Motorama to Now-ish: During and After the Event

Alright, so lots to cover

First, Motorama

So this is the Bone Dead Robotics squad rolling up into Motorama. The shell in the back their is the chassis of CATAPULT (6lb Mantisweight) that never competed, but I always bring for the coolness factor of being a full shell made by the greatest machine shop everr. The usual suspects, PK v2, WoD v3, and Ferocious Mk. IV are all in the middle before any carnage has befallen it yet. I also brought the chassis of the original Weta clone PK came from. I originally wasn't going to bring it until I got.....a premonition...about it that said I would need it for......reasons....

The competition began with the Antweight tournament. Ferocious faced Puppy which was a member of the Collective family but wanted a solo career (like a certain Mayn Zalik). As the video shows, both robots were incredibly speedy, but the low lip and lifter secured the W. 

With our luck of course, this meant bad things were to happen.

As a result, Ferocious faced off against the super-dominant-ultra-strong-king-of-the-insect-bots Vile Ant. But instead of getting trashed.......

THIS. THE THING HAPPENED GUYS. THE THING.

Yep, in one of the luckiest shots I have ever seen, Vile Ant chucked Ferocious into the one place in the box that it really couldn't recover from: the gap on the side of the arena with the giant bill of the lifter literally all the way through it thus creating a complete and inescapable face plant. Murphy's Law wins again.

Here is Vile Ant getting removed from the box after posing with the newly faceplanted Ferocious. After this, Ferocious fought against Poco Tambor who is one of the most solid and formidable competitors today. Another oh-so-lucky draw I know.

The fight was pretty close at first, but gradually the drum caught the edge of the lifter and made it impossible to get under so in the end it was just a matter of seeing whether or not it would break. Overall, no damage to the chassis was given. A few chips in the front UHMW was all that there was. Unfortunately, the lifting servo was messed up a little bit, but this didn't become apparent until after it got hit by Klazo of Near Chaos Robotics/Chaos Corp (the drum). Ultimately, I love this little guy because its base is incredibly rugged and the weapon is pretty solid. I don't see much change necessary for it besides cleaning up the edge of the lifter. 

Oh look, bigger me! This is Revenge of Dr. Super Brain who is a 3lb lifter. As it can be seen, these two bots are basically the same only adjusted to weight class. Super Brain is older though so he gets the "originality points." Anyway, on to the main competition!

Here's a pretty picture courtesy of Pete Smith of Kitbots allowing us to use little studio he brought with him to record robots at the event.

Another pretty one!

A-not-as-pretty-as-before-but-could-be-worse one!

WoD v3 was the first one up, against Mombot (seen below)

I knew that I was immediately disadvantaged because the style of this robot is too high. LOOK AT THOSE HEARTS AND BUTTERFLIES, In all seriousness though, this robot is very sturdy. It is made of a UHMW unibody with about .5in protection at each portion and a .063in Grade 5 Titanium wedge. It's pretty indestructible. However, the main problem emerged from speed. You see, WoD was the test mule for the fusion gearmotor between the Kitbots 1000RPM gearmotor and the Banebots RF-370 motor (which may or may not be out of stock). The reason for this is that the original motors that come with the 1000RPMs are considerably less durable than the Banebots so it improved reliability. Additionally, the Banebots run on a nominal 7.2V which means that when overvolted at 14.8V (4s Lipo) it will spin at high speed. Note: When overvolting motors make sure that it is properly cooled otherwise it will burn up, demagnetize or some other catastrophic event. Moving on, WoD v3 lost its first match due to two main problems:

• The lifting arm's face was too floppy

The other front two sets of screws were unfortunately ruined as a result of the tap breaking off in one and the other not being completely bored through.as a result, the top screws ended up serving as pivot points since they were the only point of contact between each arm and the front face. 

• The pinion on the shaft of the BB 370 moved while it was operating

While constructing the combination I decided to use high-strength Red Loctite to secure the shaft to the pinion. However, I discovered at Moto that this isn't good for the "sleeve" type bond that is in play. While the red holds it tight as possible, there is still a large enough gap between the shaft and pinion which means that it doesn't have those tight friction forces which provide most of the force to keep it in place. As a result, the continued trauma in the spinning directions (i.e. going forward and backward) the red was forced to burden more than it should so it snapped. Upon additional research, I discovered that the Loctite 640 "Green" compound is designed for sleeve relationships and, once applied, makes everything all good again :)

Unfortunately, this knowledge didn't help me at the moment since I still had no way to help it. So, I threw some classic 1000RPMs into it and prepared to fight Scrambles the Death Dealer.

