The concept of 'ant class' battle bots from 3D Printed parts... HOW AM I JUST NOW HEARING ABOUT THIS???? That is such a fantastic idea to get people interested and involved in 3D Printing and Battle Bots, while keeping costs as low as possible.
I also just learned about it. i had only ever seen the gigantic robots on tv. i probably would have pursued it earlier had i ever known about it. now im researching how to get into it - specifically using 'ant class' as a query keyword. better late than never, i guess.
We use several 3D printed parts, for both decoration and function, in our 250 pound combat robots (Tantrum and Blip) In fact, we brought a few printers to the event (an Ender 5 and a Voron 2.4) -Team Seems Reasonable
@@MakersMuse several teams have them. Printed parts definitely get used a lot for electronics mounting. We've had one printed inconel part before for fun, and Valkyrie has used some MetalX printed stainless parts before Big fan of your videos! Glad you enjoy Blip, we're fond of her
Loved having the opportunity to meet you today Angus. You have been an inspiration for my Son in this amazing world of 3d printing. Keep up the good work you do. THANK YOU!
Just got back from Norwalk Havoc (a huge beetle weight competition on the East Coast of the US) with my fully 3D printed 3 lb robot. The full TPU chassis held up fantastically until my last match where I fed it into a top tier horizontal spinner for 3 minutes. The flexibility of the filament effectively meant all my parts were shock mounted. My drive never died in any of my fights
I had really enjoyed building a 5.44Kg battle bot with my daughter and I can definitely recommend it as a learning experience. This was in 2015 and I was not into 3d printing yet, so as opposed to the engineers we were up against and their CAD designed and aluminium CNC constructed (and sponsored) robots, we went with a design using builders cardboard and then constructed the robot out of 3mm polycarbonate sheets (which can be cut with a bandsaw and is incredibly tough). We also used recycled stuff a lot - for instance the drive motors were ex-cordless driller motors and the weapon was made from reshaped (normal) printer rods! For the insides we used marine foam (super light, the stuff they use for boat seats) to protect the components. Of course the first time round there are lots of wrong turns and you can end up spending a lot of money for what is effectively 9 minutes of ring time. But the joy of seeing your creation out there battling away more than makes up for the spend. Thank you for this video!
I was hooked on watching Robot Wars too. Never went into building one. But watching this video amazed at how well the video was done. How long did it take you to edit this? EXCELLENT.
@@MakersMuse ooh boy wait till you see the American version, battle bots, were robots are so big they are the size of a Person nearly, one legend, icewave, is the only internal combustion robot with a 2 stroke engine powering like a 100 or 50 pound blade up to speeds above 100mph, tombstone is a lawn mower on all the drugs, his first fight or one of his fights against "counter revelution" he beat the living hell out of it and turned it into nothing, ray billings on yt for tombstone
I was a mentor for a middle school FIRST Robotics team a few years back. My first team of 4 kids won the State Championship our first time out. I've always been a big proponent of getting kids involved in Robotics. A lot of former FIRST Robotics member are working with places like NASA, etc.
Great Video! Love seeing more people building and sharing Combat Robot designs! I have only done one competition so far at MACRO in Maryland, but it was a ton of fun.
Would've killed for a video like this a few years ago when I was getting started, super informative, especially the wiring. Definitely looking forward to seeing more from this series!
The brief ESC explanation you performed is missing everywhere. Your explanation is one of the best I've found. Plus your explanation of BECs fantastic!! I would love to see you do a more detailed explanation on ESC/BEC. Specifically the "fiddly" bits of a higher draw servo/motor item added into a circuit..
Use the power of the Slicer, Angus! I had a friend wanted a fairly specific mounting frame for a project, had about 85-88g for a frame, rather than make and weigh several prototypes I sliced the model in Cura, that said that I was way over, did a few redesigns and got it down to 78g, printed it - and V3.3b design was strong and light enough for them. I also discovered a cool hack, you can use 0% infill and big voids to lighten something, and where you want a mount point, add a daisy pattern of holes, the holes each have to have walls and so the mount point ends up solid enough to glue something to or put a screw or bolt into.
I've been slowly getting more and more interested in doing some combat robot stuff lately (unfortunately there isn't really a local scene from what research I've done), so thank you for doing this series! If I ever get around to doing one, I'll absolutely use this video as a starting point!
One thing to mention, especially with insect class bots, is to balance speed and control. If your bot is humming bird fast but controls like a city bus you quickly become limited especially against a nimble bot that can get angles on you. No one wants side flipped because you can’t turn 😅.
