[TC11] Son of Aminnich

[aminnich]

Hey guys, 

I am finally reporting some progress on my TC11 bot build.  I have been following the contest very closely since it was announced.  I started building the day it started and I finally have a solid start to a bot.  I have rebuild and taken apart 5 bots so far, they all had something I did not like about them, a lot of the problems were probably  because I was rushing into the build.  

Anyway, lets talk about the bot

I wanted to get an idea of some bot ideas, so I decided to watch a bunch of YouTube videos of all kinds of battle bots, I found a lot of really cool and interesting concepts used.  When I think of battle bot, I think of the bots that flip opponents and spinners.  They both have their pros and cons, but I decided to go with a spinning bot and hopefully not one that self destructs.  

I decided to lightly base my bot off of the "Son of Whyachi" battle bot.  I thought it looked interesting.  after doing some research on the bot, I found out that the bot had an interesting drive system known as walking or shuffling, I might try this after the bot is done, but I do not want to run out of time trying to big this concept.  

For my bot I had some main focuses:

• durable 
• effective weapon (focusing on one bigger one instead of multiple little ones)
• Easy to control (Sbrick coming in the mail, the IR receivers were not responsive enough)
• Compact

As I said, I have built 5 other bots so far, I know what works for this and what does not. And like I said, I am not going for a prefect replica of the "son of whyachi" bot, just the concept of the top spinner.  So here is a picture of what I have so far, it is not much as of right now, but I wanted to start a topic for motivation to keep building. 

The main weapon is powered by 8 L motors with the central gearing using tires.  Originally I was using gears, but not having a clutch gear was not a good idea and adding the clutch gear did not give enough of a "punch", everything just kind of stopped.  With using tires, I am able to have that "punch".  You might be saying 8 L motors might be overkill, sure it might be, but it works very effectively.  

For the drive on my bot, I am going to be using tracks.  I was going to use wheels but I had some trouble using them on my other bots, so when I tried tracks, they seemed to work out a lot better.  Also building the battery box inside of the tracks helps free up some space on my bot.  

Just to give you an idea of how compact what I have is, here is a picture.  It is a 15 x 15 square.  I had the tracks on, and that will come out to a 30 x 30 square.  So I have 15L to still mess around with.  

The link to my bricksafe is below if you want to check out my failed attempted bots.

http://bricksafe.com/pages/Aminnich/tc11#

As always, comments and questions are always welcomed.  More progress to come soon, hopefully.  

Name to come later

Edited April 8, 2017 by aminnich

[teos]

Neat design, though nothing is showing up on your failed list.

[krtwood]

And here I thought I was going over the top using 4 motors :)  How many battery boxes is that taking?  

[aminnich]

Just now, teos said:

Neat design, though nothing is showing up on your failed list.

The link should work, it works for me when I am signed out of my bricksafe account.  If you are still having trouble, please tell me

Just now, krtwood said:

And here I thought I was going over the top using 4 motors :)  How many battery boxes is that taking?  

My bot now has 10 L motors on it with 2 battery boxes.  I am hoping to still add 2 more battery boxes, for more power divided and weight.  

Are 8 motors too many? 

[teos]

1 hour ago, aminnich said:

The link should work, it works for me when I am signed out of my bricksafe account.  If you are still having trouble, please tell me

My bot now has 10 L motors on it with 2 battery boxes.  I am hoping to still add 2 more battery boxes, for more power divided and weight.  

Are 8 motors too many? 

Okay, I can see the photos now.  Were all of your "fails" built for this contest?  There's some really neat techniques used.  I'm going to have to study the photos for part connection ideas.

[PKW]

All the idea looks really cool, but I think racecar/smooth wheels + gears are a better combo than offroar wheels, because it looks like that mechanism has a lot of friction don't it? 

 

Good luck with that top spinner idea! Looking forward to see the "disk" since it should be really though

[agrof]

Looks like motorization overkill on it's best! 

