Some detail on the video making process for those interested: This video is the first I've made with my new laptop and software. Moved from a 2019 15" Macbook pro and Final Cut Pro to a specced out Framework 16 and Davinci Resolve 19. I wanted a project to make me learn the new software, and so a 42 minute video appeared. A bit different from the usual as it's less of a lecture and more of an event report, but hopefully its still entertaining and educational. Definately prefer Revolve over Final Cut though I have had an enormous amount of crashes thats somehow linked to how the software loads in media files. As you can probably tell, I like putting together match highlight sections with music. Have been doing this since my FRC days, reckon its a good way of going about this as it allows me to try and communicate the '''''''v i b e''''''' of the event. Bonus points I can fill the dead space where slow motion clips have no audio, or the box camera is popping out of its mind. 1080p 60fps is what i've made all my videos in at this point as 4k is kinda pointless if the majority of people are watching on their phones. Personally even on my 2560xSomething laptop I set the quality to 720p. Both video and Audio are recorded on my Nothing Phone 2 at 1080p 60 for the most part, 4k 60fps for important stuff, 1080p 30fps for really long recordings. Have hours on hours of footage of the robot builds that never gets used but that seems like the way of things. By the way, love the framework 16. Good performance, stupid storage and ram (4tb, 64gb), genuinely repairable and modular, helpful support and complete documentation. Especially coming from two MBPs for the 12 years i've had a computer of my own.
Thanks for the additional update. I am planning to switch to resolve as well, and I hope Framework will get Nvidia GPUs (as I need CUDA which is proprietary NVIDIA software for my work and projects) despite the AMD partnership. Keep up the good work.
@@louisdt241yeah I'm not experienced enough to know if the whole amd-nvidia hardware difference matters, but the GPU in this machine (7700S module) chugged along just fine.
Been using Resolve on my desktop PC for years, its great! I also got a Framework 13 AMD version several months back and I love it as a secondary portable machine.
From the design thought process, the little manufacturing montages to the combat footage with tasteful slow motions thrown in that was one of the most coherent and entertaining combat robot videos i've seen in a while. Amazing work!
I love watching your videos there is so much good engineering in there, from the CAD to the machining, to just understanding mechanical stuff. I am crying into my tea, by comparison my robots are crude and badly made; the most advanced piece I've machined is a wheel hub which has only a few operations on a lathe or pillar drill. I had at least a vague moment of sympathy when you broke the tap in the workpiece, I have done that on more than one occasion.
I'm in debilitating pain due to an allergy to neproxin I didn't know I had. Thank you for this video, it's helping a lot. I love your channel, the way you break down your bots into approachable concepts, the way you show your thinking, and also your dry humour. It's definetely a nice break from the 'attention attack' style most videos are these days, while still being very enriching.
Swerve drive is a crazy idea for a combat robot. Significantly more points and modes of failure, plus twice the actuators, and non-invertible in the config you have. Personally, I don't see that big of a benefit over holonomic due to the weight and complexity implications, but you're the expert.
@vincentsoubbotin7830 You're absolutely right, but that's the challenge. Omni drive is more complex etc. than tank with minimal advantages too, i'm hoping that swerve actually drifts properly with the weight imbalance though.
@BrokenLinkRobotics given that most of the weight is on the wheels closest to the weapon anyways, (hence the issue with drifting you mentioned), have you considering just putting a dead castor wheel/steel ball roller as the third rear wheel? Would significantly reduce weight and number of actuators/unique machined parts. With that setup you could potentially even link the steering actuation for both modules together using a belt as there's no reason to ever point the wheels in different directions.
Your videos continue to amaze me with the dedication, effort and awesome engineering. A pretty great result, especially the driver awards. Once those little kinks are sorted, you'll have a powerful and dependable roaster or bots
@14:30 - we didn't need that one anyway. New BrokenLink video? The day has been officially made great. Still no one wheel melty, but i'll let you slide on that. Great video, as always. Thank you for sharing your processes.
I really like something about your design process. I can't put my finger on it but everything you do seems so simple and effective. Edit: man i cant stand pits in arenas. Never seen a pit loss that felt deserved.
