Seismic Robot Build Diary [First Time Builder]

[TeamSeismic]

Hi all,
This is my first ever attempt at creating a robot of any kind. After growing up with Robot Wars as a kid, I was over the moon when a reboot was announced.
I have created a pusher/flipper design in Google Sketchup and transferred it over to Pepakura Designer 3 to print of templates, here is what the digital version looks like:


Here are the following components that I have obtained for the robot:
- FLY SKY 2.4G FS-CT6B 6 Channel RC Transmitter and Receiver
- 1mm Polycarbonate Sheet
- 350mAh 7.4v 40C LiPo
- 9g SG90 Micro Servo
- 50:1 Micro Metal Gearmotor (x2)
- DasMikro 2S6A ESC

Items to be acquired (Any advice would be ideal):
- Wheels


I'll post more updates as they come. Take care roboteers!

[Puddle]

you can't glue polycarb as the bond becomes weak very quickly, scoring it and bending it also weakens it as does heated bending. the main three ways people get polycarbonate to do what they want is either to put it in a vice and bend it into shape without heat or scoring, screwing them into eachother or onto a frame or just 3D printing it. if it's your first time and you don't own a 3D printer I'd reccomend the plan I'm going with for my first bot which is to cut your chassis out in as few pieces as possible, (say; Base, sides and back as once piece that you bend. the top as another and any flipping bit as a third) then once you have your three or so bent find some decent spots to create holes you can use to screw the remaining bits together. but depending on the shape of your robot you'll want to make sure that in the event of having a bad encounter with a spinner or something similar that you can get at your innards. there's no use in making repairs unnecessarily fiddly.

[BeligerAnt]

You could use 3mm polycarbonate for the base, but it will almost certainly be too heavy if you make the entire robot from 3mm. Most people tend to use 1mm or 1.5mm as it is fairly easy to bend and a reasonable compromise between weight and strength.

Most people use Pololu (or equivalent) 10mm gear motors. There are plenty of references to them elsewhere on the forum. Forum user Rory "Rapidrory" sells an antweight-size ESC plus motors & wheels.

[TeamSeismic]

You could use 3mm polycarbonate for the base, but it will almost certainly be too heavy if you make the entire robot from 3mm. Most people tend to use 1mm or 1.5mm as it is fairly easy to bend and a reasonable compromise between weight and strength.

Most people use Pololu (or equivalent) 10mm gear motors. There are plenty of references to them elsewhere on the forum. Forum user Rory "Rapidrory" sells an antweight-size ESC plus motors & wheels.

Thanks for the advice, might contact Rory for the ESC and some motors.
I was thinking of bending the 1mm polycarb and bolting it together by making tabs in each piece, would you recommend a screw size to do so?
Thanks

[BeligerAnt]

If the polycarbonate is thick enough you can tap it and use M2 or M2.5 machine screws. 1mm is a bit thin to tap but small self-tapping screws hold pretty well.

[peterwaller]

As Gary says M2 and M2.5 are the most common sizes of machine screw I use but recently I have obtained some small self tappers.
Machine screws sizes are easy M2 screws are 2mm dia thread etc but I wasn't aware of the size of the self tappers.
In the picture you can see machine screws M1.6, M2 and M2.5 along the top and No 0 (1.4mm), No1 (1.7mm) and No2 (2.2mm) along the bottom.

Hope this helps and I got the selftappers from Modelfixings.co.uk

[TeamSeismic]

As Gary says M2 and M2.5 are the most common sizes of machine screw I use but recently I have obtained some small self tappers.
Machine screws sizes are easy M2 screws are 2mm dia thread etc but I wasn't aware of the size of the self tappers.
In the picture you can see machine screws M1.6, M2 and M2.5 along the top and No 0 (1.4mm), No1 (1.7mm) and No2 (2.2mm) along the bottom.

Hope this helps and I got the selftappers from Modelfixings.co.uk

Thanks everyone for the comments so far, it's been great interacting with some like-minded roboteers.
I've assembled a cardboard mock-up of the robot out of a spare cereal box to get an idea for size.
I've designed the mock-up to open up by removing the yellow tape, this will help me to pencil in roughly where all of the electronics will go.