I am wondering about:

• if You can feed all the motors at once, without kicking on the safety circuit of the BB's or Sbricks (I guess),
• how will the angular momentum of the blade influence the stability and the driveability of the bot.

Please keep us updated, it is an interesting entry and also experiment! 

[aminnich]

8 hours ago, teos said:

Okay, I can see the photos now.  Were all of your "fails" built for this contest?  There's some really neat techniques used.  I'm going to have to study the photos for part connection ideas.

I am calling them fails because they did not work for what I wanted. And yes all of the the fails in the TC11 folder are from this contest. 

5 hours ago, PKW said:

All the idea looks really cool, but I think racecar/smooth wheels + gears are a better combo than offroar wheels, because it looks like that mechanism has a lot of friction don't it? 

 

Good luck with that top spinner idea! Looking forward to see the "disk" since it should be really though

I orginally was going to use the smoother wheels, but I would not get a good "mesh" between them. The wheels I am using not only mesh well but also give me a good output speed from the 8 L motors with a high amount of torque.

1 hour ago, agrof said:

Looks like motorization overkill on it's best! 

I am wondering about:

• if You can feed all the motors at once, without kicking on the safety circuit of the BB's or Sbricks (I guess),
• how will the angular momentum of the blade influence the stability and the driveability of the bot.

Please keep us updated, it is an interesting entry and also experiment! 

1. I tested all 8 on one battery box, didn't work. But 4 motors per battery box did work. 

2. That's a good question. I am hoping balance is key and I won't have to mess with it too much 

[agrof]

It will be stable horizontally, only the drive-, and manouverability is open.

[krtwood]

15 hours ago, aminnich said:

My bot now has 10 L motors on it with 2 battery boxes.  I am hoping to still add 2 more battery boxes, for more power divided and weight.  

Are 8 motors too many? 

Nah, smoke em if you got em.  I've got 9 motors and 6 battery boxes (4 for power) total.  I was able to run 4 XLs for the weapon off one battery box but it likes two better.  I wasn't able to run 4 Ls off one battery box for the drive.  They were under too much load.  You may find if you go up to 4 battery boxes that 2 Ls are not enough for the drive anymore without making it slow.  

[aminnich]

I was worried about the drive too, so I tested it last night.  I loaded the bot up with all the battery boxes I had (10) and it drove around, it did not like turning, but it did it.  Also, My bot will not weigh that much.  I am hoping 4 battery boxes is enough.  

Edited March 20, 2017 by aminnich

[aminnich]

UPDATE:

I did some more building last night after I posted this topic.  I mounted the tracks, powered them, and added some armor.  I wish I took pictures during the build, but I did not sorry.  

The picture above is the front, but it does not really matter which way is front and which is considered the back.  

And here is a picture of the drive.  Using Sariel's gear calculator I found that the gear ratio is 1:4.5 

Things to come:

• Add 2 more battery boxes in the back
• Add Sbricks once they come in the mail
• Figure out where wires can go to get out of the way of the moving parts.  
• Then figure out a strong spinner for the top.  That will be last though.  

Hope you guys like the progress.  Tell me, would you rather progress pictures more often or like one big post once a week?

 

[Alex Ilea]

Looks very good ! I like how you did those track covers . More posts a week are better than 1 big 1 , my opinion.

[aminnich]

Sorry for all the updates today, but here is a video of the weapons drive mechanism.  I just added the beams to simulate the arms, they will be much beefier than that 

Also, The video quality does not seem good at all.  I took the video on my iPhone 5s but it doesnt seem good, what do you guys think?

 

[Aventador2004]

It will not do much damage if it stops on impact 

You should fix that

[krtwood]

There has to be some amount of resistance that will make it stop but it's hard to tell how much force you are using to stop it.  I would suggest you try removing the gears from 4 of the motors and try the same test to see if takes less force to stop it.  If it doesn't then the clutch is too weak to be making any use of the other 4 motors.  

