Canadian Carnage Robotics

[rcjunky]

After taking with the resident sparc forum master (Zac) at Moto I have figured out how to post pics in a convenient way to share them here for those not on facebook. I'm a big fan of embedded pics on forums and it is in fact possible. I figured I'd try to give a bit of a recap of my 30sc I just finished for motorama 2019, and a bit of a summary on the other bots to start things off.

We'll start with the current fleet and go from there.

First off my 150g fairy, IntensiTi. This all started as a way to get a pit pass for Robogames 2018 to help with running Lucky/Ziggy. This all fell through for a few reasons including school and Battlebots s3, but ended up completing it for the SCRC Canadian Nationals in September 2018. As a machinist by trade this was my silent protest against 3d printing more or less. I set out to make an all machined 150g bot that uses real hardware to bolt it all together. With the exception of glueing in the drive motors this kept true to the completion.

It runs a 1407 2700kv motor direct drive in the weapon, 30:1 botbitz drive motors, botbitz power switch, tiny esc's on drive, RotorX 30a esc all powered by a custom 2s 240mah battery. The red screws are all aluminum, the chassis is 7075 aluminum, 0.5mm ti top plate and front armor, 1mm ti bulkheads, wheels are 27.5mm slot car wheels. I have about 10 hours in to the pair of chassis I made so I can see why clicking print on a 3d printer has its place in this class.



Mostly complete cad including the Minor Threat disk profile. Originally was going to use the Fingertech profile since it also looks pretty cool.


Chassis getting the final edm cut done removing the chassis from the material used to hold the part


The bare chassis after 3 set ups on a mill and another on a wire edm machine. Not a simple part for sure.


Early test fit of the electronics, its all very snug. You'll see a 10a esc in there in this pic, but hard issues with brown outs with the high current draw weapon.


This is the disk before heat treat and wire edm cutting. Adding the step to make it easier to assemble adds a lot of work to the part. Its only so the disk is flush with the motor can when centered between the weapon bulkheads

[rcjunky]

Up next is the 1lb bot, AbsurdiTi. Its a direct drive horizontal spinner using a custom hub motor. Using the Fingertech bearing blocks as the beginning of the project, its 1" thick inside the top and bottom plates which are 1mm ti. It has a lot of influence on Freds 1lb bot, The Cuban, but with the fancy hub motor. Its currently on its 3rd weapon motor revision and finally seems to work really good most of the time. Spinning a 6.5" 100+g bar at 10k+ rpm is always good times. Electronics are Fingertech 22:1 silver sparks, tiny esc's, sk3 2822 weapon motor (1090 or 1275kv, I've used both) RotorX 30a or afro 20a weapon esc and a 450mah 65c 3s battery



The current main hub for the weapon motor


The other side with the bar. 6, 6-32 screws in shear seems to hold up plenty fine with the center bore on the bar locating it


Weapon shaft before holes and heat treat are done


Pretty snug inside, its very small


The weapon lock/wheels up devide is pretty fancy as well like I generally do

[rcjunky]

InsaniTi is what I consider my first competitive bot, a 3lb beater design with a welded ti chassis. I was talking with a friend and next thing you know it looked mildly reasonable to do this so I ran with it. The result is a pretty over the top design that works really good. That said I can't say I'd recommend doing this since its a full time job keeping it all together. It runs botkits 22mm gear motors with robot power wasp esc's, propdrive v2 2836 motor, ztw spider 40a weapon esc all off the 1000mah 4s bolthv lihv pack. Its just enough capacity to run 3 mins if needed, which rarely ever happens. The beater is about 12oz.



Chassis before welding with the fixture to keep it square


Lots of ti, including the 3/8" shaft. It was a nightmare to end tap those holes.


A quick pretendo bot of the layout. I've since gone to a small weapon motor then in this pic

[rcjunky]

Reserved for Llama Sheen

[rcjunky]

Motorama 2019 has now come and gone, and all I can say is what an event it was. This year I brought the little 150g IntensiTi without touching it since the Canadina Nationals in September, and the all new 30lb sportsman, Llama Sheen. Llama is my biggest, most expensive, most complex build to date, yet was the least prepared I'd ever been going to the event. By the time it was through safety I figure I had about 8 hours of work done to it, and that was only electrical. I managed to get all the mechanical work done before packing up and making the 10 hour drive.

IntensiTi was basically on the back burner and ended up going 0-1, getting to the arena 10 seconds late for its second fight making it a forced forfeit. I never had the time to make some needed tweaks so in its first fight its only issues quickly surfaced. It will be getting the needed love in the future but it may not be until later this year if I go to the SCRC Canadian Nationals again this year.

