Tomorrow night is our monthly meet again, so this week I've been upgrading/building ants.


Bladetip has just had the tips of it's blades blunted slightly, as it's main issue last month was repeatedly getting stuck in the arena walls.
Picobyte took a beating last month (some from Shrapnel, some from itself) and I still haven't started on my next mad spinner, so I'm back to running Cut Above this month. It's got some new wheels though!



The hope is that the foam wheels will take a hit and flex father than break, Gabriel style. The hubs (Damian's design) should hold on to the shafts better, even with my DIY grub screws (glad I bought that dremel).

The new bot is Plover, my first attempt at CADing/3d printing my own design from scratch, with the plan to have a few as loaners at Maker Faire next month. I've already had to alter the design though as I didn't leave enough height inside for the receiver, and it's a few grams overweight.


Hiding at the back is a reprint of my Botbitz ant, the last chassis took a Shrapnelling so I made use of my new printer to make a new one.

Well, the weekend just gone was a busy one, with our monthly comp on the Friday and the Maker Faire on the Sunday. The latter was awesome fun but crazy, didn't get as much of a chance to see other stalls/chat with people as I would have liked as our stall was so popular.

Taking stock of the loaner bots post Maker Faire. The red Botbitz ran well until the ESC (a dual channel Banggood special) went up in smoke - probably from too much constant use! The blue one had issues with the servo arm screw repeatedly coming loose, but otherwise ran fine up until the battery got flattened beyond charging. The red Plover had one of the cheap ebay gearmotors die (25% failure rate so far, think I'll stick with the ones from Botbitz in my more competitive ants), the blue one ran fine all weekend. The yellow Push Over also ran without a hitch both as a loaner on Friday and through Maker Faire - it was running one of the mixed Banggood ESCs, which overall seem decent. Space Madness (Push Over + googly eyes with 3S 2000rpm motors) was eventually a victim of my poor soldering, but surprisingly it didn't lose another motor after having one go on Friday night, and was insanely fast fun while still working.



The bots weren't the only ones to take a battering at Maker Faire. I had 3 sticks snapped across 2 controllers, this one the closest in while the others still had enough thread to screw some end bits on.



At some stage I'm going to rebuild Picobyte but I threw it back together for the demo matches at the Faire. Unfortunately in it's first match I discovered a new failure mode.



I'm continuing to improve the wheels for Cut Above - I've redesigned the hubs to be longer and hold an M4 nylock nut to stop the wheels coming off, and I've painted silicone grout around the foam wheels to improve traction. Both these seem to have really helped - the wheels stayed secure all weekend and I actually managed to push other bots around at times.




I even managed to face off against Shrapnel in one of the demo matches and the wheels held up fine (even if they now look a bit chewed).

wth did they do to the controllers!?!?
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Mechanical engineers build weapons, civil engineers build targets

I know, it's impressive! I mean, my 4yo has dropped his several times and hasn't managed anything like that.

Antweights update:

Saturday was an awesome event, amazing turn out - I think we had 15 bots in the main competition plus 5 in a "no spinners" newcomer friendly side comp plus 4 teams in a 2v2 side comp, as well as a massive crowd of spectators. Having Battlebots on TV has certainly helped!

Owen ran Bladetip again for 3rd place, which has been unchanged for the last few months now apart from replacing a dodgy power switch. It's got a few battle scars and the blades get bent up every so often jammin up the spinners (got some ideas about that) but the overall design seems solid.


I ran a new bot, Kinda Saw-Ta, and I think I ended up 5th. Basically it's my excuse to stick a dremel saw blade on a brushless motor, and apart from being a bit long to drive straight nicely it was a lot of fun. I've got a minor redesign planned for next month if I get time (and don't get distracted with building/rebuilding another bot).



Cut Above got entered in the teams competition fighting alongside Bladetip - unfortunately it got rather Shrapnelled early on in a fight and had to RIP (retire in pieces). Owen did a good job holding Chris and Lucas to a draw over the remaining 2 plus change minutes but it rather scuppered our chances. I'd actually already started on a rebuild but ran into issues with weight and a non-failsafeing ESC and I've put it aside for now in favour of other bots.


Push Over is being used as a loaner bot and the kid driving it this event managed to make it to the final to take 2nd. Along the way it tousled with Shrapnel and took some damage. One of the motors needed replacing but otherwise it held up pretty well, I'm happy with the design.

Well, with this month's meet (the first annual Adelaide Antweight Cup no less) rapidly approaching I've been working on my bots - which unfortunately needed it.

Kinda Saw-ta
Kinda Saw-ta got redesigned for last month's comp and it went well, I ended up with 3rd. It was a lot easier to drive with the wider/shorter chassis, and it now has little roll bars at the back so it can't get stuck.




I ended up against Shrapnel in the semis ... and got rather destroyed. The weapon had stopped working consistently the fight before (I thought it was a bad solder joint but one of the motor leads seems to have a break in it) so I just charged straight at Shrapnel and hoped for the best. What I got was two smashed wedgelets and one destroyed drive motor. I quickly swapped in the guts out of one of my loan bots and left the weapon guard on for the 3rd place playoff so the saw blade wouldn't drag on the arena floor, and somehow managed to win.



As my 3D printer is currently out of action I had to hand craft some bespoke aluminium replacement wedgelets - whether or not the hold up any better against spinners we'll see, but I think they look cooler.



Here's me testing Kinda Saw-ta in my new, high-tech test box.

Picobyte
I finally got around to rebuilding Picobyte, which broke it's own weapon motor (as well as some of it's other internals) at Maker Faire back in November. The shell and some of the electronics are the same but it has a new 3D printed chassis, new drive motors, and importantly a new weapon motor and mounting system. There's now rubber washers sandwiching the metal of the shell to give it some flex, to both aid in balancing and taking hits. I had no idea the best way to screw the thing down and just brought a variety of m5 nuts/nyloc nuts and washers, and tried out combinations. I put it in the teams tourney and in all bar the last fight the shell came flying off. I eventually worked out that a combination of a normal and a nyloc nut worked and this stayed solid in the last fight - even when both the wheels (bodgily modified lego ones) came flying off and it got flipped, resulting in me spinning it up so it spun crazily around the arena.



I've since printed (before the heated bed died) some new wheel hubs that fit the lego tyres but actually fit properly on the motor shafts, as well as some plastic m5 nuts - again in testing one of these and a nyloc nut seem to keep the shell on well. Here's Picobyte in the test box - I decided that trying to drive and film at the same time was too difficult, so I enlisted some help.




Other bots
- Bladetip continues to run well, although Owen had some issues avoiding the pit last month. We've got some upgrades planned but the parts haven't come in yet.
- Cut Above has been rebuild with a 3D printed upgrade that I've actually been working on for a while (but have apparently taken no photos of).
- My fleet of bots slowly grows, the loan bots have seen a lot of use, especially in our beginners league.