Great video as always. I hope to one day build a robot that drives as well as subdivide B. I may be biased but the slow motion footage 23:09 is my favourite part
The weapon motor wires on Subdivide A and B really flail around. It looks like a couple times they were thrown right into your opponent's weapon. In the fight against antweight Business Time if the wires were zip-tied to the weapon arm it might have saved them. Subdivide is a really neat design, and I love your choice of using a gyro to control the weapon arm. That just looks like so much fun!
I wonder if the arm breakage was _caused_ by having two arms. With one arm the arm is free to flex and bounce, but with two arms it would be much more rigid and the lateral force would be focused into a bending force at the arm's weakest point. It basically makes a parallelogram linkage which wants to snap the arms right at the joints. A cross brace would probably help.
1:54 happy to be the cause behind the end of this streak (: Another great video of course. Very keen to see flywheel flipper development along with scale, subdivide etc. would a 'roll cage' aswell as rear stabilising forks on DES help with staying planted and reducing the likelihood of bouncing off the weapon when unstable?
Would be rather interesting to see what parametric design processes could produce as far as iterations for big bot designs. Had no idea people would use that sort of method to come up with blueprints.
You're a talented builder but I do have my concerns that carbon fiber would be too brittle as an external part due to its brittleness. The nylon was probably the way to go from the outset. Anyway, good video I've been waiting impatiently for more content from you!! 🙂🙂
@LukeisKool It's called 'Polyurethane Cord'. It's good material for drive belts and typically used for conveyor belts. Can melt it together from a long string with a soldering iron.
Holy crap the beetleweight Business Time is vicious. Glad you were at least able to find redemption against the antweight version. That weapon arm is wild. You could almost run it as a pure hammer with no spinner and be successful. Also, it's kinda wild to me that there's about a 10x difference in weight between the Australian Beetle and Ant weight classes. Is there any interest in something like the US Antweight class?
@neutronium9542 we've discussed it, but it hits a middle ground that both ants and beetles satisfy in their own way. Would probably just become beetle weapons bolted to ant drivetrians.
Looking into it. Was recommended a Rode Wireless thingo, unless you have a better suggestion. The 'nice' mic I have was used in the previous subdivide video but was too ASMR-ey so stopped using it as the slightly lower fidelity was preferable to that.
@@BrokenLinkRoboticsI am by no means an expert but personally use a Røde NT1A for audio projects (it is not wireless though). Your current mic setup has a bit much reverb and too little dynamic range which makes your voice sound less articulate (especially when using poor speakers or small phone speakers in horizontal mode). That being said your content has really contributed a lot to my newly found interest in combat robotics. Your in depth content is truly an island in a sea of superficial robotics content. Keep up the good work - and don’t stress about the mic thing - it was just some friendly advice.
@@louisdt241 Hmm NT1A is a bit outside the price range right now, but will keep that sort of microphone in mind (aware it's just an example). Another youtuber I talk to uses the Rode Wireless Go 2, a same price but looks like it'll just work wheras the NT1A needs supporting hardware? Glad you're enjoying the videos.
@@BrokenLinkRobotics yeah the NT1A requires an additional audio interface (like a focusrite Scarlet which are cheap 2nd hand) + I see why you would want a wireless mic.
Would dual vertical spinners turning the opposite direction cancel out the gyro effect? Each would weigh less but would the gain in control be worth it? Just curious, great showing with the fleet!
One of the advantages of vertical spinners is sending the target flying and not yourself. A spinner going the opposite direction would send yourself flying, although it seems to do that anyway. :P This is kinda why beater bars are popular; they still have significant momentum, but less gyroscopic leverage.
Another amazing design! Do you think it's possible to make a hub motor without cutting off the magenta ring? I'm trying to find a good way of stabilizing a horizontal spinner direct drive system, and the hub motor you made is inspiring, but I don't have a whole metal shop at my disposal.
