Dale's Homemade Robots

Robot Battles 2016

Thanks to Kelly Lockhart and various talented hardworking individuals we had a great Robot Battles 60. Due to the large number of entries, this years event was single elimination and matches without a clear winner were decided by a three judge panel. The event went smoothly and there was even time for a rumble.

I only entered two bots this year and one was completely new. 12 pound T-Boner was upgraded since it's last fight at Momo Con. It's wider, shorter, has auto-pilot and a new self-righter mechanism. But it lost due to mechanical failure. For more info on T-Boner 2.0 click here.

The new bot is Noodles, a 3# pushy bot. Noodles fought Too Big To Flail, Mobile Chernobyl, Gor Gor and won all by judges decision. In the final he had to fight an extremely powerful egg beater spinner, Black Adder built by Kurtis Wanner of Fingertech Robotics. Noodles took hit after hit and kept on running. Eventually Black Adder ripped off one of Noodles latex tire treads which got stuck in his weapon an stopped it cold. The rest was a pushing match with Noodles doing most of the pushing. Unfortunately I never quite got him to the pit. It went to the judges who took a very long time to render a split decision declaring Noodles the winner! I was told they liked the raw agression of Noodles.

T-Boner 2.0 performed very well until the bolt holding the weapon pushrod to the dog clutch backed itself out a little and caused the weapon the self-activate repeatedly.

The first fight was against Shaboombox by Jim Smentowski. T-Boner tossed him off the stage once and he drove off in the 2nd round. The bot was almost flawless except for wanting to do wheel stands under hard acceleration. I think I can fix that in software. The small self-righting flipper also worked well.

The next fight was with Lift Lord. This one didn't go so well. In fact we lost due the the above mentioned bolt issue. The flipper self-activated when it got stuck under steel stage edging. Since the flipper tip couldn't go up the bots body went up instead. Almost 4 feet up actually. Awesome air time. Too bad is was my own bot. After landing it self righted, flipped Lift Lord once more before flipping itself off the stage. Round 2 was a disaster. The flipper had to be shut off because it was triggering continuously and T-Boner is a terrible pushy bot. Single elimination meant I was out.

The opponent tracker was completely useless because Charles brought a bag full of 2 inch diameter 3D printed plastic set screw replicas as stage hazards and presented them to Kelly. Apparently it was to commemorate his loss at BattleBots due to a stray set screw that came up off the floor and jammed his chain drive. Kelly dumped them all on the stage. They were like chaff to radar. Targets everywhere! I may need to raise my sensors up a little.

I figured out why the bolt came loose. It was improper use of a lock washer. Where is was placed did absolutely nothing to hold the bolt. Totally my mistake. I've made some modifications so it can't come loose again.

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