I love this! Here in the Denver/Colorado Springs area, we've had a long tradition - the Critter Crunch. The Crunches were held during conventions, and technically started out as Critter Crawls... but a group that calls itself the "Denver Mad Scientist's Club" isn't going to settle for a little parade for long. Thus the Crunch was born. I stumbled onto them in the mid-'90s, and they had been going strong for a while even then. Now, given that these were held at science fiction conventions, and thus, mostly at hotels, some of the more... violent and destructive options had to be.. contained. So instead of trying to break the other Critter, the Crunch evolved into more of a Sumo-style competition, aiming to shove the opponent either off an 8 foot square platform, or render them immobile. There were still shenanigans galore, but the hotel liaisons worried less about emergency visits by the fire department. (I do know of at least one tiny flame thrower, and I think Gomez did finally retire Big Punch due to issues with the launched spike tether breaking.) Other quirks: While never a requirement, there was something of a tradition of scrounging parts rather than buying them, at least for the larger class. Motors were frequently sourced from junked cars - windshield wiper and powered window motors were quite popular as I recall. To keep things from getting out of hand (and potentially taking over the con), there were only two weight classes - two pound and twenty pound, both limited to an initial size of one cubic foot. A common design element was some sort of plate or ramp that would drop down once the round began. There had been mention of a larger, two hundred pound class, but that would have been exhibition only - partly because one of the hotel liaisons about fainted at the mention, and partly because there would be the risk of several competitors trying to fit themselves inside. Hey, they are called "mad" scientists, after all. And one of the odder quirks in the earlier years, the twenty pound class was initially not allowed to have remote controls. It seems that there were some occasional issues of interference, causing problems such as blocking the signal of the opponent, or actually controlling the others Critter. Since these issues were inconsistent, it was decided to require all twenty-pound class Critters to be run via a cabled controller. This had the benefit of some extra entertainment as combatants had to circle around the platform to control their tethered Critter, while both dodging and not getting tangled up in each other's cable. Occasionally even minor acrobatics came into play. Meh, I could babble on even more, but my clock just reminded me I need to be back up in a few hours. Needless to say, though, I'll be watching these builds closely and with great enjoyment. And yes, I plan to download the file... in the morning...
MJF is some incredible stuff. I have done prints with ~.5MM walls and while they are flexible, I have done it for my model train prints. Anything 1MM + is dang tough. I once had a train shell cab, which is mostly thin walls, fall into a rat trap and get shot across the room and it survived with only a minor crack! A regular resin print would have just shattered instantly.
I’ve been interested in RC type electronics for a while now but generally the electronic stuff has been a bit daunting to understand and apply to your own projects, I really appreciate the way you explained how each component works explaining the fundamentals. I’m sure it’s probably second nature for most of the audience but it a knowledge gap that I haven’t seen many other content makers fill.
Thanks Angus, I was thinking about building an rc tank. Not for battle, just as an rc vehicle so this is a great introduction to what I'll need to get into
@@MakersMuse For sure! I'm interested to see your new sportsman I've had to throw mine together in less than a week so its a bit of a bodge, but it should still be fun to fight
Fair play to you showing that even an experienced bot builder can make mistakes ie the weight came out too heavy ...thanks for showing the trial and error nature of designing and building things ...and not being put off that it's not always perfect first time
I was also hooked as a kid. I did the FIRST robotics program in high school and then my friends and I did combat robots for fun. I dabbled in ant weights and beetle weights. It was so fun. Ever since I started 3D printing I've always thought about how much it would have helped back then.
Seeing the Alpha Phoenix video on robot competition, the combat aspect sounds a lot more fun and the engineering challenges will be similar. And you are more free to be creative with your offense
I think with the bots Michael Prentice had at MRRF, we're going to see an explosion of bots being created in the 3D printing community. They were a blast to watch
When I was 12 and Battlebots was on air for the first time I designed my own. I used graphing paper and ruler and refined my design, simple. A flipper bot with such power and violence, sloped sides of course because I'm the one doing the flipping. I got sponsored by a major pneumatics company, if I could get the chassis and electronics they would give me all the pneumatic components I needed. For an ant weight this wouldn't work but it was 2 pneumatic cylinders connected in series with a joint. One mounted horizontally with a guide for the joint and the other vertical connected to that flipper arm... I did the math, "thrower arm" would be more accurate 😁
I remember going back to first day of Robotwar, I kept thinking what will I build to compete, but lack of a welder. Not this time, I got 3d printer to help with, thank to you.