@josstrigaming you can cut the motor up with a hacksaw and file, all my other robots with modified motors were done that way including Scale. Mill was just a nicety
I may have missed it in the video, but are you using any sort of encoder of software travel limit on the arm motor, or actuating it forward and backwards and letting it stall? I love the look of the continuous curves and shapes on this bot, tunned out looking really cool!
Just watching old Vids, untill a new one is out. What made you go with that design for the weapon arm? Weight? Also is they no way to hide the weapon cables they seem really exposed
Scale put on a great showing. What a monster. It looked like it was bullying every other robot up until the last match. Edit: does Scale have the ability to strafe? If so, do you just not do it cause its not effective or do you not have the controls for it or something?
@kobitz9001 it does, but rarely comes up in combat nowadays. The first version did al the time as it was typically trying to outmanouver an opponent whereas this version more often just rams the beater bar forward.
@@BrokenLinkRobotics makes sense. Like I said, Scale looked like a bully for every match before the last. Really seemed to preform well. The main thing I could see the strafe being fun for is matador-ing other bots when they charge.
@@kobitz9001 Indeed, hopefully the swerve does it better. Should also help with gyro, it dosent look like it but the slight lifting does inhibit this current versions manoeuverability. Better strafing means no gyro.
I actually like push bots. They're like a baseline all robots have to pass to be truly great. You can have the most complicated and impressive weapon systems in existence, but if a simple pusher without a weapon can beat you you were fundamentally missing something.
@@mme.veronica735 traction, they were missing traction. that said it can't be that hard to get better drive when you can dedicate a bunch more weight to it.
Some detail on the video making process for those interested:
This video is the first I've made with my new laptop and software. Moved from a 2019 15" Macbook pro and Final Cut Pro to a specced out Framework 16 and Davinci Resolve 19. I wanted a project to make me learn the new software, and so a 42 minute video appeared. A bit different from the usual as it's less of a lecture and more of an event report, but hopefully its still entertaining and educational. Definately prefer Revolve over Final Cut though I have had an enormous amount of crashes thats somehow linked to how the software loads in media files.
As you can probably tell, I like putting together match highlight sections with music. Have been doing this since my FRC days, reckon its a good way of going about this as it allows me to try and communicate the '''''''v i b e''''''' of the event. Bonus points I can fill the dead space where slow motion clips have no audio, or the box camera is popping out of its mind.
1080p 60fps is what i've made all my videos in at this point as 4k is kinda pointless if the majority of people are watching on their phones. Personally even on my 2560xSomething laptop I set the quality to 720p. Both video and Audio are recorded on my Nothing Phone 2 at 1080p 60 for the most part, 4k 60fps for important stuff, 1080p 30fps for really long recordings. Have hours on hours of footage of the robot builds that never gets used but that seems like the way of things.
By the way, love the framework 16. Good performance, stupid storage and ram (4tb, 64gb), genuinely repairable and modular, helpful support and complete documentation. Especially coming from two MBPs for the 12 years i've had a computer of my own.
Thanks for the additional update. I am planning to switch to resolve as well, and I hope Framework will get Nvidia GPUs (as I need CUDA which is proprietary NVIDIA software for my work and projects) despite the AMD partnership. Keep up the good work.
@@louisdt241yeah I'm not experienced enough to know if the whole amd-nvidia hardware difference matters, but the GPU in this machine (7700S module) chugged along just fine.
Been using Resolve on my desktop PC for years, its great! I also got a Framework 13 AMD version several months back and I love it as a secondary portable machine.
Are you using ExpressLRS now?
@@erremilia All my robots use the ADFS2A Protocol, if thats what you mean
Man I love watching these, your engineering is crazy.
10:03 Canadian jump scare
my question is why?
Canadians are terrifying have you met them. All polite and stuff
@@BrokenLinkRoboticsAs a Canadian, I beg to differ about being polite
They have some wicked bastards in Edmonton. Never visiting there anytime soon.
From the design thought process, the little manufacturing montages to the combat footage with tasteful slow motions thrown in that was one of the most coherent and entertaining combat robot videos i've seen in a while. Amazing work!
21:16 i think that might be the closest pit escape i have ever seen. Awesome performance from all your bots.