A little moment for Scrambles.

Scrambles has been a de facto eternal rival for BDR as it has competed against both Play'n Krazy v.1 and El Destructo. In all cases, it has been a frenemy relationship where we both just want the beat the crap out of each other.

Back to the fight! WoD could only really just drive around. Being a pulley-driven 4WD robot it meant that it basically only has the power of a 2WD robot but with more stability (longer wheelbase) and drag (more tires to move). As such, without any super powerful drive motors it becomes a weak pushy bot whose job was to bear the carnage. Which is exactly what happened until Scrambles managed to reach under the wedge and lightly slap the receiver which turned it off. As a result, WoD was out of the tournament but the all 5/16" 7075 Aluminum chassis with .06" Grade 5 Titanium held up fine. The base chassis is super strong and completely undamaged so I'm going to build off of that later.

Now for PK!

Well, PK got wrekt. Like SUPer wrekt.

Like

That wrekt. 

• Ripped the left nutrstip out of the UHMW sides
• Bent the thin lip of the Grade 5 .063" Ti wedge
• Bent the aluminum baseplate hard
• And shattered the receiver case

Good Lord it was wrekt despite all my hopes and dreams :'(

But remember how I mentioned that auspicious feeling of bringing the old chassis? Well looks like someone upstairs was looking out because now I had a pre-designed and guaranteed combat-survivable chassis! With the support of Frederick Moore,who had BEST KOREA and Gracious Pipefessionalism, having great sportmanship in giving me a new weapon ESC (the other smoked out after its wires got crossed or something during impact) I was able to rebuild the whole thing in less than 20mins. 

Despite my best efforts, the Weta design never failed to return anyway. My hat is off to you Pete Smith! Anyways, the fight went well until the Afro kinda went crazy and disabled my control probably as a result of the receiver being browned out by it or something. The left drive motor had one of its ESC wires broke and the right had the motor completely separate from the gearbox which left it dead in the water. All in all, back to the drawing board for PK! Now its time to resurrect El Destructo...

Path to Motorama 2K16: Wedge of Destruction v3

Well this post is going to be a UBER long post dedicated to this little bucket of sunshine: Wedge of Destruction v3.

First, a little backstory

Like many other builders here I grew up watching Battlebots/ Robot Wars and was like yaaaaas that is too cool. One robot I loved to watch was (in a Mark Beiro voice) Weeeedge oooof Dooooooooomm.

That robot was one of the coolest customers I saw because of its simplicity, effectivity, and coolness. That low profile shape made it hard to hit and gave it the appearance of a some kind of shark, you know like a Mako or something, which it then embodied by its speed and aggressive attacks. Its lifting arm was such a simple design yet its impact in battle was evident as it LIFTED AN ENTIRE OTHER ROBOT OF THE GROUND!!21! (that was 5 yr old me getting hyped for a sec). Naturally, I sort of had this image in the back of my mind of this guy which just kinda lingered there for years.

Another robot that interested me was this guy: Gammaaaa Raptoooor

Gamma Raptor here bore many similarities to Wedge of Doom in the fact that they are both really speedy lifter lightweights. So you can imagine how hyped I got when I saw this fight. 

Their respective designs were both very similar to each other, but they had differences that I liked about one versus the other. Wedge of Doom had a greater range of lift-a-bility than Gamma Raptor due to it having a 180 degree arc shape versus the 4-bar lifter of Gamma Raptor which had a smaller range of motion. However, Gamma Raptor's shape was much tighter and the close proximity of the wheels to one another made turning great. Additionally, the wheels poking out so cleanly allows it self-right even when it is stuck.

I loved them both tho so like the commercial says  I just fused them. Note: there were two other versions of WoD preceding this one (hence the v3) but I'll probably just put that in a Servo article :P

Now, onto the build!

So in this blurry phone picture we make out that the first of the frame rails has at least been cut out. 

