Concept
Design
Prototype
Development
Colt's Combat Robot Project
Background:
As a
product of watching way too much TV (BattleBots, Junkyard Wars, Robotica,
etc.), my 7 year old son (Colt) decided he wanted to build a killer robot.
After some discussion to make sure he was serious, I agreed to back him
financially and provide technical assistance for the project.
|
Concept |
Design |
Prototype |
Development |
Requirements: (as dictated by Colt)
Journal:
May, 2001- We noticed that people in most stores get very helpful when we tell them what we are building.
Constructed a wheeled frame and thoroughly tested it for indestructibility (Colt used it as a skateboard for a week). Added motors, chains and sprockets to make a drive system. Tested motorized chassis using 2 car batteries and an extension cord. It climbs stairs, chases the dogs around the pool table and just about anything else we could think of.
Though
reversible, each motor is grounded to the chassis and draws up to 8 amps.
To get independent motion, 2 separate power sources (one for each drive
motor) are needed. Sealed lead acid batteries are too heavy and alkaline
batteries have too much internal resistance for the load. This narrows
down the options to NiCad or NiMh batteries.
Test Drive |
Wired for External Power |
June 2001-
Ordered NiCad batteries, 4 channel RC with 2 extra sets of ground frequency
crystals and H-bridge motor controllers.
|
Transmitter |
| The controllers are capable of forward, neutral and reverse operation of each drive motor. We installed shielded wire and 0.5F capacitors on the motors to help mitigate any signal to noise ratio problem that might happen after the armor is installed. | 
Controller |
Assembled Chassis |
The complete chassis (sans weapon, armor and kill switch) tips the scales at 30 pounds. This leaves us 28 pounds in the weight budget for the rest of the robot. |
| The retractible gear was a tough requirement to meet. It took us about 8 hours just to build the articulated mechanism to raise and lower each corner evenly. The plan is to mount the armor shell to the top and bottom of the vertical rods. If we ever have to do this again, we'll just use a rack and pinion at each wheel. Most of the operations were beyond the capabilities of a typical 7 year old, but Colt was content to operate the drill press and solder all the connections. The 24 volt actuators needed to complete this component are on order. | 
Gear Retraction Mechanism |
Actuators and Armor |
With
the linear actuators installed, the weight is up to 36 pounds. The gear
retraction mechanism operates well under no load conditions, but binds
at the homemade bearings when made to lift the whole robot. We'll just
have to take the 4 pound weight hit and upgrade to industrial ball bearing
slide mounts at each corner.
The first layer of armor is a wheelbarrow tub cut down to the appropriate size. Though quite low tech, it provides excellent impact resistance for the weight and price. With some modifications, it should also provide protection from cutting and crushing weapons. |
July, 2001 -
| We selected a surplus wiper motor to power the weapon. With the projected weight now looking closer to 60 pounds than 58, we bought a total of 4 of these motors with the intent of replacing the heavier drive motors and having one as a spare. Close inspection revealed a potential problem. The shaft driving the arm is round (just about any other shape would be preferable) with thin splines stamped into the tapered portion. The arm is mild steel with a smooth bore. This looks like it would work on a car until the first ice storm or on a robot for about 10 minutes before starting to slip. Could this be why these motors are surplus? The shaft is too short to mill a keyway, so we plan to drill the assembled shaft and hub to press a retaining pin through the axis of rotation. | 
Potential Problem |
| After much deliberation, Colt decided to name the robot "Bad Buzzard". Considering the quantity of scavenged parts consumed by this project, the name seems appropriate. Pardon our initial attempt at a team logo. We'll add a graphic artist to "Team Scavenger" before printing T-shirts. |  |
Though rugged, the PVC battery holders are heavy and do not fit well in the available space. We replaced the NiCad's with a set of lead-acid gel cell medical equipment batteries. Each 12v / 2ah battery is about the size of a paperback book and weighs 1.5 pounds. An inexpensive half amp trickle charger can be used to charge 4 or more of these batteries in parallel. The robot runs well with 4 such batteries installed and weighs 1.2 pounds less than it did with NiCad batteries. The premise that sealed lead-acid batteries were too heavy is clearly false.