As a Canadian, I was very confused with this music
Same man
Likewise.
35:17 I believe that is called karma and felt extremely cathartic after seeing the earlier beetleweight fight.
The gyro controls looked so fun. You get to smash with your controller to smash with your arm!
I love watching your videos there is so much good engineering in there, from the CAD to the machining, to just understanding mechanical stuff.
I am crying into my tea, by comparison my robots are crude and badly made; the most advanced piece I've machined is a wheel hub which has only a few operations on a lathe or pillar drill.
I had at least a vague moment of sympathy when you broke the tap in the workpiece, I have done that on more than one occasion.
The little kids for scale is awesome! Antweights are so cute!
Criminally underrated channel
Im so excited for the future of this channel
Thank you for thinking outside of the box. True engineer and entertainment in educational stand point
I'm in debilitating pain due to an allergy to neproxin I didn't know I had. Thank you for this video, it's helping a lot.
I love your channel, the way you break down your bots into approachable concepts, the way you show your thinking, and also your dry humour. It's definetely a nice break from the 'attention attack' style most videos are these days, while still being very enriching.
Swerve drive is a crazy idea for a combat robot. Significantly more points and modes of failure, plus twice the actuators, and non-invertible in the config you have. Personally, I don't see that big of a benefit over holonomic due to the weight and complexity implications, but you're the expert.
@vincentsoubbotin7830 You're absolutely right, but that's the challenge. Omni drive is more complex etc. than tank with minimal advantages too, i'm hoping that swerve actually drifts properly with the weight imbalance though.
@BrokenLinkRobotics given that most of the weight is on the wheels closest to the weapon anyways, (hence the issue with drifting you mentioned), have you considering just putting a dead castor wheel/steel ball roller as the third rear wheel? Would significantly reduce weight and number of actuators/unique machined parts. With that setup you could potentially even link the steering actuation for both modules together using a belt as there's no reason to ever point the wheels in different directions.
Your videos continue to amaze me with the dedication, effort and awesome engineering. A pretty great result, especially the driver awards. Once those little kinks are sorted, you'll have a powerful and dependable roaster or bots
Another work of art mate, great job!
@14:30 - we didn't need that one anyway.
New BrokenLink video? The day has been officially made great.
Still no one wheel melty, but i'll let you slide on that. Great video, as always. Thank you for sharing your processes.
2 screw is minimum before shit went crazy anyway
Congrats on your wins! Really enjoying following your engineering progression
I really like something about your design process. I can't put my finger on it but everything you do seems so simple and effective.
Edit: man i cant stand pits in arenas. Never seen a pit loss that felt deserved.
Great video as always. I hope to one day build a robot that drives as well as subdivide B. I may be biased but the slow motion footage 23:09 is my favourite part
I love your videos, they're an instant watch for me! congratulations on a great result :)
Awesome channel, the algorithm smiles upon you this day
It's insane the amount of work in your videos. What a crazy pack of robots
I suspect the reason that the small disc on Derive is so potent is that the lifting arm frequently forces openings on the bottom of other robots.
I like the music choices, keep it up
I like your videos. Your monotonous script delivery helps me fall asleep when I want to take a nap in front of the TV ❤️
Ad some small levers to your controller. Just keep it simple print a sleave around the wheel control like a drill press lever. Boom thumb throttle!
The weapon motor wires on Subdivide A and B really flail around. It looks like a couple times they were thrown right into your opponent's weapon. In the fight against antweight Business Time if the wires were zip-tied to the weapon arm it might have saved them.
Subdivide is a really neat design, and I love your choice of using a gyro to control the weapon arm. That just looks like so much fun!
9:20 I had a terrible experience with tapping holes in a shop class, and hole tapping scares me to this day. RIP that tap and part
Actually some of the best combat robot footage on yt, love it. Love the montage-style of the tournament, I wish to do some stuff similar one day.
I wonder if the arm breakage was _caused_ by having two arms. With one arm the arm is free to flex and bounce, but with two arms it would be much more rigid and the lateral force would be focused into a bending force at the arm's weakest point. It basically makes a parallelogram linkage which wants to snap the arms right at the joints.