Getting Llama Sheen through safety working correctly was a huge relief. Going in to the first fight with no practice and never lifting anything I had pretty low expectations. It ended up working really good. With the lifter current limited to 30a (so about 1000w) if had no issues lifting 30lb which was a relief. It can easily be cranked up to double that but don't know what the shock of using basically on/off switches to go up and down. You'll notice in the first and last fights the drive dies at the end of the fight. I planned on using an 850mah pack for drive and it wasn't enough in the first fight. I got a 1000mah into it and it wasn't enough in the last fight. Made it long enough to not get counted out, but give the opponent some free shots. This is one of the areas I'll be revisiting for next event. On top of having 9 fights, I was meant to also fight Beeeees before Aeriform but he had to forfeit after having a few issues in the previous fight and couldn't fix it in 20 minutes which was all we had.

vs Buzzkill
https://youtu.be/WQmemobk_1w?t=10806

vs Conduit
https://youtu.be/WQmemobk_1w?t=22592

vs Major Axe E Dent
https://youtu.be/WQmemobk_1w?t=27672

vs True Grit
https://youtu.be/pWpzgCwqjzk?t=6438

vs Wedding Gift
https://youtu.be/pWpzgCwqjzk?t=11354

vs Buzzkill
https://youtu.be/pWpzgCwqjzk?t=17297

vs Flip Special
https://youtu.be/pWpzgCwqjzk?t=19922

vs Ralph
https://youtu.be/pWpzgCwqjzk?t=21978

vs Aeriform
https://youtu.be/pWpzgCwqjzk?t=28464

Overall I had a blast and had some excellent fights. You'll definitely see more from Llama Sheen moving forward.

[zacodonnell]

I really enjoyed the name of this bot, and it worked really well.

Magneato is carrying 2x 2300 5S A123 packs on board in parallel. I burn through about 2500 mah in a fight. Of course it also draws 150A on spinup... I'd love to drop to a single pack but I have nightmares about running out of juice - it's such a frustrating way to lose.

Looking forward to when you get this dialed in.

-Zac

[rcjunky]

The name wasn't my idea (I have 0 creativity) but its so good in so many ways. It all started as a way to fuel a troll and just kept escalating Once I write the build post I reserved for it, you'll see some of the silly things I integrated to keep things fun. A select few had/have big issues with it apparently being a wedge and not a sportsman in there eyes.

I have dedicated weapon packs on the lifter that only take 50-150mah/fight so capacity wise its got plenty with the 850mah packs, but its current limited to 30a and I know it hits that when digging for gold in the floor. I plan of turning the current limit up even more and that'll really be hammering those packs current wise but its such a low duty cycle they should be fine. Drive is the issue and there really isn't much space for a bigger pack, its so tight. I don't think its even remotely possible to fit a123 cells in it if I wanted to run franklin. I'm going to need to do some playing around to figure out what I can actually fit with some chassis mods to get a bigger pack in there, I'd like 1600mah but may need to settle for 1300mah unless I literally put the batteries in the lifter arm (which I believe I can do)

Other then more battery capacity on drive and turning up the lifter, it needs more position control at the bottom of the travel. Once I have a bit more of a plan and time (yay big robots) I'll probably be hitting you up for some assistance. The current vague plan is use an arduino to basically have a soft start (to pre load the gear train before dumping all the amps)as well at some kind of sensor (break beam, potentiometer or encoder) to slow the lifter at the bottom 1/4" or so of travel so I can slam it down and be close, then hold down so it'll creep down the rest of the way at a controlable speed. I think all of these need to be done so I can really turn it up to 11. I think improving the lifter will also make the drive battery capacity an even bigger issue as I'll be spending less time parked adjusting the lifter height.

[TeamAlreadyBroke]

We also had issues with people complaining about Aeriform and Flip Special being wedge bots and not Sportsman compliant robots. There are at least two points that make that pretty funny though:

1.) Each robot has at LEAST 0.125" (if not 0.375"+ on Aeriform and inches on FS) clearance at all times on the wedge portions.
2.) The first point of contact on both bots IS the weapon.

If you rewatch Flip Special and Aeriform's fights, there were only a select few times where the wedges even came into play like in the match of Llama Sheen and Flip Special. IIRC you drove over Flip Special like a ramp for a monster truck!

However, in all honesty I could see issues with passive tines meant to immobilize that reach out passed the weapon. To each his own though, as long as it is 100% for functionality for the weapon to work or stability, I don't see there being too much of a gray area about the whole thing.

[rcjunky]

With all the mess of facebook over it, I concluded the people complaining (non of which compete in the class) basically think its against the spirit of the rules to build a bot with the sole purpose of winning. The rules are also quite clear what kind of wedges are and are not allowed, so I don't get why people hate on legal wedged features. I actually did a rough sketch of a more wedgy yet totally legal configuration but elected to not post it to avoid the mess it would create. At the end of the day we're all here having fun and don't have any issues with either of your teams sportsman entries, other then they're so hard to beat I felt those 2 fights were the closest I had all event, and it was a blast. I sent you a pm here a while ago btw