Team Shakey Build Diary

[DieGracefullyRobotics]

I watch the video of it whenever I need cheering up about robots

[AntRoboteer]

The self righting will still be using the disc, I'll just be taking what I learned from getting DHMIS to actually spinup and applying it to Test! Though the new frame would hopefully stop that being needed much anyway.

It's definitely the most reliable way. DHMIS is terrifying when it spins up. I'd love to fight it just for the specatacle (of course with a good 5mm of polycarbonate up front).

[Shakey]

Not a robot, but a new tool! LASER!

I like lasers and I like easily cutting out shapes for robots. So...




Bodged in air assist, running off a paintbrush compressor borrowed from my dad for now.


The first few cuts before the air assist was in. I can now neatly cut 1.5mm poly with minimal discolouration. I need to do the air assist properly to really get nice cuts but the bodge has given me an idea of what to aim for.


A standard K40 laser. Needs a fair bit of tweaking to get working fully, lots of parts on order to get it completed.

The upgrades I intend are:
Non bodge air assist with an all around nozzle.

New exhaust (Polycarb fumes are bad. That and just general smoke), Inline blower with 3" tubing straight out my house. Hopefully I can seal it enough to make enough negative pressure to eliminate all escaping fumes.

New bed to put material on, the current one is pretty bad.

New cooling system (Currently distilled water in a mixing bowl with a pond pump), I'm intending on what will essentially be a PC water cooling system with a hefty reservoir.

Interior Lighting, fairly self explanatory

New stand. So... I'm actually running out of places to put tools and robot stuff. I have a 2 bed flat, one bedroom is already a full robot room dedicated to fighting robots. My kitchen has CNC corner with the 2 printers and router. This is going to have to live sortof where my TV currently does so I need to make a stand to hold both... And I'm unwilling to move it to the garage.

[AntRoboteer]

Just what we needed, another way for you to make huge discs...

Looks incredible Alex; I know you'll have some big plans for it so excited to see the use it's put to.

[Shakey]

Unfortunately this won't be able to cut metal (I'd need to add about 2 zeros onto it's pricetag for that!), I've only cut them as they were the first DXF's I found in my mammoth CAD folder.

But it'll be pretty handy to check stuff like that before getting it done properly. Cut a FW out of MDF to check it all fits and works before getting it waterjetted from hardox and the like. Being more of a delicate machine than the router I can do some more detailed work with it and hopefully let me try some crazier designs with it.

[AntRoboteer]

Ah, I see, well that's pretty cool. Good luck with it!

[Shakey]

A bit late for it but throwing out a few pics of Bristol bot Builders 2.

This was one of the most fun events I've been to in a long time, I joined in the bodgebots with 'Pukka', a robot more bodge than any I could do while sober.


The addition of pipe cleaner decoration to help it out and a quick cut down of the lance to fit in the cube. It actually managed to win one fight! The next it just ended up driving into a pit.

Test and DHMIS got to have a run around aswell, test in the 1v1's and DHMIS in the 2v2's. Jack Tweedy being the man crazy enough to tag team with DHMIS to form team 'Best Chef's.




Finally a rumble was at the end including the awaited faceoff of DHMIS and Valkyrie, this redulted in some of the first actual combat damage DHMIS has received from another bot but it was definitely worth it.


It was a great laid back event and I'm looking forward to the next and seeing what other robots are cooked up over there, there were some really great robots that appeared at this one including a particularly viscious vert that bested Test at its own game!

Outside of events the laser cutter is coming along, upgrade parts are arriving and the rest on their way. I'm looking to switch PETG in for polycarb on a few robots (specifically the shop stuff) as it is much more agreeable to laser cutting and is almost the same properties but cheaper. Partly wondering how it would hold up as arena material (It's used for the same purpose as polycarb in industry, machine guarding) though will need some testing.

[Shakey]

Post AWS 55 update! I know, late as normal but I'm feeling nostalgia for these post event posts.


A fantastic event for Team Shakey finally achieving one of my goals of winning with a spinner, Test came close before but was defeated in the final by ALBOF, but this time a few tweaks and some more controlled driving got it all the way.

