featherweight shells

[tweedermeister]

it's ok now i'm getting a polycarb shell and i'm going to extend the wedge with hardox once I get it and add hdpe skirts like panic attack and for the uk champs i'm going to use steel skirts

[terminaldamage]

To be perfectly honest, I wouldn't bother with skirts. They're a waste of material and weight.
Have a look at the current crop of active featherweights. None of them (even the pushers) have skirts. There are a few reasons for this, some of which include;

- uneven floors. If you compete at Roaming Robots or Robots Live events, the chances are the floor will have taken a battering from the heavyweights, so there will be several bumps and uneven patches that skirt edges will easily get caught on. If they don't there's still a chance that there will be gaps underneath the skirts at certain points on the floor, rendering them pointless.
- self-inflicted immobilisation. Unless your skirts are made of pretty thick material, there is a likelihood they will get bent from impacts. They will then either scrape along the floor, hindering your driving abilities, or get bent in underneath your wheels, leaving you beached and unable to move.
- ineffectiveness. The flattest floor for featherweights is the Robo Challenge arena, which means that not only will your skirts be flat against the floor, but so will many flipper blades. If your skirts are on hinges, they're only held down by gravity, whereas most flipper blades will be held down partially with bungee cords. In a head-to-head clash, the held-down flipper blade is more likely to get underneath the flappy skirt.

Add to that the general maintenance (which will be regular if they're thin and keep bending) and they seem to be much more hassle than they're worth.

Just my tuppence worth anyway.

[tweedermeister]

what do you think I should do then because the wedge will obviously scrape the ground but the sides and back have quite high ground clearance so how will I lower the ground clearance or make a substitute for it ?

[terminaldamage]

Just keep the wedge pointed at opponents at all times if possible. It doesn't matter if it's a melee or one-on-one fight, your robot's gonna get flipped, regardless of how much or how little ground clearance you have. I don't know the shape of the robot but if possible, design it so that it can run upside down.

Alternatively, rather than making hinged skirts, make some solid side panels that screw directly on top of your existing side panels, but are a few millimetres taller than the current ones (or however much of a gap there is to cover). This way you can make the panels thicker, not have to worry about hinges and things getting bent, and reduce your ground clearance as well.
However to stand a chance of not getting stuck on the RR or RL arena floors, I'd recommend a minimum ground clearance of 5mm. Most of my robots tend to have 8mm-10mm of clearance and getting beached isn't usually a problem.

[tweedermeister]

It can run upside down and has 6mmground clearance all over before I get the wedge extender made

[terminaldamage]

In that case I wouldn't bother trying to reduce the ground clearance. Add the wedge extender and have 0mm at the front, but I'd keep the 6mm round the sides as it will save you a lot of grief in the arena.

[tweedermeister]

Ok I'll just do that then, thanks

[anttazz]

We saw a video of his FW at the weekend Jamie, was the one next to the Reaper feather shell. Nice simple 4WD shell to start with, can't go too wrong with it the way it was when we saw it and at least it'll get you in the arena.

[tweedermeister]

There's also a vid of it called bulldozer drives again ( mine will be faster because it's going to be running 12v drills on 18v)

[Team Invade]

Jamie's right, a pusher will always get flipped