, I just tightened all the nuts and bolts to ensure nothing was going to fall apart and then charged the battery, ready for the next match

Result: Loss by Judges Decision.
Watch the fight here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rsgc7zcOLUM


Fight 2: Raptor
After the Pothead match, I dug into the menus of the radio and dialed in some rate limiting on the steering to try to reduce the twitchiness. Raptor is a full fat featherweight that swapped out their usually vertical discs for a pair of saw blades and wedges…… (I wasn’t expecting these since it was a sportsmen event, but the EO allowed it.)

There was a lot of back and forth, sparks and hammering through out the match, there was a moment where they actually wedged me up and onto the weapon, which missed the internals my a few millimeters. After that, as it was clear the wedgelets were not something I could defeat, I just focused on pushing against their weapon, trying to hammer, stall and push them where possible. For the last ~30 seconds, I just jammed the weapon down on them to clamped on (The APD speed controller did well here, the thermal/current limiting saving it.)

Sadly, the judges gave it to Raptor.
Once again, there was no real damage other then a slice into the tongue on the robot and some more scratched paint.

Result: Loss by Judges Decision.
Watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cl5Bw53AW8Q

Unfortunately we are now out of the competition, so we can only compete in exhibition matches and melees.

A New Sportsman Robot – The Verdict

Posted on by Half Done Things

With the first robot event announced and confirmed with only a short window to get it done, it was time to dig out some parts and get cracking.

I dug out the old Dewuts and BotBitz TZ85A controllers that were in the first version of Farmboy. This combo was good enough to win RoboWars Sportsmen 2013 in Sydney, maybe it can do it again!

Updating the gear selector on the Dewuts with my own design that cannot come loose.

Fitted and locked into mid gear.

Designed up a 3D printed mount for the TZ85’s so they can be mounted to the Dewuts directly.

Fitted and ready.

Adding the ESC itself.

The Brazil wheels I purchased in 2020 have an odd sized 15mm shaft which is hard to adapt to the 1/2″ Dewut shafts.
So I farmed out the machining to Demon Designs for a 20mm Hex into the wheel.

Then he machined up these adaptors for me.

Drilled and tapped some 3mm grub screws into it.

Bolted it all to a plank for initial testing.

And then we hit a problem… I had issues with the main door on my workshop and lost my entire xmas break off…. It was fixed 9 days before the event.
What I had designed and was prepared to build all went out the window and we started the rush build!
I bought a gas bottle from Bunnings, found an old winch motor setup with a brushless motor on it and decided to run with some form of hammer bot.

Marked the gas bottle with this simple method.

Followed by the cutting.

Marked for the next cut.

Pushed both halves together, it looks like a bot shell….

Added a few tack welds.

Started adding the first internals frame work. Just some basic 25x6mm mild steel.

Tested fitted the weapon motor setup.

Started mounting the drive motors.

And starting to add more bracing in.

Now to add the weapon slot into the chassis.

Getting closer.

A quick weigh of all the components as it is… Very close to the 13.6kg limit!

Some brand new batteries from Ovonic arrived, just in time!

Things from here were a blur, suddenly a lot of thing were done an no photos were taken…

But here we are, 13.50kg

One last beauty shot.

Next time, the event!

Knightrous Wedge: The Vertical Slice – Part 9

Posted on by Half Done Things

It’s been a bit quiet here as we’ve been busy!

Quickly CNC’d up some motor mounts and supports for the drive

Started machining the weapon hub

Then drilling it out

Then boring it

Then making some bushes

Bushes pressed into the weapon hub, then the assembly pressed into the weapon bar.

A quick dummy fit.

Picked up the weapon belts. HTD 5M-325-15

Machining the weapon timing pulley. A 36T pulley to give the weapon a 2.4:1 reduction.

A quick dummy fit again.

The weapon motor mount… an after thought…

After cutting the upright and tack welding it in.

Motor mounted

Belt fitted.

3D printed jigs are awesome.

Drive mostly ready.

Knightrous Wedge: The Vertical Slice – Part 8

Posted on by Half Done Things

Another update!


Batteries arrived, this will give Knightrous a 12S 2.2Ah capacity.


This decision was something I had been holding off, on doing for a while, but it became inevitable with the requirements for this robot. The drive and wheels must go close to the weapon axis and it needs more space to fit them. So the original chassis and wheel guards had to be removed….


This left it looking very bare, but it did make space!


I’m still undecided on which drive configuration I’m going to decide on.


The spur gears are a very simple setup, uses off the shelf parts and will be easy to repair and service


The planetary gearboxes are more expensive, require some modifications but have a nice and simple form factor that suits the robot.


The new wheel guards tack welded in. More bracing and reinforcement to come!