The armor
is now clad with 6-4 titanium sheet metal. I am familiar with a range of
non-ferrous metals, but titanium is a new material to me. It cuts well
with pneumatic shears and drills without excessive heat or burrs at low
bit speeds and a rapid feed rate. Methods used to polish aluminum, stainless
or copper just produce a seemingly endless amount of black residue from
this titanium alloy. An acceptable finish was achieved by applying a thin
coating of WD40 with a clean cloth.
Gel Cell Batteries |
Titanium Clad Armor |
Prospective Weapon |
August 2001- We signed up for our first competition. Twin-Cities Mechwars in Minnesota is hosting an event in the last weekend of October. Their rules are a little different from BattleBots, but close enough for us to compete. Things we will need are:
The
weapon motor is now attached to the forward armor mount, giving it a variable
height from the floor. It is angled forward at 22.5 degrees to allow the
weapon to clear our own armor and to strike any opponent in front of "Bad
Buzzard". Kill switches are accessed through keyholes in the rear.
Weapon Motor |
Kill Switches |
OK, time to rethink the weapon strategy. "Bad Buzzard" is geared too low to ram effectively. The addition of small forklift booms to the bottom of the armor will allow us to lift and shove an opponent into an arena hazzard - if the other 'bot holds still long enough for the lift actuators to complete their travel. This takes about 1 second under no load conditions, so it should not be a primary tactic. On to the main weapon ...
The objective of a kinetic weapon is to maximize damage to the opponent without damaging "Bad Buzzard". Since energy is proportional to mass * velocity2, the wiper motor pictured above would need either an unreasonably heavy mass or an unmanagably long arm to do any damage rotating at 120 RPM. We clearly need a faster motor, but how fast? Suspending a mass by a tether, chain or other such linkage will help prevent the shock of impact from being transmitted through the weapon motor, but each strike will cause a momentary imbalance due to the counterweight. If we want to limit this temporary imbalance to 58 pounds, that means a half pound mass could be swung at a speed to produce a centrifugal (centripetal?) force of 116G. By applying high school algebra to A=V2/R and rounding off the constanats, we get G_force = RPM2 * Inches_of_radius / 35000. One solution to this equation is a motor that runs 475 RPM loaded with the air resistance of 2 half pound masses suspended at opposite ends of a 36 inch diameter (18 inch radius) arm. In practical terms, we need a motor and 2 masses close to these specifications and adjust the radius of the arm accordingly.
| We added solid titanium forklift booms front and rear. The thicker alloy required a shear the size of a minivan to cut it to size. The main weapon consists of two 9 ounce hardened steel wrecking balls tethered at opposite ends of a rotating titanium rod. Pushing 56 pounds, we still have a little over 2 pounds in the weight budget to upgrade the weapon motor. The plan is to replace the wiper motor with a 1/4 horsepower motor and a belt driven gearbox. | 
Full Battle Configuration |
Mechwars and BattleBots now allow up to 60 pound robots in our class, but the latest BotBash rules put the limit at 58.9 pounds. The rules are very specific about vessels for compressed gas, so stuffing a couple of helium baloons under the armor to save an ounce is out of the question ;) Seriously, any excess weight we can eliminate before our first competition can be spent to upgrade the batteries. Maureen suggests disassembling the robot and introducing all the metal parts to Mr. Drillpress. Aluminum has a specific gravity of 2.7, so it would take about 104 one inch holes through the 1/8 inch frame to save 1 pound. Seven 9/16 inch holes in each of the four 3/8 inch steel linear bearing mounts would save 3/4 pound. The tires are hollow, but still have twice the rubber (specific gravity = 1.5) needed to support two 58 pound robots. If we can figure out exactly where and how to remove 18 cubic inches of rubber, that would save a pound. We can easily replace the solid axles with hollow ones for a few ounces savings. To this end, we have ordered a set of tubular bolts and matching nuts.
