My first Antweight flipper bot

[Christian1944]

I am new to this hobby and I would like to build an Antweight bot (one pound). I figured that I would make it a flipper style bot because that seemed like the sensible type of bot to build for someone who is new to this. I would appreciate any help and tips. Also I am willing to spend a litlle money but hopefully not too much. I have build rc planes and such before so I probably have most of the electronics needed. Recommendations for anything would be helpful. Thanks in advance.

[haz]

Hi,
We are UK builders, so we have 150g antweights instead of 1 pound but I'm sure we can still help you out

Most of your RC plane stuff probably isn't much help, a good 2.4ghz radio would be useful though. You could make a moving platform if you are willing to sacrifice some servos and hack them for going 360 degrees. Servos aren't used much in drive trains any more as they are slow and quite weak compared to most geared motors. I don't think it would be our place to recommend drive motors for something this size but ESC's such as the sabertooth 5a, robotpower "wasps" and some "botbitz" would be fine for these sized robots.

Check around http://forums.delphiforums.com/n/main.a ... Tag=x52-40 for a bit more detail on the american style antweights, their information will be much more accurate than anything we can give you. I'd advise having a read through build diary's etc to see what the normal components are etc.

Cheers,
Harry.

[Christian1944]

Oh yeah there is quite a bit of difference between a 150g bot and a 454g bot lol. But yes I planned on using a 2.4ghz radio because 75mhz gets too much interference. Also I have tons of servos. Micro and standard at that but no geared motors unfortunately. I can get some though. Now that I realized that yall are UK builders that may present a problem but do you have any design tips? I'm not quite sure how to design a decent flipper bot. All help will be much appreciated.

[haz]

Here in the UK we do flippers well, I'm sure some of the main flipper guys can give you a few tips.

Good luck with the build mate.
Harry.

[Christian1944]

Thanks I'm gonna need it. Is there anyone that you would recommend me gettin in touch with that has experience with these type bots?

[BeligerAnt]

Here's an article I wrote about flippers some time ago. The principles apply to any size/scale
http://garya.org.uk/antweight-robots/te ... r-linkages

[Christian1944]

Beligerant thanks for the information. It helps greatly. I was wondering about a front hinged flipper? I didn't know how well this design worked though. If you have any suggestions on what type of flipper and how it should be done, I'll greatly appreciate it.

[BeligerAnt]

Front-hinged flippers do work, there have been examples in most, if not all, weight classes. Either type are capable of turning another robot over given good design, good driving and an amount of luck!

Every robot design is a compromise; there is no perfect design, so there aren't really any right or wrong answers. I'd say don't stress too much about getting the design optimum first time round. Build something and get it to an event. You will learn far more from your first event than you possibly could from any number of forums or YouTube videos!

[Christian1944]

Will do. I will keep you updated on the build. Thanks for the help guys.

[Christian1944]

I decided on the front hinged flipper design. I plan on using two micro servos to move the flipper. Do you think that it would produce enough forces to flip another bot that can weigh up to a pound? I will post some pictures when i finish the brackets for the servos to show what I am doing. Any recommendations are great. Thanks again guys.