Blazestorm, never seen before front hinge flipper

Bot Builds & Designs
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Did I forget this site exists …

Anyways took a break to focus on the leaving and no they are not done but I’m going to drive on before losing my last shred of sanity

Since last time Cortex has been put aside and gear has been upgraded which has spurred me on to recreate my favorite robotic slice of cheese, a 150g Firestorm

Ive gone through a single iteration so far: insert drum roll

Iteration 1:
My two major goals going into this project is for it to be modular and to be a complete pain to kill off.

The internals are simple with a Malenki Nano (the GOAT PCB), a 350MAH 20C 2s Arrows Lipo which should last for around 2 full fights. For drive I decided on two 600 RPM N20’s and two 100RPM N20’s for the flipping arm. I opted for power over speed since I could have gone for 1k RPM motors but the flipper is positioned high on the wedge due to space limits stopping any linear actuators from being used, and so far the results are good in terms of shoving power.

The 100 RPM motors also have plenty oomph and are more than enough for self righting and all going well a nice few flips and of course of one goes down due to impact the other will hopefully keep going.

In terms of wedge angle I have just yoinked firestorms angle, if it aint broke dont fix it I guess. The chassis shape is pretty much the same also except for the wheels being outside the main body leaving the robot being able to drive inverted if needs be (hopefully). The chassis is printed from regular PLA on a standard Creality Ender 3 V3 KE (this thing is unreal).

The armour packages are printed from 95A TPU which extend to being flexible wheel guards.
Finally the wheels hubs are ordinary PLA fitting into Lego rubbers giving plenty of traction @ 30MM diameter and are 13MM wide.

After some testing the overall result is positive. The main downside is the flipper not being long enough to self right and assembly is a bit more akward than i think it should be due to the positioning of the malenki and lipo package, worst of all it weighs 125.7g so we certainly got plenty of wiggle room. One other tiny disadvantage is the screws not being flush which do provide catching points going against my goal of this thing being like firestorm, a pain to kill. (unless you are razer ig)

At the time of writing this it is currently disassembled and iteration 2 should be on the way shortly, of course any humbling or ideas is greatly appreciated.

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TPU Side pods

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Top Plate

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Back Plate

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Frontal Wedge

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Lego Wheel with custom hub

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Flipping System thus far

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Nice. Are you using two n20s for the flipper? If you are, maybe use one n10 or a good servo to power that, otherwise I’m sorry if that is the drive😂. Hopefully it’ll save weight!

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Nah those are two n20’s for the flipper, thought i may as well seeing the amount of weight I was going to have left over it does seems pretty powerful but certainly will try it with just one. Thanks for the reply btw :slight_smile:

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Exams are over so time to get back to the good stuff, and here is the second iteration of Blazestorm. Again one of the goals is to make this thing a complete pain to kill.

The primary issue with the first iteration was the fact it could not self right even in a perfect state and a fully charged battery, so Blazestorm now has a longer flipper and this JUST about is enough for it to self right 100% of the time (thus far). I have had to compromise some top plate weight as the flipper now extends back in to merge with the top plate so most of the time we have the same amount of strength (maybe even more with them being separate parts) while having the longer flipper.

Another issue was the screws not being flush thus adding catching points for spinners, now the TPU armor packages are countersunk.

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Two additions into the internals of the robot are a switch (wow well done me), and the Malenki and Lipo have been rotated so the Malenki faces upwards, this makes it far easier to solder but it is also directly exposed upon the flipper being opened so I may add a small TPU plate over the top of this area.

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Another small change is the accommodation of a TPU cover for the frontal plate so the frontal plate is easy to mount via brass inserts that hold well and the TPU plate can still have a major effect on absorbing impacts all while being easily swapped out between fights.

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As for the PLA part of the frontal plate standoffs (I think that is the correct term), have been added to either side for extra mounting points which do align with the TPU - chassis threads.

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Finally via after fiddling with printer settings and these few additions Blaze storm is a lot beefier now weighing in at 143.7g.

I plan to allocate this weight to a power on led, the Malenki cover i mentioned previously and a thicker tougher flipper as the current one would be sent to the backrooms with a half decent spinner shot, as well as change out the pair of n20’s for a single n10 for extra flipping power. Still a nice list of things I want to improve on before sending this thing into an arena.

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looking good! Just a question, how much does it weigh fully assembled and if there is any weight left, I might recommend beefing up the tpu side pod bits (air armour is op) with little infill so it just gets dinged. (having a dented bot is better than having a destroyed one!)

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Oh never mind, i just read that you litterally posted the weight btw :zany_face: that is good enough for some beefy tpu bits though!

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Thanks for the suggestion on the low infill TPU plates! up to now I’ve just been using some standard Creality print settings so I will certainly do some testing between configs.

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You’re welcome! Another thing, if i’m correct or if i’m wrong because i speed read posts you talked about pla plates. Is that just for tests or is that for combat? I’m wondering that cause pla isn’t exactly the most resilient material, and witha creality printer, could you spit out a few nylon cf reps?

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To be more specific it is PLA + I got off the 3D Jake site, the idea is to have a PLA inner shell with a squishy TPU outer shell on all sides.

Nylon is a great suggestion of course, I just forgot it was an option to me now due to my horrendous experience with my old starter printer (Fookos Odin 5 F3) and thus I still have nightmares of warping.

TLDR: Forgot nylon was an option I will give it another shot thanks for the suggestion !

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Thats good. Pla plus is good enough considering an inner shell. Have you tried nylon carbon fibre? It’s not that bad to print but you do need a drier with at least 70 degrees to print it. That’s what i use for the top and bottom plates of TombPebble, slight flex but good rigidity. What TPU are you using? Not really a concern but helps to know :wink:

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My TPU is from E-Sun being 95A and no I have not used nylon carbon, might look into it since I do have a drier that should just about be able to heat it, thanks for the suggestion !

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Yeah, that tpu will take a beating! As long as you have an inner chaasis You’ll be fine with 95a. Just a word but brass heated inserts i can see will sometimes pull out but if thats pla then youre okay!

Watch this, it has lots of the important tips!

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