September, 2001 -
| Our first competition is October 6 in Phoenix and we still have some problems with the main weapon. The gearbox has brass bushings instead of ball bearings and was designed for a direct drive motor. Due to space limitations, we are using a belt drive to mount the weapon motor beside the gearbox. This puts additional torque on the input shaft and causes excessive heat and noise at the bushings. Packing the void around the shaft with lithium grease helps, but more tests are needed here. There's not much point in entering a competition without a reliable weapon. | 
Belt Driven Gearbox |
To satisfy the Mechwars requirement for proof of a functional robot, we made a video tape. Sorry, no video clip to include here, but the tape's in the mail to Minnesota. If someone there can convert compact VHS to MPEG, it would be greatly appreciated. Our opponent was a heavy picnic cooler filled with enough water to make it weigh 60 pounds. Bad Buzzard's weaponry inflicted a few dents and shoved it off the patio, but was unable to do any real damage. We still have 3 weeks to fix that.
The airlines' advice on transporting gel cell batteries is:
Now
there's good news and bad news. BattleBots announced a competition in San
Francisco on November 3 through 11. At the same time, they announced a
rule change. Colt will be 4 months short of the new minimum age requirement
and therefore not eligible to compete. A bit of an unexpected lesson from
an educational project he spent 5 months designing and building, but that's
life. We have our plane tickets, hotel and car reservations for BotBash
and Mechwars and are ready to kick some 'bot under Phoenix and Minneapolis
rules. We'll have to wait until 2002 to compete in San Francisco.
October 2001- We bought a large canvas bag with wheels. This will serve as a checked bag for Bad Buzzard and can double as a dolly in the pits. While packing for BotBash, we realized we had almost enough spare parts to build a second robot. (TX/RX, motors, chain, sprockets, wheels, lexan, batteries, actuators, titanium, aluminum, bearings, etc.) List a sparring partner as a future project.
At BotBash
in Phoenix we drew a first round bye and defeated Daisy in the second round.
Though neither 'bot had much visible damage, Daisy developed a control
problem midway through the match and was unable to move. Later the same
day, we suffered a spectacular loss to Ziggo in the winners bracket quarter
finals. Ziggo tore the armor panels off our shell (aluminum rivets were
a bad idea) and ripped the tires off all 4 wheels. Bad Buzzard compensated
for the loss of ground clearance by lowering the gear actuators and running
on its rims, but Ziggo's next attack removed our entire port side drive
train. Since we only packed 2 spare wheels in our parts kit and needed
4 to continue, we forfeited our loser's bracket match. It was fun and we'll
be back.
Before our first match |
After our first match |
After our second match |
Lessons learned at BotBash were:
To
get more power to the weapon without increasing weight, we may need to
move from a continuous duty motor to an intermittent duty one. An outboard
starter motor might be a good candidate.
We drilled out all the remaining aluminum rivets and replaced them with stainless steel rivets. The one aluminum panel on the armor was also replaced with stainless steel. To cover the exposed edges of the titanium panels, we fit titanium quarter panels at each corner of the armor shell. Since Mechwars rules allow us an extra 1.1 pounds and Bad Buzzard weighed in 1 pound under the Botbash limit, there's an extra 2 pounds in the weight budget for the next competition. We added a 1.3 pound expanded steel skid plate under the Lexan mother board. The remaing 0.7 pound went into repairing and upgrading the armor.
Weapon motor used at BotBash |
Armor with titanium quarter panels |
Steel skid plate |
All dressed up and no place to go. The Mechwars folks had a real run of bad luck. Some spoilsport stole the truck containing their battle cage a week before the tournament. They recovered the truck and battle cage a few days later, but by then the arena had been rented out to someone else. With our chief designer, copilot and half our pit crew disqualified from BattleBots competition until March 2002, the November event in San Francisco is no consolation either. BotBash plans a Phoenix event for February and Mechwars promises to reschedule the Minneapolis event ASAP. Until then, we will be tinkering with the weapon system to get more destruction out of the same weight.
November 2001- Good news: BattleBots announced a youth tournament in March 2002, Colt's 8th birthday. Really good news: The planned location is Universal Studios Florida, only 200 miles from home. BattleBots expects to publish youth tournament rules and registration information in January, 2002. Barring any more unforseen "gotchas", Colt will be there piloting Bad Buzzard.
Mechwars rescheduled their event for January 19 in St. Paul, the same date as the SECR event in Florida. We can't attend both, so it looks like we will drop out of the Mechwars competition this time around. To all the Mechwars competitors who have sent us email - we look forward to actually meeting you at Mech IV (autumn 2002?) and wish you good luck at Mech III.1.