Loved robot wars as a kid, remember watching the first episode when it aired in the UK and watched pretty much every series which was aired. Even watched the re-boot several years back, myself, my husband and our housemate were yelling at the TV like it was a football game! 😂 Didn’t know there were different weight classes, so tempted to try this! 😁
I haven’t even watch the entire video yet. but I got to say man I love your inspiration on everything you tackle. You wanna take us along with all of these builds I can’t wait. I really wanna join and jump in. I am going to get my 3-D printer out of the closet. I love all your videos Man. I love the continent.
I'm so glad you made this video! Your rc video from last year was fantastic for getting into robotics and I learned a lot since. This video is a great review to everything I learned!
I've never heard of robot wars but something that I used to watch when I was younger here in the states was something called BattleBots which was essentially the same concept
I loved watching Robot Wars! Craig Charles was on the show when I was watching it. One of my favorite Smeg Heads, see Red Dwarf in IMDB for reference, still around robots was cool.
Awesome video Angus, been waiting for more robot videos for a long time, very worth waiting for, can't wait for more. Although I have built a slightly bigger robot in the past (82.5 Kg and I don't even have a garage) I do hope to get time to build some more sensible ones soon.
What a fun project to do. Long ago used to watch Battle bots but didn't have resources to make my own but nowadays its a different story and probably should give it a go. Thanks for the inspiration
Thank you for this excellent guide! I've been following *ahem* Armored RC combat vehicles (OK combat robotics isn't technically correct, but goodness isn't it so much easier?) since I was in High School and it thrills me how far its come. And now as an older adult with more income I'm happily swimming in FDM designs and realizing a life-ling dream to make custom electronics and later RC!
I actually picked up combat robot during pandemic. I am now in sydney but havent managed to build a bot or go to compete in ARC. Once my studies become a bit lighter, plan to build a beetleweight and compete with it. Thanks for the great video! Got some helpful ideas on starting the design part!
Tip for when you mention using a cable tie to hold 2 tinned wires together to join them onto their place. Instead bare the wire ends that you need and twist the wires together BEFORE you tin them, then tin them both as one mass before attaching them onto their desired pin. It’s both easier to do and also will give abit more redundancy on your soldering during heavey use
Awesome walkthrough; I just started making plans to start battling in the coming months, and while I have a lot of experience with RC building (mostly flying things,) there were some nuggets that I didn't know (e.g. braking) that kept me watching to the end. Thanks!
Good Job! One revision I would have made is instead of a big saw arm, i would have sandwiched the belt between two thinner plates, that way it would have had the same stiffness, but a bit of armor too. Maybe some sort of mechanical clutch to limit the torque on the arm too. I too have had a hell of a time keeping these DC motors and their controllers alive in industrial applications where there's force applied to them. Maybe i'd use an electric piston mechanically disconnected from the arm pushing on it
Hi Angus great video. Use carbon fibre nylon as print material for the competition robots. It is more pain to print but the gains in strength durability and weight will show.
Also, shorten your wire runs! You could cut a pretty decent amount of weight just by reducing the length of wiring you have bundled in there. Any excess wiring spaghetti is just additional weight in the form of copper + plastic sheathing. (Seriously, cut your wires shorter.)
@@MakersMuse So, is this battlebot craze the real reason the world is short on motor controllers like the Sabertooth lately? I'm still waiting on mine for my R2. :)
It does occur to me that for something like this you could get away without a tank mixer simply by having each stick control one motor. I don't say that would be better, just an option. For something that had other devices to control, you probably wouldn't want to do it because you'd want the other stick for the other thing, but for this, you could do the mixing manually. This was fun! I'm working on an astromech and mostly understand the electronics, but it's good to get some basic principles in a different context. Looking forward for the big one!
Wow. That was an awesome video!! Loved it so much. Getting into RC planes, and looks like both hobbies share a lot of the same equipment and knowledge. Again, such an awesome video, and from one of my fellow Aussies too!!! Thanks Makers Muse. P.S., I wonder how significant the weight change is using Lightweight PLA is. It's used a lot in 3D printed planes, and is still fairly durable.
I think the most entertaining class of battle bots would be like a wooden chassis only class or something. The problem with small robots that cant use explosives or projectiles is the armor to anti armor ratio just isn't there. I can just make a steel plated flipper robot and nearly no robot on the planet could generate enough kinetic energy to break through the armor which just isn't super interesting to watch. However seeing two wooden robots taking massive chunks out of each other as they trade blows splintering through armor would be absolutely sick
"I can just make a steel plated flipper robot and nearly no robot on the planet could generate enough kinetic energy to break through the armor"? Have you've seen modern insect weight bots? They can, will, and have easily tear a steel plated flipper apart. Hell, my beetleweights drum is so badly gouged and damaged that I can't use it anymore, and its a solid hunk of machined aluminum
@@Coboxite Bruh maybe it seems that way when you're the one that built it, but this stuff is televised lol. Ive maybe seen a handful of bots actually be destroyed, 95% of the time they just get disabled or get pushed out of the arena. Or just break.