A cross brace would probably help.
@TlalocTemporal hmmm maybe. Testing required
The sound of a spined up weapon in the first test is truly terrifying.
14:09 Sounds like an air raid siren!! These little robots are truly terrifying and I would not want to be in the same room as it :p
about your new project - checkout swerve drive, it's commonly used in First Robotics Competition
It's so cool to see my robots turn up in this recap
Great first song!
I love the full pits during the rumbles
1:54 happy to be the cause behind the end of this streak (:
Another great video of course. Very keen to see flywheel flipper development along with scale, subdivide etc. would a 'roll cage' aswell as rear stabilising forks on DES help with staying planted and reducing the likelihood of bouncing off the weapon when unstable?
Love the new bot but scale just keeps being my favorite
Would be rather interesting to see what parametric design processes could produce as far as iterations for big bot designs. Had no idea people would use that sort of method to come up with blueprints.
You're a talented builder but I do have my concerns that carbon fiber would be too brittle as an external part due to its brittleness. The nylon was probably the way to go from the outset.
Anyway, good video I've been waiting impatiently for more content from you!! 🙂🙂
"why do i hear a little bit of the canadian national anthem in this orchestral music" *looks at song list* "civ 6 canada industrial theme" huh
Great video as always but god I would KILL for a workshop like that
I need that flywheel flipping goodness!!!
10:04 sudden O Canada? hwa? But in all seriousness, awesome montages, keep up the destruction!
Canadian anthem goes hard!
sunsetter goes hard
canadian national anthem followed up strong by the homestuck national anthem
14:13 Imagine that thing going into your foot
28:11 what is that position??
love watching your videos are always entertaining, and educational!
By far my favorite channel for learning how the robots work! Quick question, what is the green band that drives subdivide?
@LukeisKool It's called 'Polyurethane Cord'. It's good material for drive belts and typically used for conveyor belts. Can melt it together from a long string with a soldering iron.
@@BrokenLinkRobotics Thanks a ton! I just bought some 2mm cord for a fairyweight and a custom hexbug!
Holy crap the beetleweight Business Time is vicious. Glad you were at least able to find redemption against the antweight version.
That weapon arm is wild. You could almost run it as a pure hammer with no spinner and be successful.
Also, it's kinda wild to me that there's about a 10x difference in weight between the Australian Beetle and Ant weight classes. Is there any interest in something like the US Antweight class?
@neutronium9542 we've discussed it, but it hits a middle ground that both ants and beetles satisfy in their own way. Would probably just become beetle weapons bolted to ant drivetrians.
Man I love ur videos but u gotta upgrade that mic to match the quality of the content
Looking into it. Was recommended a Rode Wireless thingo, unless you have a better suggestion. The 'nice' mic I have was used in the previous subdivide video but was too ASMR-ey so stopped using it as the slightly lower fidelity was preferable to that.
@@BrokenLinkRoboticsI am by no means an expert but personally use a Røde NT1A for audio projects (it is not wireless though). Your current mic setup has a bit much reverb and too little dynamic range which makes your voice sound less articulate (especially when using poor speakers or small phone speakers in horizontal mode). That being said your content has really contributed a lot to my newly found interest in combat robotics. Your in depth content is truly an island in a sea of superficial robotics content. Keep up the good work - and don’t stress about the mic thing - it was just some friendly advice.
@@BrokenLinkRobotics I've had good experience with the single Rode mic I have, though I haven't used it for voiceovers.
@@louisdt241 Hmm NT1A is a bit outside the price range right now, but will keep that sort of microphone in mind (aware it's just an example). Another youtuber I talk to uses the Rode Wireless Go 2, a same price but looks like it'll just work wheras the NT1A needs supporting hardware? Glad you're enjoying the videos.
@@BrokenLinkRobotics yeah the NT1A requires an additional audio interface (like a focusrite Scarlet which are cheap 2nd hand) + I see why you would want a wireless mic.
Why the fuck is the canadian anthem playing., i'm at 10:33 and it took me a bit to realize before I started getting the lyrics. HUH?