In this not so blurry pic we see that this robot has integrated notches built into it. The goal of these notches (besides looking legit) is to strengthen the front wedges. When the front wedges have notches cut into them, they will overlap each other much like a jigsaw puzzle. By overlapping this way, a large portion of the energy from a weapon shot will be transmitted away from the screws and into the 5/16" 7075 Aluminum which is considerably stronger and will therefore absorb the energy better.

At this point, I had begun to cut the blank 1/8" holes into the top of the frame rails in order to prepare to tap them for 6-32 screws to attach the top and bottom plates.  

I done goofed up that one. That was most of the tap breaking off in the hole because I sneezed as I was removing it (sigh). As a result, I had to make another hole directly behind it. The other whole is fine, but now I'm down like half of the tap.

Here is the fix happening in the drill press.

First screw in!

So here is the first part of a pretendo-bot frame. This is basically just the cross brace and the left frame rails shoved together. That interlocking bit took some time, but it is a fairly tight fit which is good so as much energy as possible is translated

 More pretendo-bot pictures!

A look inside of the chassis (note the motors and wheel attached). Now those motors are a little different than average 1000RPM Motors because they are mated to Banebots 370 sized motors. They are considerably faster than the usual motors and they all have metal back which makes it less easy to ruin by heating it too long. On 3s they are already blistering so with a 4s it should be lightning quick. For a non-high KE robot, a speedy drivetrain is super important as it allows it to still be entertaining as well as more maneuverable. 

Still on weight!

Better pretendo-bot with the top/bottom plates on 

 Here is the first dead shaft for the front pulleys. It is a 1/4" spacer which is counter-sunken into the frame rails which provides extra rigidity and strength.

Example of the counter-sunken holes in the frame rail

Even more pretendo-pretendo bot

Getting ready to battle some .06" Grade 5 Titanium with some fancy McMaster cut-off wheels thanks to Charles Guan. 

Well, they came out looking nice, but I messed up the left one by leaving it a liiitle too short. Welp, guess you measure twice then cut once..

So this is a side flap and was planning on bending it down to cut the sides. I even cut a little groove along the bend to make it easier. Unfortunately, I forgot that titanium (with the exception of really thin material) needs heat to bend...

....so I ended up just breaking it off and smoothing it off.

Here is an example of the "notch method" from earlier. A vertical or horizontal shot to the wedge is transferred to the frame rail and vice versa. This should help keep it strong against those meenies.

Not bad, right? Kinda? Okay I admit that they aren't perrrrfect but considering 90% of this was hand tools it was pretty good.

Fingertech Robotics belts and Tiny Switch!

The belts are on! Its almost-not-quite-okay-not robot fighting time!

From da rear. From here the motors are clearly seen. 

Some early wiring done to the drive ESCs and motors. Those black drive ESCs are Vextroller 29s which can be hacked  and then used for drive. However, they don't have an internal Battery Eliminator Circuit (BEC) which powers the receiver and power the servo (which comes from the receiver). In this case I'm using a Castle BEC. 

Yay its still on weight!

I did some work on the lifter frame rails by cutting them out of some Alum and then pressing the bushings into them. They provide a very smooth lifting action and doesn't lose much energy to lift. 

Rewired with the switch and servo mounted. That servo is a Savox 1231SG servo which has more than enough power to lift a 3lber up all the way off the ground.

Closer to completion. Note: That wrench is not a weapon but instead turns the robot on and off.

Tiiii wings! They were designed to both strengthen the outer frame rails against horizontal hits as well as keep it from getting stuck on its side. Unfortunately, they ended up messing with the drive as they messed up the belt's tension and therefore would ruin drive. Also in the picture is rear mounting blocks for the lifter. Nothing special; just two blocks of aluminum with a spacer in between.

The arm linkage is in place! Too bad the arms don't mesh perfectly..

Solution? offset the screws so the arm still remains level!

Here are some spacers I attempted to use as tensioners, but they ended up having the same effect as the tii wings strangely enough. Oh well, just gonna have to make do with what I can.

At this point, when half the robot is apart on the floor, did I realize this miscalculation (facepalms)

The rear end is finally attached! It is made some of the 1/8" UHMW armor from the original Play'n Krazy and the Weta kits. 

And that's a wrap on WoD v3!