When trying to save weight, see where you can use compliant mechanisms. Verastium interviewed the guy who helped pioneer engineering them. Some mechanisms printed in plastic don't break even after 1 million cycles.
This is awesome! Two requests: 1. How do the super fast autonomous sumobots magnetic hold down systems work? I'd love to see a build video of one of those! 2. Can you please share more information about your synths setup?
A few notes for 150g antweights I've found: a link might be easier than a switch - in a real event you don't want to use a toggle switch, you can use a jumper that's hard to pop off instead. Also you can definitely go with a 3S 150mah battery or wire them in series if you have space for wiring, just be careful soldering lipo batteries and accidently shorting them. Also 3D printed chassis have a lot of excess weight you don't need, I'd recommend very thin polycarbonate or fiber tape or carbon fiber for armor or lids to save weight. Lastly, I recommend mixing in a better controller so you can adjust the sensitivity of the mixing (instead of 100/100 proportions), it helps you get more control. Also with a weapon you can control dead zones and ramping.
Great video! FIRST robotics got me into building and designing. I loved the reprap video and actually it inspired me to start building a custom tantillus (:
The concept of 'ant class' battle bots from 3D Printed parts... HOW AM I JUST NOW HEARING ABOUT THIS???? That is such a fantastic idea to get people interested and involved in 3D Printing and Battle Bots, while keeping costs as low as possible.
and this is the best way , for kids to get into stem and mecatronics 👌
I also just learned about it. i had only ever seen the gigantic robots on tv. i probably would have pursued it earlier had i ever known about it.
now im researching how to get into it - specifically using 'ant class' as a query keyword. better late than never, i guess.
@@bobbyhutter5654 Other good keywords are 150g or 450g combat robots, 150g being antweight.
Thank you for bringing hobbyist combat robots to a bigger audience. There aren't enough of us.
We use several 3D printed parts, for both decoration and function, in our 250 pound combat robots (Tantrum and Blip)
In fact, we brought a few printers to the event (an Ender 5 and a Voron 2.4)
-Team Seems Reasonable
The man speaks the truth, TPU printed cases have been great for our electronics
I've only recently started watching battlebots stuff again, and Tantrum has quickly become one of my favorites!
Very cool! I heard there was a few markforged on site at BB as well? Gotta say, huge fan of Blip! Awesome design concept.
@@MakersMuse several teams have them. Printed parts definitely get used a lot for electronics mounting. We've had one printed inconel part before for fun, and Valkyrie has used some MetalX printed stainless parts before
Big fan of your videos! Glad you enjoy Blip, we're fond of her
"There's nothing stopping you from making an autonomous killer combat robot"
*John Connor has entered the chat*
Loved having the opportunity to meet you today Angus. You have been an inspiration for my Son in this amazing world of 3d printing. Keep up the good work you do. THANK YOU!
Thanks for swinging by, it's my pleasure! Will definitely keep making tutorials and videos 👍
A robot in every weight class!? That's pretty ambitious. Looking forward to seeing them all. :D
Oh, it's all fun and games until we get to the Mecha class.
Just got back from Norwalk Havoc (a huge beetle weight competition on the East Coast of the US) with my fully 3D printed 3 lb robot. The full TPU chassis held up fantastically until my last match where I fed it into a top tier horizontal spinner for 3 minutes. The flexibility of the filament effectively meant all my parts were shock mounted. My drive never died in any of my fights
I had really enjoyed building a 5.44Kg battle bot with my daughter and I can definitely recommend it as a learning experience. This was in 2015 and I was not into 3d printing yet, so as opposed to the engineers we were up against and their CAD designed and aluminium CNC constructed (and sponsored) robots, we went with a design using builders cardboard and then constructed the robot out of 3mm polycarbonate sheets (which can be cut with a bandsaw and is incredibly tough). We also used recycled stuff a lot - for instance the drive motors were ex-cordless driller motors and the weapon was made from reshaped (normal) printer rods! For the insides we used marine foam (super light, the stuff they use for boat seats) to protect the components. Of course the first time round there are lots of wrong turns and you can end up spending a lot of money for what is effectively 9 minutes of ring time. But the joy of seeing your creation out there battling away more than makes up for the spend. Thank you for this video!
