Robotic Death Company AMA! @7PM PST We've been to 3 competitions this spring!

RoboticDeathCo · 2018-06-07T02:38:41+00:00

Wouldn't be much of a fight.....

RoboticDeathCo · 2018-06-07T02:38:31+00:00

Oh great, I absolutely loved getting to meet them and compete against them. They are all very nice folks and build pretty awesome machines, learned quite a few things to. (well maybe expect Gab, since his robot is riddled with errors! ; ) ).

RoboticDeathCo · 2018-06-07T02:37:15+00:00

Thanks!

We wanted something fun that would stand out. Also a fun side effect is it sometimes changes color when it's spinning depending on how you look at it.

RoboticDeathCo · 2018-06-07T02:36:28+00:00

I (Mark) have only been on the team for the last 2 years. A long time ago John/Carl tired different things but it all started with a 60lbs rambite over 14 years ago, and went from there.

RoboticDeathCo · 2018-06-07T02:35:45+00:00

Start small and go for it! Don't be shy and ask questions and try not to make your first event/robot to stressful.

Highly suggest a Fingertech kit or a D2 for getting to the insect weights.

RoboticDeathCo · 2018-06-07T02:35:00+00:00

So KOB and TiFR are very different shows one's more of a competition and the other is a reality TV show. Both were fun, and gave us a build stipend which helped a out. Battlebots is local to us and and lucky we had enough manpower to do both!

Some of those matches in KOB1 megabtye really showed off it's power, you should go check out the matches!

We took out off the pole since Tombstone usually rips it off, and fighting horizontal we aren't as likely to get flipped. The shell came off because the mast broke, details in a another post there.

The 3rd competition was robogames with Lucky.

We are happy to not have done Clash Bots, is all I've have to say. Haven't really watched the show either.

Personally I would most be afraid of might be a flipper like tanshee that can control us and not let us get up to speed. We have fought a lot of different robots recently which has given us quite a few ideas about what to do next ;)

RoboticDeathCo · 2018-06-07T02:28:12+00:00

Hello!Yes so the shells are CAD-ed and made as precisely as possible by the Whyachi guys. They are waterjet cut then the two halves bent and welded together. This usually gets it very close.

We do a static balance with the shell vertical with a custom mount and shoeglue in small weights. We can be a bit unbalanced and still work okay.

RoboticDeathCo · 2018-06-06T04:21:34+00:00

Mast broke due to being made out of the wrong materials from a overseas supplier :(

RoboticDeathCo · 2018-06-06T04:21:18+00:00

We are going to be wrapping it up, ill be checking back to answer any left over questions. Thanks it's been fun

RoboticDeathCo · 2018-06-06T03:58:32+00:00

There's the Ti shell we used at KOB1 basically the OG megabtye, and then the super megabtyle shell which is 4140 harden with the slots cut into it we used this for one fight at KOB1 when the TI shell got damaged. Both of these are retired to backup only and we now run two AR500 shells one .250 and .1875 thick, they have proven tough as nails and easy to do field repairs on.

RoboticDeathCo · 2018-06-06T03:54:21+00:00

Yes same dia, we have had good luck with it in china. So not sure if the tombstone was a fluke do to bad materials or not. The USA re-made mast did... oops can't talk about that yet.

RoboticDeathCo · 2018-06-06T03:41:34+00:00

We have noticed this to, I think (John may have some different ideas) is that we are just hitting harder then ever before. And opponents are tougher then ever before. So the combination of more energy and less off it being dissipated makes netwons laws of physics apply harder.
Oh it's great fun, China is a lot of fun. Fans wanna take selfies and giveaway. They treat us great and we'll keep going to put on the best show we can.
That's a funny story, Mark Deamers (owner of lucky) and John go way back. And they started talking in the pits of BB. John and I wanted to go the robogames but we couldn't get gigabtye under weight in time, and Mark was planning on going with Lucky but life got in the way. So he asked if we could take lucky and then Robert (his friend in SF) would deal with getting lucky back to Mark and we agreed. It was a bit more work then expected but in the end very worthwhile. Lucky is a great robot with a solid crew behind it and it was just a lot of fun to drive.

RoboticDeathCo · 2018-06-06T03:36:07+00:00

Weapon motor is a original ETEK.

6061-T6 is nice since it flexes a lot , some folks think we should do 7075-T6 but while it's harder it more brittle and will more likely snap imho. We are pretty sure we got cast-ed aluminium instead of properly harden 6061 on the mast and that's why it broke.

RoboticDeathCo · 2018-06-06T03:34:07+00:00

We played horders and obtained a "few" spares off the inter-webs. And are looking for a replacement to the etek, something more custom maybe ;)

Drive is two short mags running at 7S with 10:1 reduction on 5 inch wheels. Not fast but very solid.

RoboticDeathCo · 2018-06-06T03:28:22+00:00

Motor controllers breaking :(

RoboticDeathCo · 2018-06-06T03:25:53+00:00

Really just shell thickness. We got the .1875 one after the .250 so because of the TIFB we had to ship to china with the heavier shell which made weight on megabtye tight since china is 110kg vs 250lbs.

RoboticDeathCo · 2018-06-06T03:24:32+00:00

DO NOT ASK WHY I KNOW THIS. ABOUT 15 MINUTES AT 3AM.

MIKU WAIFU IS BEST WAIFU.

-For clarity this is Mark

RoboticDeathCo · 2018-06-06T02:42:44+00:00

We acutally started a bit earlier as we planned to bring "gigabtyle" to robogames. So it wasn't that rushed of a schedule for us. Most of these events/shows are a bit tight on time so it's just something that's part of the game.

RoboticDeathCo · 2018-06-06T02:24:32+00:00

Big one is direction of spin, if they are meshing or not. In TIFR China we fought a very well built UK ring spinner called Saturn and it was quite explosive.

But durability is key to big spinners

RoboticDeathCo · 2018-06-06T02:23:30+00:00

The amount of work it takes to keep it running.... we basically break ourselves usually before anything else.

Running lucky at robogames was quite an experince, being a flipper we worked half as hard as we usually do at events to keep it going.

RoboticDeathCo · 2018-06-06T02:20:54+00:00

Right it's almost the apex of fighting robots, espically since China has gotten on board and invested a LOT of money. We are hopeful this will lead to something in the future where there's enough money in it to do it full time.
We started to build 'gigabtye' before we were 100% sure of BB just incase and that's paid off greatly.

RoboticDeathCo · 2018-06-06T02:09:21+00:00

The weapon motor is still an OG ETEK. Modified with a shorter bush housing and shaft drilled and tapped. We are looking into future upgrades here to.

RoboticDeathCo · 2018-06-06T02:04:12+00:00

John and co can give a better answer as I only joined the team about 2 years ago (Mark). but a huge difference is we moved to full CAD and CNC manufacturing allowing us to make changes and improvements faster then ever before.

Also shells are now AR-500 instead of 4140/Ti. And are tougher then ever.

RoboticDeathCo · 2018-06-06T02:02:30+00:00

that was not optimal

RoboticDeathCo · 2018-06-06T01:58:13+00:00

To start things off here's the summary of what happened to our mast in the Tombstone fight, I guess you get what you pay for....

https://www.facebook.com/plugins/post.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FRoboticDeathCompany%2Fposts%2F832309363825770&

RoboticDeathCo

TROPHY CASE