January 2002-
| In preparation for the SECR event on January 19, we weighed Bad Buzzard on the UPS scale. At 8 ounces under the 60 pound limit, it seemed prudent to put another 6 ounces into the weapon system. The next size larger motor in our inventory (EV Warrior) is almost a pound heavier and would need larger motor mounts, so a bigger motor is out of the question. We could always weld spikes on the balls, but a small increase in RPM does more for MV2 than a small increase in mass. So the decision was made to put more cells in series to the weapon motor. Within 6 ounces we were able to modify a small battery holder for high current and add 2 C cells to run the weapon motor at 26.4 volts instead of 24. | 
Last 6 Ounces |
At the SECR event, Bad Buzzard had 2 wins and 1 loss. Our first battle was against Death Ray. First, the 'bots weapons became entangled and had to be manually separated. Next, one of Death Ray's Victor 883s caught fire during a shoving match and the clock was stopped a second time to extinguish the fire. Death Ray was able to complete the remainder of the 3 minute match running on one drive motor. The judge's decision favored Bad Buzzard.
In our second match Little Piece of Hate immobilized itself on its own wedge at the same time as the nut securing Bad Buzzard's port side drive sprocket came loose. Bad Buzzard was still mobile, but had an arena wall on its left and was unable to make a right turn. This was a victory by TKO for bad Buzzard.
After borrowing a washer and attaching our spare drive sprocket nut, Bad Buzzard faced Critical Condition. Midway through the match, Bad Buzzard lost the same troublesome drive sprocket on the arena floor. We found ourselves only able to move back and forth along the same arena wall as in the previous match. This made Bad Buzzard a moving shooting gallery target for Critical Condition. The judges decision was quite justifiably in favor of Critical Condition. Tack welding the nut, shaft and sprocket together got Bad Buzzard working well enough for the rumble where we dished out and received our only active weapon damage of the day.
Colt entered a $20 toy robot in the antweight class. In the interest of good sportsmanship he withdrew the entry after he and his co-driver racked up a 5-1 victory streak, but later defeated the antweight class winner in a grudge match. Special thanks to Chris McVey and the rest of the SECR staff for awarding Colt the only silver grudge match medal of the competition. Maybe next time we will build a legal ant and go for the gold.
Open Air Pits |
Ants vs. Store Bought 'Bot |
Turns out the BattleBots youth tournament in March is only for middleweights (Bad Buzzard is a lightweight), requires a 900 MHZ IFI controller (we use 75 MHZ Futaba) and has a minimum age of 12 (Colt will be 8 - the minimum age for regular BattleBots tournaments). Three strikes and we are out. The next competition for which we are eligible is the North Carolina Robot Streetfight on April 6. See you there!
February 2002- After seeing Bad Buzzard's weapon take out a lighter weight robot with a single strike in the SECR rumble, our first thought was "Wouldn't it be cool if we could do that to robots in our own weight class?". We removed the old weapon motor, gearbox, lift actuators, slide bearings, brackets, etc. for an incredible 14 pound weight savings. The retractible gear was good for a lot of "Wow! How did you do that?" in the pits, but never did us much good in battle. We installed the largest motor (7 lbs) we could fit in the available space and are eagerly awaiting the arrival of a thicker titanium weapon arm and a set of 70 amp relays to test it.
We slapped together a 12 lb robot in the space of one day using stuff we had around the house. It has an aluminum frame, spring suspension, 4 wheel drive, 1/4" Lexan armor and a 6-4 titanium plow. We dubbed it "Vicious Vulture" and entered it in NCRSF.
14 lbs of Ineffective Hardware |
New Weapon Motor |
New Robot |
The 70 amp relays for the weapon motor arrived and are now installed. We attached Bad Buzzard's old weapon arm to the new motor, sandbagged it into a corner of the garage and spun it up to combat speed. Our phototachometer clocked it at 1228 RPM or 74% of the maximum safe speed (based on the rated tensile strength of the tethers). The calculated velocity of the steel wrecking balls is 146 MPH - almost triple what we got with the old motor. Plans are to add a 24v battery pack dedicated to weapons and double the weight of the weapon arm and wrecking balls. This should leave about 3 pounds in the weight budget to upgrade the armor or drive motors. Of course, we still need to see what happens when the weapon impacts a 60 lb object.