I was hooked on watching Robot Wars too. Never went into building one. But watching this video amazed at how well the video was done. How long did it take you to edit this? EXCELLENT.
Thanks! It took... A while haha. Hope it's handy!
@@MakersMuse I'm going to show my coworker. I'm 100% convinced this will push him over the edge to buy a printer and also to sub to you haha
Excellent content. I may just print and build my first remote controlled device.
i also loved robot wars i watched the original series
@@MakersMuse ooh boy wait till you see the American version, battle bots, were robots are so big they are the size of a Person nearly, one legend, icewave, is the only internal combustion robot with a 2 stroke engine powering like a 100 or 50 pound blade up to speeds above 100mph, tombstone is a lawn mower on all the drugs, his first fight or one of his fights against "counter revelution" he beat the living hell out of it and turned it into nothing, ray billings on yt for tombstone
Thanks for this video! I LOVE Battlebots and would love to see more of this kind of content!
Me too!
Great, just what I need, yet ANOTHER hobby to obsess over.
I was a mentor for a middle school FIRST Robotics team a few years back. My first team of 4 kids won the State Championship our first time out.
I've always been a big proponent of getting kids involved in Robotics. A lot of former FIRST Robotics member are working with places like NASA, etc.
This video is worth its weight in gold just for the 2 wire 1 ziptie trick. That will come in so handy in the future! Love the vid as always!!
I just can see you child/raw joy coming out when you talk about this topic.
Great Video! Love seeing more people building and sharing Combat Robot designs! I have only done one competition so far at MACRO in Maryland, but it was a ton of fun.
Would've killed for a video like this a few years ago when I was getting started, super informative, especially the wiring. Definitely looking forward to seeing more from this series!
Angus the most adorable DIY maker. Thank you so many details flowing seamlessly in this 28 minute video. ❤❤❤
The brief ESC explanation you performed is missing everywhere. Your explanation is one of the best I've found. Plus your explanation of BECs fantastic!!
I would love to see you do a more detailed explanation on ESC/BEC. Specifically the "fiddly" bits of a higher draw servo/motor item added into a circuit..
Doing my best to try to integrate a project like this as CAD training for a bunch of the kids in the FTC club at my school. Great video!
Use the power of the Slicer, Angus!
I had a friend wanted a fairly specific mounting frame for a project, had about 85-88g for a frame, rather than make and weigh several prototypes I sliced the model in Cura, that said that I was way over, did a few redesigns and got it down to 78g, printed it - and V3.3b design was strong and light enough for them. I also discovered a cool hack, you can use 0% infill and big voids to lighten something, and where you want a mount point, add a daisy pattern of holes, the holes each have to have walls and so the mount point ends up solid enough to glue something to or put a screw or bolt into.
I've been slowly getting more and more interested in doing some combat robot stuff lately (unfortunately there isn't really a local scene from what research I've done), so thank you for doing this series! If I ever get around to doing one, I'll absolutely use this video as a starting point!
One thing to mention, especially with insect class bots, is to balance speed and control. If your bot is humming bird fast but controls like a city bus you quickly become limited especially against a nimble bot that can get angles on you. No one wants side flipped because you can’t turn 😅.
I just get flash backs to that one robot that was too fast and destroyed the other both within 2 seconds.
I grew up watching battle bots and always amazed and I wanted to make one I am from Adelaide too
I love this! Here in the Denver/Colorado Springs area, we've had a long tradition - the Critter Crunch. The Crunches were held during conventions, and technically started out as Critter Crawls... but a group that calls itself the "Denver Mad Scientist's Club" isn't going to settle for a little parade for long. Thus the Crunch was born. I stumbled onto them in the mid-'90s, and they had been going strong for a while even then.
Now, given that these were held at science fiction conventions, and thus, mostly at hotels, some of the more... violent and destructive options had to be.. contained. So instead of trying to break the other Critter, the Crunch evolved into more of a Sumo-style competition, aiming to shove the opponent either off an 8 foot square platform, or render them immobile. There were still shenanigans galore, but the hotel liaisons worried less about emergency visits by the fire department. (I do know of at least one tiny flame thrower, and I think Gomez did finally retire Big Punch due to issues with the launched spike tether breaking.)
Other quirks:
While never a requirement, there was something of a tradition of scrounging parts rather than buying them, at least for the larger class. Motors were frequently sourced from junked cars - windshield wiper and powered window motors were quite popular as I recall.