Test Robot Please Ignore
It had a couple of pre-event improvements. New disc was cut for it as the old one had blunted, same profile. Cleanup of the wiring to save some weight and try and stamp out electrical trouble. Reshaping and thinning the bulkheads to gain weight, allow it to drive inverted (and self right without weapon) and to raise the disc slightly in the chassis to reduce the robot bouncing on hits from the disc flexing into the floor. New battery (actually couldn't fit in the same capacity one as hobbyking has changed the size, a new slightly smaller but fresh battery helped spinup).

The tweaks to test really helped it out, especially key was the self righting which came in handy and really helped it stay in fights. It did have one very dramatic failure when the bolts holding the disc on failed on a hit releasing it from the chassis. A scary moment but no actual damage to the bot occurred, I won the fight as a pusher using the forks to get under the other bot and hastily repaired to continue on.

HSOD
Still the same fun robot as always, an okay performance but it'd been so long since I fought it I'd essentially forgotten about its odd handling. Maybe a new larger disc is in order.

Wedge Wedge Wedge
Wedge Wedge Wedge had a pretty good run with some great opponents. Finally drew itself against EPZ slowly boiling down to a tense 1 v 1 for wedgy clusterbot honor, it was a close run fight but in the end 1 Wedge was left standing to take the win for Wedge Wedge Wedge. My two drivers for the event were George and James who did a great job, James even taking out Andy's half of EPZ. However the wedge of Considerable took both of its lives in hilarious fashion.

Sir Digby Chicken Ceasar


Somewhat of a test bot this robot led on from a desire to build another Hexa Chopper and from refinements made in my geared drive from doing the Crackers & Smash ants. It did well and the 60mm disc packed one hell of a punch. The armour for this bot was PETG in an effort to asses it. The armour held up okay but on heavy hits from boomstone started to crack, which PETG is very vulnerable to and was then shattered by valkyrie. I need some more controlled tests to asses PETG with.

The drive however was letting it down a bit, though I have a plan with some tiny motors from the depths of china I bought as potential Nano Drive. I whipped up a 20g testbed with them and could push an ant, so packing 4 in an ant (weighing less than 2WD with N20's) should work nicely.

Charge Block
An issue I regularly have when my team has 6 individual bots running in every tournament is charging. My poor single channel charger does an admirable job but often it just isn't enough. Enter the charge block! THe laser cutter put in some good work to make this happen and now I can charge 4 robots at a time. The DC4's chargers are great and this unit combines a 12V 'LED power supply' in the base with a drawer to hold charge cables. It made my life at the AWS far easier.


Laser Cutter
Work were having a clearout and let us at the scrap. Laser cutters need fairly good cooling to run for sustained periods. Normally in the hobby lasers people just use large tanks of water to absorb the energy then allow the water to cool. However as I found (especially when ambient is high) this can allow the laser to approach too warm (only ~25-30C or so) and power levels to be very inconsistent. Luckily for me in amongst the scrap were 2 industrial water chillers capable of chilling the tube to nice temperatures and holding it there for consistent sustained operation.



Of the two of them only one would power on when it arrived. I had given them an inspection and hoovering out of dust first, one powered on but the other wouldn't and instead tripped my MCB. I focused on the working one and cleaned up before filling it with water for a chill test. Setting it with the aim of getting the water (~23c in my house) as low as it could go. At that moment I discovered they were chillers AND pumps... Very high flow pumps.


My poor lounge. After grabbing some hose and putting a loop from its outlet to its inlet I set it off again. It only managed 19C however before the temp started rising again, a poor showing. An inspection showed the fan meant to draw heat off the radiator was dead, so I stole a spare off the non working chiller. And setting it off again I found... I had no temperature reading from the water. After 2 evenings of head scratching and poking, resoldering the sensor I found the culprit. A switch on the front switches the 7 segment display between what the temperature is and what it is aiming to be, that switch was just dodgy. Easy workaround... hit the switch. I set the chiller off again and went about my day until I heard a sudden pitch change from the motor. Legging it over I found it had gotton the water to 0 degrees and it was forming ice crystals, I turned it off and poured in water to bring the temp up to prevent damaging the unit. Safe to say it works.

The second unit needs an electronics swap. It's an older simple machine so some mains relays connected to an arduino with an LCD screen readout should get it running again, though I have no need for a second right now so that can wait.