March 2002- A few changes are in the works for NCRSF. On the outside, Bad Buzzard is sporting all titanium armor, heavier weaponry and our sponsor's decals. Inside, it has EV Warrior motors, Victor 883 controllers, #35 roller chain and 6 inch Colson wheels. The old low geared motors were good for pushing things around, but it's hard to score points for aggressiveness unless you can go fast. The only fight we ever won by decision was against an opponent who was severely crippled at the end of the match. Our new battle plan is to have one supremely effective weapon and make the rest of the robot a rapid attack platform.
New Look |
New Drive Train |
Weapon Heads |
April 2002-
Our 12 pound entry Vicious Vulture is now retired.
It survived NCRSF with barely a scratch, but placed dead last in the featherweight class.
What do you expect from "We have all these parts and a day to put them together, so ..."?
Bad Buzzard placed third in the 60 pound class and won the lightweight rumble.
Our toughest competitors were 2X4 and Space Madness.
2X4 is a gasoline powered spinner whose matches were usually quick and decisive.
Our weapon relays failed at the start of our match against Space Madness,
forcing us to compete unarmed.
Except for that one time it failed to activate,
we are pleased with the performance of the new weapon.
Our compliments to the NCRSF organizers.
The layout of the pit area was the best we have ever seen.
Their arena was superbly set up for both combatants and spectators.
NCRSF Pits |
NCRSF Arena |
May 2002- Bad Buzzard was accepted for the May BattleBots tournament in San Francisco. Due to a conflict with school schedule, Bryan will be taking Colt's place on Team Scavenger this tournament. Bryan has been a personal friend for 20 years and will be providing all the pit equipment. Don't expect too much of a trip report this time around. The BattleBots NDA allows those who pass the preliminaries to say "watch for us on TV" and everyone else to say nothing regarding match competition.
Screenshot from BattleBots.com - Cool! |
On Treasure Island |
The first 3 days at San Francisco were mostly spent waiting for safety inspections.
After that, we started battling our way up through the preliminaries.
Can't say how far we got nor which robots we fought, but it was fun.
Our next technical challenge is to construct a better defense against low wedge bots.
The summer tournament schedules do not line up well with our personal calendars,
so we may take the opportunity to start building our heavyweight.
July 2002- Registered for Southern Assault, ordered parts for our next attempt at a 12 pounder and actually started work on Condor, our heavyweight.
August 2002-
Now that BattleBots has started airing season 5 episodes,
we can openly admit to not making it through the preliminaries.
Here's the belated portion of our trip report.
Our first match was against Knucklehead,
a compact solidly armored 2 wheeler.
Their only externally visible weak point was tight clearence between tires and fenders.
Our strategy was to attempt to disable them by bending a shaft, nicking a tire or
slamming them hard enough to dislodge an internal component.
In the BattleBox, KnuckleHead drew first blood by scratching Bad Buzzard's armor while our weapon was spinning up.
Bad Buzzard retaliated by repeatedly ramming KnuckleHead with our active weapon flailing until he stopped moving.
We waited for the count to receive a victory by KO.
Our second match was against Grunt Force,
a 2 wheeler that is heavy on horsepower at the expense of armor and weaponry.
Our strategy was to get behind Grunt Force and disable him with our active weapon,
but we never got the opportunity to land a single blow.
Shortly after the start of the match,
Grunt Force impaled himself on a spike strip and tapped out.
Our third (and final) match was against Rugger,
a 4 inch tall 4 wheel invertible wedge.
Rugger had a clear advantage along the spike strips,
so our strategy was to keep the battle away from the spikes and try to hit him from the side or rear.
We managed to keep the battle in the middle of the box for a minute and a half.
Rugger never let us get a shot at anything but his front wedge and Bad Buzzard drove over the top of him
several times without ever making weapon contact.
Towards the end of the match Rugger got under our side and carried Bad Buzzard over to one of the hammers.
We rightfully lost that match by judges decision and Rugger went on to compete in the finals.
In preparation for Southern Assault,
we made some minor changes to keep from getting high centered on a wedge again.
Bad Buzzard has traded in his chain guards for titanium wings.