To keep things from getting out of hand (and potentially taking over the con), there were only two weight classes - two pound and twenty pound, both limited to an initial size of one cubic foot. A common design element was some sort of plate or ramp that would drop down once the round began. There had been mention of a larger, two hundred pound class, but that would have been exhibition only - partly because one of the hotel liaisons about fainted at the mention, and partly because there would be the risk of several competitors trying to fit themselves inside.
Hey, they are called "mad" scientists, after all.
And one of the odder quirks in the earlier years, the twenty pound class was initially not allowed to have remote controls. It seems that there were some occasional issues of interference, causing problems such as blocking the signal of the opponent, or actually controlling the others Critter. Since these issues were inconsistent, it was decided to require all twenty-pound class Critters to be run via a cabled controller. This had the benefit of some extra entertainment as combatants had to circle around the platform to control their tethered Critter, while both dodging and not getting tangled up in each other's cable. Occasionally even minor acrobatics came into play.
Meh, I could babble on even more, but my clock just reminded me I need to be back up in a few hours. Needless to say, though, I'll be watching these builds closely and with great enjoyment. And yes, I plan to download the file... in the morning...
MJF is some incredible stuff. I have done prints with ~.5MM walls and while they are flexible, I have done it for my model train prints. Anything 1MM + is dang tough. I once had a train shell cab, which is mostly thin walls, fall into a rat trap and get shot across the room and it survived with only a minor crack! A regular resin print would have just shattered instantly.
I loved robot wars when it was still around in the UK and I've always wanted to build my own robot. I think this may be a start
I'm forwarding this to my 3D printing friends this is going to be so much fun!!! Thank you so much!!!
I remember going to combots with my friends when I was little. It was like the battlebots heavyweight category. So many fun memories.
I’ve been interested in RC type electronics for a while now but generally the electronic stuff has been a bit daunting to understand and apply to your own projects, I really appreciate the way you explained how each component works explaining the fundamentals. I’m sure it’s probably second nature for most of the audience but it a knowledge gap that I haven’t seen many other content makers fill.
Thanks Angus, I was thinking about building an rc tank. Not for battle, just as an rc vehicle so this is a great introduction to what I'll need to get into
I love the idea of you making 3d printed battlebots! Please make more videos like this besides the 1,36kg bot you mentioned in the end!
Great to see you building again!
Cant wait to see you at Havoc 5
Gonna be a blast !
@@MakersMuse For sure! I'm interested to see your new sportsman
I've had to throw mine together in less than a week so its a bit of a bodge, but it should still be fun to fight
@@TeamPanicRobotics it's going to be a mad rush, still waiting on so many parts!
Fair play to you showing that even an experienced bot builder can make mistakes ie the weight came out too heavy ...thanks for showing the trial and error nature of designing and building things ...and not being put off that it's not always perfect first time
I was also hooked as a kid. I did the FIRST robotics program in high school and then my friends and I did combat robots for fun.
I dabbled in ant weights and beetle weights. It was so fun. Ever since I started 3D printing I've always thought about how much it would have helped back then.
The enthusiasm in this video makes me smile :)
Seeing the Alpha Phoenix video on robot competition, the combat aspect sounds a lot more fun and the engineering challenges will be similar. And you are more free to be creative with your offense
I think with the bots Michael Prentice had at MRRF, we're going to see an explosion of bots being created in the 3D printing community. They were a blast to watch
I am making a full sized printed R2 - lot of what you talk about in this video is directly related. Thanks Angus!
When I was 12 and Battlebots was on air for the first time I designed my own. I used graphing paper and ruler and refined my design, simple.
A flipper bot with such power and violence, sloped sides of course because I'm the one doing the flipping. I got sponsored by a major pneumatics company, if I could get the chassis and electronics they would give me all the pneumatic components I needed. For an ant weight this wouldn't work but it was 2 pneumatic cylinders connected in series with a joint. One mounted horizontally with a guide for the joint and the other vertical connected to that flipper arm... I did the math, "thrower arm" would be more accurate 😁
I remember going back to first day of Robotwar, I kept thinking what will I build to compete, but lack of a welder. Not this time, I got 3d printer to help with, thank to you.
Loved robot wars as a kid, remember watching the first episode when it aired in the UK and watched pretty much every series which was aired. Even watched the re-boot several years back, myself, my husband and our housemate were yelling at the TV like it was a football game! 😂
Didn’t know there were different weight classes, so tempted to try this! 😁
It's so cute I can't handle it!! Reminds me of that RC car Decepticon from Transformers!
I'm glad to see you're back in shape
I haven’t even watch the entire video yet. but I got to say man I love your inspiration on everything you tackle. You wanna take us along with all of these builds I can’t wait. I really wanna join and jump in. I am going to get my 3-D printer out of the closet. I love all your videos Man. I love the continent.
