Sort of Newbie...

[shangalaing]

Hello everyone, I got into antweights about 14 years ago when I was still in school and built one that, because of school commitments and lack of transport I never got to fight.

So I'm back now and wanting to get back into it and trying to persuade a few mates to join in too.

I have a couple of questions; do people still use servos for drive? I have seen the geared motor/esc combos for sale and they look great but in the interest of saving money to begin with if they are still acceptable I will go with servos.

Also, have the rules on armour changed? It used to be nothing thicker than 1mm but I couldn't find that in the rules topic.

Anyway thanks for the help, I will try and dig out my old antweight so it can be laughed off the field and I will build a new one to conquer the world (or not)

Matt

[Occashokka]

I wince at the thought of 1mm armour lol that rule is gone and thank god, I had 1.2mm of aluminium peeled like a banana, most people use 2mm of polycarbonate or 3D Print something of about the same thickness

[shangalaing]

That's great to hear! Yeh I had thought about 3D printing the frame with supplementary metal bits. Glad that rule has changed, I have seen the power of some of those spinners!

[joey_picus]

Servos are still an option for drive but the speed and maneuvrability of current robots generally favours gearmotors; I'd have a look at videos of recent competitions on Youtube and make a decision based on that. People who use servos seem to favour the SG/MG90 as it's quite easy to speed modify and cheap!

[shangalaing]

Ok awesome! Thanks for that. I shall investigate!

[BeligerAnt]

Welcome back! Quite a lot has changed in 14 years

The biggest changes are in battery and transmitter/receiver technology. LiPo batteries and 2.4GHz radio gear are much smaller and lighter than their predecessors. This leaves a lot more weight available for motors and weapons/armour!

There aren't many people still using servos for drive, you would certainly want to speed hack any servo to get a competitive speed out of it.

It's worth reading the latest rules, here: http://robotwars101.org/ants/rules.htm
Section 2 covers build rules and there is no longer anything about armour - you can use whatever you like (within the weight limit) now.

[shangalaing]

I'm up with lipo and radio technology because I fly racing quadcopters. Useful in the future because I have spare motors for a spinner. Yeh I think I will have a crack at a speed mod on a servo for a first try, but I need to get some cad work and 3D prints done too. I also have access to cnc milling mack es so could work with that too. Once I have started, I will post updates no doubt. Seems like a great community and it's cool to be back into something I loved doing when I was a kid.

[shangalaing]

So here is a picture of my original antweight.

image.jpeg (116.65 KiB) Viewed 7398 times

Servo powered (no speed mod) big wheels so it wasn't too sluggish and no weapon that really was any worry.

Never got to compete and it's now obsolete (crystal reciever, not lipo)

[joey_picus]

You can still use it; there's no rule against using 27/40mhz gear (and indeed if you do you'll almost certainly have your pick of channels!) and it'd be quite good to see how something of that era holds up in combat. The batteries might not hold much of a charge any more though!