3 week, 'zero' budget feather

[Rapidrory]

So I heard that there was a featherweight fight happening on the 16th of April at the Fleet Air Arm museum. It being only a few miles away, and not owning a feather weight robot, I thought I'd come and watch. Then I heard it was free entry for the roboteers.
...So I decided I would see if I could build a feather from the parts I had lying around for less than the cost of entry to the museum, in the 3 weeks I have until the event

I had plenty of old drills lying around, SLA batteries, a pair of old 50A ESCs (my dad tried to build a heavy weight back in 1998), a few suitable wheels, plenty of steel, and some HDPE and polycarbonate sheet, so thought I'd give it a try.

So... I got back from uni to find that the drills that hadn't been thrown out were of different voltages, and the ESCs are very dubious... so much for zero budget; I've already spent £80 on just the drive train

The design itself is a simple 2WD pusher, with a very basic windscreen wiper motor powered flipper and HDTP armour (not sure what thickness yet)... nothing fancy, but hoping it lasts long enough to provide some entertainment!

[Rapidrory]

Ok, so I hadn't noticed that the larger weight classes weren't active on this forum till after I made this thread, so i'll it off with the results and leave it at that.

This is what i ended up with:



It's called Richie, and has a lifter powered by a motor from a car compressor pump. It looks a little silly, but the armour was thrown on at the last minute using 5mm HDPE from an old water tank...

It won one fight out of the 6 it competed in, but most of the losses were due to silly electrical or mechanical faults, like the battery running out or coming disconnected. The wheels also had a habit of falling off, but that's since been fixed hopefully. It's finest moment was almost taking out Beauty 2, but sadly the other robot I was fighting with caught fire just as I was about to throw Beauty out so the fight was halted and reset :/
I at least got the video of that fight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtLXupn ... SCHzqPS4jQ

As far as building it for zero budget and in 3 weeks; I spent £50 on parts (I'm not counting the £30 I spent on the PIC programmer, as I need that anyway), and I did build it in time, but the last two days was 40 hours straight of work with no sleep and hardly any breaks to get it built in time, so i wouldn't advise it!

[Shakey]

Yeah fancy someones featherweight having a motor burst into flames... heh- eh... Yeah I'll try not to do that again

[limpet]

As far as building it for zero budget and in 3 weeks; I spent £50 on parts (I'm not counting the £30 I spent on the PIC programmer, as I need that anyway), and I did build it in time, but the last two days was 40 hours straight of work with no sleep and hardly any breaks to get it built in time, so i wouldn't advise it!

'tis the only way to do it!
I saw it (and you!) at Burgess Hill, great weekend.

[Rapidrory]

Yeah it was Richie did really well; managed to get several people hoisted helplessly into the air, and it only really had any issues after 'pain in the ass' holed my SLA battery in the second to last fight I was planning to upgrade to Lipos anyway, so it's no big deal... Final fight was running on my spare very old SLA, and when that died mid fight (as kinda expected), I was floor-flippered hard I haven't done extensive damage checks yet, but it all seems mostly ok still.

I've extended my budget by another £50 for upgrades, but am determined to keep it sub £100. Planning to add 4WD and self righting, along with a few other fancy extras like proper lights and spinner-proofing. These'll all be done in the summer after exams..

[Remote-Controlled Dave]

Just watched the video. Awesome, Rory!