[aminnich]

It is hear to tell how much force I am applying to stop the arm slipping around.  It is not a lot, but it is more than I expected.  I am not done reinforcing the "clutch" so many doing that will keep the wheels closer together and make it a stronger "clutch".  If that does not work, I will go there my wheels and find a tighter fit.  

At the base of all my arms, I plan to have a battery box or 2, so imagine at the speed it was moving, having a battery box hit you in the face.  Have a nice day 

[aminnich]

Update for today is interesting,

I was working on how to strengthen the "clutch", instead I decided to test it with a battery box.  In the video I test 2 different things, the battery box is the second of the 2 and the less interesting one.  I think I am satisfied with the result as it is now.  It knocked over a full battery box no problem and kept spinning like nothing was there.  In the video I use 2 battery boxes, again no problem.  

Now for the interesting idea.  Looking at my bot, I realized I was getting very close to the size restriction, not good.  I had an idea to fold up the arms of the bot and use no motors or actuators or anything.  Instead the arms would fold done strictly from the centripetal force of the spinning motion.  I am not sure how lite the arms would have to be for this to work, but I still wanted to try it out.  

Here is a short video of what I have.  I am still learning video editting, but I think I am getting better, I hope.....  

 

As always, comments and questions encouraged.  

[PKW]

Please man balance that thing! You'll gain rpm too, start with a bar and then try with a weapon more similar to SoW, btw your drive looks really slow, do you want to fight the regicide and hope that battery won't discharge before the first  hit? I also think that you can't build a faster threaded voucher due to the amount of weight it will have with that much BB, good work but that's why I don't like big build for lego battle bots, looking forward for the spinner weapon

 

edit i've just regicide speed up so you are the slowest :P it is defending tactic to have a shell spinner?

Edited March 22, 2017 by PKW

[aminnich]

It is very unbalanced in that video because I am just testing everything. The final bot will be balanced. 

As for speed, why does my bot need to be fast? Is it in the rules? it doesn't matter how fast your bot is, it is all about how effective your main weapon is. That is what I am focusing on. 

The problem I have with my drive system is not the speed, but the amount of space it takes up, so I might be changing it soon anyway. 

Edited March 22, 2017 by aminnich

[PKW]

11 hours ago, aminnich said:

As for speed, why does my bot need to be fast? Is it in the rules? it doesn't matter how fast your bot is, it is all about how effective your main weapon is. That is what I am focusing on. 

I don't know how many fights you've made with lego or non lego battlebots but i can say winning is determinated by 3 factors: LUCK, driving skill, reliability. unfortunately in most fights the main weapon or the whole robots doesn't really matter, but since we have to vote the robot and not the driver i can argue that a "sluggish" bot can't be driven well even by the best driver and most of other bot can outmaneuver it and have all the "control" judging criteria. Consider that avoiding damage will make an "effective weapon" just useless because there will be no contact in the fight, not to mention that it will be really easy for the house robot to destoy your bot and also (since you are taking inspiration by SoW) remember how SoW ended up: its own wepon break the robot iself, so focusing on the weapon is not the main aim of robot wars sorry.

[aminnich]

I do not mean to sound rude, but focus on your bot and I will focus on mine.  I can focus on whatever part of the bot I want.  If I want it to be fast enough to just run away from the enemy bot, I would have done that.  Instead I am concentrating on the weapon, which in my opinion is the most important part of this contest.  

As it has been discussed a number of times, these bots are not fighting either other.  We are only to show case our bot and the voters are to vote for the bot they think would preform the best.  If you are voting for the bot that can maneuver around the arena better, than that is fine, but I do not think that is right.  

Also, looking at the real bots on the TV show, SoW had its flaws, but so did most all of the other bots.  During the TV episodes, each on had their own strengthens and weaknesses.  I only said I was basing mine slightly off of SoW.  

