A new antweighter (again!)

[Occashokka]

The Nano Two's don't have a website. To buy one you email me what you want to rapidrory@gmail.com, I build it, then ship it to you.

I would have a website for them, but I only sell straight to other roboteers so don't really want to advertise them more publicly.

What are the prices and stats of this thig coz im on a harsh budget

[Occashokka]

Wow I just realised I did this is the wrong section I think I should migrate it to the antweights section

[Hogi]

hi Joel. welcome to the forum and welcome to the antweight community.

I'm Dan, I started about this time last year ( was 14 ). if you are looking to build your own machhine to compete with, there are loads of people on this forum who are willing to advise you and help you if you get stuck.

good luck

EDIT: oh and to answer your question on robot kits, the shockbots kits are good, 3D printed with standard components, very good value. my cousins have a couple of the earlier versions. i think you get the choice of a grabber or flipper kit now as well. roaming robots also do a robot kit called “ battle ant ” i would advise against that as it's not an antweight, it actually falls into the super ant catagory and there are no competitions for them any more. another kit that might be worth a mention is the one available in the antweight section of this forum. i'm not sure how up to date the parts are but i know they do a gear motor version which should be a competitive drive system by current standards. an alternative option would be to order one of Rory's nanotwo ESC kits. that comes with a speed controller, reciever, presoldered gear motors and 2 pololu wheels. after that you just need to add a battery ( 2 or 3 cell lipos are probably best ) and construct the body of the robot. hope this information is useful

[BeligerAnt]

Hi Joel, and welcome to the forum!

The kit available from the robotwars101 shop http://robotwars101.org/ants/shop/ is available with a range of options - servos or gearmotors, with or without radio gear etc. Prices are competitive as the shop is run as a get-you-started service rather than a strictly for-profit business. Any profits go into running the site (basically this forum!). Contact PeteC via the web site or this forum.

Don't worry too much about posting in the wrong section - most things can be fixed quite easily!

As others have said, the best way to get started is to build something and get to a competition. You will learn far more from your first event than any number of forum posts!

[Hogi]

yeah, you will deffinitely learn a lot from your first event. just by watching the battles you can compare different robot designs and get an idea of how things are generally done. you will also get plenty of opportunity to talk to experienced roboteers who will show you their creations and offer you any advise you may need. i think the next antweight event will be antfreeze 2 in nuneaton in janurary. that event should be a good starting point for newcomers as it will probably be a lot less serious and a lot more relaxed than an official AWS ( antweight world series ) event.

[Occashokka]

Thanks for the info I will try to get one ready and I might make a new thread when I start building -
Aargh god I can't wait a single second

[Occashokka]

yeah, you will deffinitely learn a lot from your first event. just by watching the battles you can compare different robot designs and get an idea of how things are generally done. you will also get plenty of opportunity to talk to experienced roboteers who will show you their creations and offer you any advise you may need. i think the next antweight event will be antfreeze 2 in nuneaton in janurary. that event should be a good starting point for newcomers as it will probably be a lot less serious and a lot more relaxed than an official AWS ( antweight world series ) event.

When is antfreeze and if I start at Christmas will I be able to assemble it by then

[Hogi]

antfreeze is on the 24th of January. it is pheasable to make a basic antweight on that timescale provided there are no serious setbacks. the best way to start would probably be to order a nanotwo kit from Rory, buy a sheet of either 2mm HDPE or 2mm pollycarbonate and go from there. that's still the way i do it and i'm just about to build my 3rd robot. trust me you'll learn a lot from building your first robot.

[AntRoboteer]

I just bought SG90 servos, a receiver, a cheap transmitter, a battery, a charger and a power switch for most of my antweights and they are actually reasonably effective.

It comes to around £40 altogether so not bad at all and the servos are a lot easier to position than gear motors. You can also mount them better with double sided tape or foam and add whatever wheels you like by gluing the servo horns included onto your wheels of choice. However, you will need to perform a simple mod to the servos and maybe (if you want a quick robot) glue the second and fourth (output) gear together, removing the third. That is if you have superglue to hand. I unfortunately don't so have not had success with this but it is certainly possible. If you get big wheels, you'll find it's quick enough already. My servo driven, slow robots are a lot more successful than my gearmotor ones; I've never had a gearmotor driven ant beyond the third round! Also, they plug straight into the receiver so you won't need dodgy, complicated, bulky ESCs to drive the motors which is quite nice.

There is a simple guide to modifying these servos here:

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to- ... -Spin-360/

or this one which is quite nice too:

http://letsmakerobots.com/node/4873

You can also use a dab of glue to hold the pot in place providing that you widen the bottom of the output gear; it really isn't that difficult at all and I can get one done by myself in about 15 minutes.

Personally, I just use sellotape and cheap rubbish as armour for my robots and it has always held out fine, even against the best spinners (such as Dark Matter). My brother even uses cardboard on one of his robots! I personally wouldn;t spend time making something spectacular for your first robot as the driving is often the weak point and you will learn so much that you will want to build a new, fresh one anyway. Thinking about it, I still have about 5 or 6 robots to finish before Ant Freeze so I might as well get cracking on those!

Cheap SG90s (well, close enough and you could get more than the two for drive to use as weapon servos while you are trying things out which is what I did): http://www.hobbyking.co.uk/hobbyking/st ... ouse_.html
Cheap batteries (I recommend 6V for pretty much any robot or you can buy a lighter 4.8V version but the robot will be slower) : http://www.componentshop.co.uk/6v-1-4aa ... -pack.html
Cheap receiver: http://www.hobbyking.co.uk/hobbyking/st ... ouse_.html
Cheap transmitter: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Blade-Heli-Co ... 35c2d32ee2
Cheap charger: http://www.componentshop.co.uk/universa ... packs.html (make sure to set the dial at the mAh of the battery, no more)
Adapter for charger (for futaba if you do choose that plug which I would advise as you can't get it the wrong way which would completly destroy your robot) : http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/C7002-Futaba- ... 54146e50c9
Cheap battery switch: http://www.componentshop.co.uk/futaba-m ... witch.html

All tried and tested for almost 6 months by myself in my 2nd gen robots to current ones.

Good luck with the build - can't wait to see it!

[Occashokka]

£40 really!
I have a £120 shockbots kit in the post but I guess that does come with a 3d printed chassis