This increases ground clearance near the wheels and reduces clearance at the edge of the armor.
September 2002-
At Southern Assault, Bad Buzzard placed second in the lightweight division.
We won our first 2 matches against Frozen Toast and Bad Grammar by knockout.
In our third match against Street Thug,
one of Bad Buzzard's drive sprockets started slipping,
we got pushed into a corner and lost by decision.
We won all of our losers bracket matches.
MacroPhage went the full 3 minutes with Bad Buzzard and lost by decision.
Bad Grammar was still experiencing drive problems from previous matches and lost by KO.
Street Thug was showing visible damage from an earlier fight and
lost by decision after a very hard fought 3 minutes.
In the lightweight championship match,
Code Black knocked us out by disabling both our drive trains.
Before Southern Assault
Lightweight Brackets
After Southern Assault
October 2002-
SECR chose to feature four of Bad Buzzard's fights in the Southern Assault video.
This gave us an excellent opportunity to observe how much slower
we moved after the first 2 minutes of a match.
To correct the problem,
we built a new battery tray that holds either three 2AH or two 3.6AH BattlePacks.
That should give us 20% more power when we need it most.
We're starting to think about ways to exploit the Robocide rules to beat those opponents
that Bad Buzzard can't take out with conventional BattleBots weaponry.
Let's see - they allow turbine engines (yes, we've got some),
releasable entanglement devices, long spin down times, ...
January 2003-
At Robocide in Orlando
we won our first match by running over bell shaped Pursuer enough times to knock its antenna dome to pieces.
A loss by decision to Thunder Wave in the second match sent us to the losers bracket.
After Magically Malicious forfeited a match to us, we were facing Code Black.
Not wanting to lose both rear wheels to Code Black like at Southern Assault,
we attached a metal Slinky to the back of Bad Buzzard to deter attacks from the rear.
The match ended with the Slinky on top of our own spinner and one of our rear wheels shattered,
but somehow we won by KO.
Our next match was against Team Van Cleave's 2 inch tall Peanut.
We went into the match thinking the only way to beat something we can barely hit and
probably can't hurt was to outdrive it.
After about 2 minutes of superb driving from both teams,
Peanut emitted a puff of smoke and stopped moving.
Our match with Team Whyachi's YU812 was just a series of violent collisions.
The first collision severed one of Bad Buzzard's weapon heads and
sent us flopping across the arena like a fish out of water until we could get the weapon spun down.
The final collision rendered both bots unable to move.
YU812 was judged the winner by virtue of having initiated the attack.
Sorry, no pictures this month.
You can thank whoever swiped our camera for that one.
Lesson learned:
Don't leave cameras or other non-robot valuables on the pit table unless there's a security guard
to separate the spectators from the pits.
March 2003-
School and work schedules kept us from competing at BattleBeach,
so we drove to Ormond Beach and bought spectator tickets for Saturday only.
It was a great show and we are still kicking ourselves for not bringing a robot or two.
Though we were not qualified to win anything,
there were ample opportunities for grudge matches with robots that had been eliminated earlier in the week.
Thanks to Brian Nave for giving us pit passes so we could hang out with the other builders.
Time to say "good bye" to an old friend - Team Scavenger's van.
It took us to all but two of the events listed above and was our home away from home.
Sadly destroyed in the northbound lane of I95 by a southbound SUV.
Our Botmobile
April 2003-
After 17 wins and 9 losses, Bad Buzzard is due for its first complete rebuild.
The RX, Victors, motors, switches and most of the mounting hardware can be reused,
but the rest of the parts have seen their better days.
One objective is to budget for a heavier or more powerful weapon by building a lighter chassis.
To this end, we have replaced the riveted 6063 frame with a welded 6061 frame,
the 6" wheels with 5" wheels and the 4130 axles with tubular 316 stainless axles.
The steel skid plate can be omitted until we compete in an arena with spikes or killsaws.
Old chassis
New chassis
July 2003- Bad Buzzard's performance at NCRSF was disappointing. 2x4 ripped the front and one side off our armor in the first match. Root Hawg took good advantage of the missing armor to attack our right front wheel in our next match to put us out of the competition. Planned improvements before going to TSN (Triangle Series Nationals in Minnesota) include a MagMotor powered weapon, titanium axles and a kevlar/titanium composite armor shell.