Because it's majestic and beautiful, just like process of bringing your will to life.
@djarkaiid slaps
Would dual vertical spinners turning the opposite direction cancel out the gyro effect? Each would weigh less but would the gain in control be worth it? Just curious, great showing with the fleet!
One of the advantages of vertical spinners is sending the target flying and not yourself. A spinner going the opposite direction would send yourself flying, although it seems to do that anyway. :P
This is kinda why beater bars are popular; they still have significant momentum, but less gyroscopic leverage.
Could maybe gear a flywheel to counter rotate in the same area so the counter engagement doesn't happen, but it still contributes to damage
Now make it more dangerous
Subdivide C full scale robot
Another amazing design! Do you think it's possible to make a hub motor without cutting off the magenta ring? I'm trying to find a good way of stabilizing a horizontal spinner direct drive system, and the hub motor you made is inspiring, but I don't have a whole metal shop at my disposal.
@josstrigaming you can cut the motor up with a hacksaw and file, all my other robots with modified motors were done that way including Scale. Mill was just a nicety
@@BrokenLinkRobotics awesome! Thanks for the info!
more proof that tipspeed limits are stupid, they shoukd use ke as a estimate instead
I may have missed it in the video, but are you using any sort of encoder of software travel limit on the arm motor, or actuating it forward and backwards and letting it stall? I love the look of the continuous curves and shapes on this bot, tunned out looking really cool!
@RECombatRobotics no encoder or codez on this machine, just stalls at the limits like the ants and feather. Does have a rubbery endstop though.
Just watching old Vids, untill a new one is out. What made you go with that design for the weapon arm? Weight? Also is they no way to hide the weapon cables they seem really exposed
@Handle1795 yeah stiffness and weight. It's hard to hide the cables in a way that would survive a hit anyhow so I chance it with the exposed ones
Ayo. Is that the canadian national anthem?
10:31 why is it the Canadian anthem
Scale put on a great showing. What a monster. It looked like it was bullying every other robot up until the last match.
Edit: does Scale have the ability to strafe? If so, do you just not do it cause its not effective or do you not have the controls for it or something?
@kobitz9001 it does, but rarely comes up in combat nowadays. The first version did al the time as it was typically trying to outmanouver an opponent whereas this version more often just rams the beater bar forward.
@@BrokenLinkRobotics makes sense. Like I said, Scale looked like a bully for every match before the last. Really seemed to preform well.
The main thing I could see the strafe being fun for is matador-ing other bots when they charge.
@@kobitz9001 Indeed, hopefully the swerve does it better. Should also help with gyro, it dosent look like it but the slight lifting does inhibit this current versions manoeuverability. Better strafing means no gyro.
@@BrokenLinkRobotics I can respect that. God speed!
10:04 the Canadian National Anthem???
10:03 Canadian Anthem Jumpscare?
13:37 Put subtitles on. [Music]
Make a bot with an emp thing
How thick was the arm carbon?
3mm on each side
Stats:
Speed: 100
Attack: 283728
Defence: 10
which app are you using to design your robots
Fusion 360 is my current CAD of choice
2:25 typo (control)
audio sound like it's coming from the right for anyone else?
Why is the canadian anthem
No man it’s beautiful
how does one defeat H.U.G.E. type robots?
Om nom nom wheels, then wait til it yeets itself 3hen it's weapon hits the ground
Invest in a Better Mic brother
theres nothing worse than push bots at these competitions. its called a combat robot not a sumo robot. so boring
Conversely, there's nothing better at these comps than melty brain ring spinners. We love doughnutbots
I actually like push bots. They're like a baseline all robots have to pass to be truly great. You can have the most complicated and impressive weapon systems in existence, but if a simple pusher without a weapon can beat you you were fundamentally missing something.
@@mme.veronica735 traction, they were missing traction. that said it can't be that hard to get better drive when you can dedicate a bunch more weight to it.
WAOW! Vertical spinner number 2662525257488473748747377272662375885847372772672747282881 the weapon is… LE ACTIVE!