I do frc and it is really Interesting hearing a different side of robots, where armour is more important that any other
I'm so glad you made this video! Your rc video from last year was fantastic for getting into robotics and I learned a lot since. This video is a great review to everything I learned!
I highly recommend getting dome helping hands for the soldering, they will make your life a lot easier
I've never heard of robot wars but something that I used to watch when I was younger here in the states was something called BattleBots which was essentially the same concept
Yeah! Same idea.
Wow, great video!
I haven't played around with remote controlled robots before but I will surely give this a go.
I loved watching Robot Wars! Craig Charles was on the show when I was watching it. One of my favorite Smeg Heads, see Red Dwarf in IMDB for reference, still around robots was cool.
To ten year old me, he was *the* guy to host robot combat, just had a knack for it without the theatrical showboating.
It makes soldiering more of a pain, but I would shorten most of the wires to minimum, as copper is heavy, (comparatively to the weight class.)
For robots that get jostled around you would want a little extra length for strain relief though.
Awesome video Angus, been waiting for more robot videos for a long time, very worth waiting for, can't wait for more. Although I have built a slightly bigger robot in the past (82.5 Kg and I don't even have a garage) I do hope to get time to build some more sensible ones soon.
It's definitely been a long time coming! I remember your machine, definitely worth a revisit :)
Hey great video. I love that it was familiar due to being Australian. Thanks for your efforts in your videos to help others get into this process.
ive loved battle bots all my life! so happy to see you cover this
What a fun project to do. Long ago used to watch Battle bots but didn't have resources to make my own but nowadays its a different story and probably should give it a go. Thanks for the inspiration
ok describe tombstone
Thank you for this excellent guide! I've been following *ahem* Armored RC combat vehicles (OK combat robotics isn't technically correct, but goodness isn't it so much easier?) since I was in High School and it thrills me how far its come. And now as an older adult with more income I'm happily swimming in FDM designs and realizing a life-ling dream to make custom electronics and later RC!
I like your "114 ml" of motors! LOL
(I have an identical scale.)
Even better it was on the "Milk" setting.
Haha I didn't even realise till you said it 😂
I actually picked up combat robot during pandemic. I am now in sydney but havent managed to build a bot or go to compete in ARC. Once my studies become a bit lighter, plan to build a beetleweight and compete with it. Thanks for the great video! Got some helpful ideas on starting the design part!
Tip for when you mention using a cable tie to hold 2 tinned wires together to join them onto their place.
Instead bare the wire ends that you need and twist the wires together BEFORE you tin them, then tin them both as one mass before attaching them onto their desired pin.
It’s both easier to do and also will give abit more redundancy on your soldering during heavey use
Nice Angus!
Love the zip tie soldering trick😎
Fugu…..poisonous little fish❤️
Awesome walkthrough; I just started making plans to start battling in the coming months, and while I have a lot of experience with RC building (mostly flying things,) there were some nuggets that I didn't know (e.g. braking) that kept me watching to the end. Thanks!
I met Razer in my local model shop in Bournemouth. It is HUGE!
ah man, i just love your face! the moment you come back: and here he is! with the new hair cut, epic! :)
Glad to see you building again!
Really impressed with so much usable information in one video. Thank you so much!
Antweight in the USA is 453 grams (1lb). UK antweights are 150g, which the USA calls fairyweight.
Not to be confused with featherweight. Those are a little different.
You can remove the case from receiver to save some weight. Nice video!
As long as you remember the pinouts it's a good idea for sure!
Great video! I hope everything is well in the Covid situation and all family members are doing great! Thanks again for the knowledge sharing.
Nice vid. Ordered my first 3d printer today, Ender-3 v2. Got a potentially rewarding / frustrating weekend ahead of me!
Good Job! One revision I would have made is instead of a big saw arm, i would have sandwiched the belt between two thinner plates, that way it would have had the same stiffness, but a bit of armor too. Maybe some sort of mechanical clutch to limit the torque on the arm too. I too have had a hell of a time keeping these DC motors and their controllers alive in industrial applications where there's force applied to them. Maybe i'd use an electric piston mechanically disconnected from the arm pushing on it
Hi Angus great video. Use carbon fibre nylon as print material for the competition robots. It is more pain to print but the gains in strength durability and weight will show.
The competition he is going to only allows PET, PETG, ABS, PLA or PLA+
Also, shorten your wire runs! You could cut a pretty decent amount of weight just by reducing the length of wiring you have bundled in there. Any excess wiring spaghetti is just additional weight in the form of copper + plastic sheathing. (Seriously, cut your wires shorter.)