September 2003-
We completed our axle modifications and Kevlar armor before going to Minnesota,
but had some problems balancing the MagMotor powered weapon.
After accidentally destroying a wooden cabinet and severely mangling a metal cabinet in our garage,
we went back to the old less powerful, but controlable weapon.
The TSN venue was the National Guard armory in Owatonna, MN.
They had an impressive arena and pits that were somewhat tight on space.
Our first battle was with Ground Zero, the full body spinner that won Robocide.
In less than a minute Bad Buzzard got flipped over on his back for a KO.
Our next match was against Halfpipe from Robot Club and Grill.
For the full 3 minutes, neither robot was able to damage nor show clear superiority over the other.
Perhaps because we were unable to make very effective use of our weapon,
the judges awarded the victory to Halfpipe.
Bad Buzzard held his own in the lightweight rumble.
We got a couple of good hits in on Code Black before proceeding to mix it up with YU812.
The only thing that prevented us from winning was the airborne YU812
putting a blade through the top of our armor and locking up one of our EV Warrior drive motors.
TSN pits
Kevlar armor
Still no trophies, but there is a certain level of satisfaction in taking a 7 year old's idea and
transforming it into one of 14 robots in our class competing for the national championship.
Our thanks to the TSN organizers and Minnesota Precision Manufacturing Association for making it possible.
Materials
| Component | Source | Cost |
| Aluminum frame, wheels and hardware | Home Depot | $56 |
| * Two 1985 Mustang wiper motors | Dixie Auto Salvage | $40 |
| * Assorted sprockets and chain | Local bicycle shop | $44 |
| * NiCad batteries | Electronic Goldmine | $98 |
| 4 RC switches | Team Delta | $147 |
| 4 CH Radio / 2 extra crystal sets | Tower Hobbies | $206 |
| * Hardware for battery holders and retractible gear | Ace Hardware | $34 |
| Nylon rod bushings | Florida Bearing | $15 |
| * Linear actuators | Warner Electric | $154 |
| Wheelbarrow tub | Lowes | $48 |
| * 4 THK linear slide bearings | ebay | $38 |
| * 4 Saturn wiper motors | Larry Stephens | $60 |
| 3 auto reset circuit breakers | Haywire, Inc. | $15 |
| Titanium sheet and round stock | Titanium Resource | $78 |
| * 8 gel cell batteries | Sunn Battery | $50 |
| * 1/2 amp trickle charger | JC Whitney | $20 |
| Warning lights and relay | Radio Shack | $9 |
| Steel balls | Hoover Precision | $50 |
| * DC motor for weapon | The Engine Room | $36 |
| * Drive belts | McMaster-Carr | $20 |
| Tubular bolts | Racebolt.com | $35 |
| Canvas bag with wheels | Local flea market | $34 |
| Really big weapon motor | ebay | $30 |
| Two 70 amp relays | JC Whitney | $20 |
| Two EV Warrior motors | MECI | $30 |
| #35 chain, sprockets and Colson wheels | McMaster-Carr | $250 |
| 2 Victor 883 controllers | IFI Robotics | $320 |
| 4 NiCad battery packs | BattlePack.com | $330 |
| Metal Slinky | Toys R Us | $1 |
Questions or suggestions?
Email me at Steve@Heard.com
Links:
My
wife - Colt's mom.
Colt
- old web page from 1999.
Robocide
- first event of 2003
Mechwars
- tried to go there, didn't happen (yet).
BattleBots
Competition rules
Team
Coolrobots - excellent links.
Team
Delta - sells robot parts.
BotBash
- our first competition.
BattleBeach
- October 2003, Ormond Beach, FL.
Team
Nightmare - Big website. Check out the DB of competitors under the
"links" section.
SECR
- See Bad Buzzard get slammed in their promotional video.
NC
Robot Streetfight - One of our recent competitions.
Daisy
- our first worthy opponent in battle.
Ziggo
- this cat chewed up our bird.
My
airboat project - falling behind schedule.
Condor - our heavyweight.
Titanium
Joe - Our sponsor. Titanium sheet, plate, tube, bar stock and bolts.