Keep in mind, we are building these out of LEGO, not titanium steel alloy that is bullet proof with car batteries inside for a source of power.  These bots are not going to be meant for the main arena.  

 

Edited March 23, 2017 by aminnich

[M5Technic]

8 minutes ago, aminnich said:

I do not mean to sound rude, but focus on your bot and I will focus on mine.  I can focus on whatever part of the bot I want.  If I want it to be fast enough to just run away from the enemy bot, I would have done that.  Instead I am concentrating on the weapon, which in my opinion is the most important part of this contest.  

As it has been discussed a number of times, these bots are not fighting either other.  We are only to show case our bot and the voters are to vote for the bot they think would preform the best.  If you are voting for the bot that can maneuver around the arena better, than that is fine, but I do not think that is right.  

Also, looking at the real bots on the TV show, SoW had its flaws, but so did most all of the other bots.  During the TV episodes, each on had their own strengthens and weaknesses.  I only said I was basing mine slightly off of SoW.  

Keep in mind, we are building these out of LEGO, not titanium steel alloy that is bullet proof with car batteries inside for a source of power.  These bots are not going to be meant for the main arena.  

 

+1

[agrof]

As far I see, PKW just made some friendly remarks, and as one with experiences with LEGO bots, he adds many advices in each topic. It is something to appretiate.

Even if they are only showcase models, they are based on reality, just like a tow truck or supercar MOC. Which MOC is more appretiated, the one, which has only 1 function, or the one, which has many and thus replicates the real object better? Also we should simulate in our fantasy a real case (battle) situation at the end of the day.

Take an example: speaking about LEGO, I don't see how any LEGO-built weapon could seriously damage a well built bot. To block a rotating weapon happens in a second, than by manouverability and by pushing power the opponent basically just needs to play until your robot will be tipped over. At this point the battle is done. So even in LEGO world, there is many aspects to consider.

Keep in mind, this contest is for FUN, keep the focus on that. 

[PKW]

6 hours ago, aminnich said:

1) I do not mean to sound rude, but focus on your bot and I will focus on mine. 

2)We are only to show case our bot and the voters are to vote for the bot they think would preform the best.  If you are voting for the bot that can maneuver around the arena better, than that is fine, but I do not think that is right.  

3)These bots are not going to be meant for the main arena.  

 

(I'm answering with "x)" answers because it is a hell to have a good multi quote on my phone)

 

1) You're not really sounding rude because you've made a really hard work on that weapon and I know you are focusing and spending on that, but topics are made to collect opinions from other user so I just gave mine.

 

2) showcase a robot that has the aim to impress voters and if voters should vote for robot performances then manoeuvrability is one of the most important in real robot wars and in lego one too, that's my point, but I have nothing against the fact that you may want just to make a big badass weapon and have a strategy like "no matter where i move my weapon is so deadly and we'll built that everything will touch it will be destroyed" and you are going good to get to this goal, but maybe showcasing a really slow robots that take a lot of time to get near something (like BB you used) isn't the best? Again this is my opinion

3) yes these bot are not made to fight in the real arena, but they will virtually fight in voters mind and also a voting criteria is "likeliness to win a battle"

As for making my feedback better what I was suggesting is something like " I see a really slow gearing here, test it, you may be able to increase the speed and get a more aggressive built, it will be another pint on your side"

2 hours ago, agrof said:

1)As far I see, PKW just made some friendly remarks, and as one with experiences with LEGO bots, he adds many advices in each topic. It is something to appretiate.

2)Keep in mind, this contest is for FUN, keep the focus on that. 

1) thank you! I'm trying my best to just find weak points on all the build I see and report then to the creator, i've seen lot of builder not paying attention to the drive system and that'a a shame for many reasons, even playability!

2) That is perfect what I want to add is: this is a forum contests, keep fun and use feedbacks/comments to learn and get better! But I guess not all members are ok with the "any comment is welcome, critics are appreciated" but this is how I think it should be and I give both critics and congratulations.