He could also take a dremel and get some of the plastic out from the inside. A few bevels and round cuts could help. Every little bit helps!
Haha yep going to employ all those tricks to get it in weight!
@@MakersMuse So, is this battlebot craze the real reason the world is short on motor controllers like the Sabertooth lately? I'm still waiting on mine for my R2. :)
Thanks , a new road for me. Your work encourages.
It does occur to me that for something like this you could get away without a tank mixer simply by having each stick control one motor. I don't say that would be better, just an option. For something that had other devices to control, you probably wouldn't want to do it because you'd want the other stick for the other thing, but for this, you could do the mixing manually.
This was fun! I'm working on an astromech and mostly understand the electronics, but it's good to get some basic principles in a different context. Looking forward for the big one!
Great video on how to start with competitive robots!
Awesome. Thanks for this. I’ll do this with my kid.
This was a fun video to watch Angus!
I want to start doing this with my spouse but it’s so intimidating. Thank you for sharing this
More of this please. BB Season 7 just fired up.
Wow. That was an awesome video!! Loved it so much. Getting into RC planes, and looks like both hobbies share a lot of the same equipment and knowledge.
Again, such an awesome video, and from one of my fellow Aussies too!!!
Thanks Makers Muse.
P.S., I wonder how significant the weight change is using Lightweight PLA is. It's used a lot in 3D printed planes, and is still fairly durable.
I think the most entertaining class of battle bots would be like a wooden chassis only class or something. The problem with small robots that cant use explosives or projectiles is the armor to anti armor ratio just isn't there. I can just make a steel plated flipper robot and nearly no robot on the planet could generate enough kinetic energy to break through the armor which just isn't super interesting to watch. However seeing two wooden robots taking massive chunks out of each other as they trade blows splintering through armor would be absolutely sick
"I can just make a steel plated flipper robot and nearly no robot on the planet could generate enough kinetic energy to break through the armor"? Have you've seen modern insect weight bots? They can, will, and have easily tear a steel plated flipper apart. Hell, my beetleweights drum is so badly gouged and damaged that I can't use it anymore, and its a solid hunk of machined aluminum
@@Coboxite Bruh maybe it seems that way when you're the one that built it, but this stuff is televised lol. Ive maybe seen a handful of bots actually be destroyed, 95% of the time they just get disabled or get pushed out of the arena. Or just break.
I used to watch your combat robot channel when i was a kid and just realized that was you, lol.
Great video for new bees to remote controlling. And you know what, it’s also great for playing with your cat 😂
i always wondered how people make those. thanks for this video!
When trying to save weight, see where you can use compliant mechanisms. Verastium interviewed the guy who helped pioneer engineering them. Some mechanisms printed in plastic don't break even after 1 million cycles.
that haircut did make me scroll back to see if i had been being attention to what you showed. Apparently i was paying attention
This is awesome! Two requests:
1. How do the super fast autonomous sumobots magnetic hold down systems work? I'd love to see a build video of one of those!
2. Can you please share more information about your synths setup?
I would like to see more off this, Nice vid!!!
Pretty awesome man, thanks for sharing the full robot experience
I might have to get in on this 3D printed battlebot thing
Ohh yessss 3d printed battle bot!
this reminds me of robot arena 2 :) you have to play it too! I'm sure you gonna love it
Loved that game! Especially the modded version.
@@MakersMuse yeah the mods make the difference :)Some of my bots actually hovered at the end :D
LOVE THIS! 🤘 Keep making more of this!
A few notes for 150g antweights I've found: a link might be easier than a switch - in a real event you don't want to use a toggle switch, you can use a jumper that's hard to pop off instead. Also you can definitely go with a 3S 150mah battery or wire them in series if you have space for wiring, just be careful soldering lipo batteries and accidently shorting them. Also 3D printed chassis have a lot of excess weight you don't need, I'd recommend very thin polycarbonate or fiber tape or carbon fiber for armor or lids to save weight. Lastly, I recommend mixing in a better controller so you can adjust the sensitivity of the mixing (instead of 100/100 proportions), it helps you get more control. Also with a weapon you can control dead zones and ramping.
Wow, great walkthrou of the process/design
Thanks for sharing your video with All of is👍😃
This series is awesome. I can't wait
Try using HIPS. It is very light and strong. Had a lot of success using a glass bed with an abs slurry.
Great video, valuable information. Well done fella!
Great video! FIRST robotics got me into building and designing. I loved the reprap video and actually it inspired me to start building a custom tantillus (:
Love the robot and the merch too!!