just finished reading migraine robotics post about old cads and figured i have my own closet of failed ideas that will never become a thing, figured i may as well put them out there!
i mostly cad stuff to get it out my head so at least 95% never makes it to reality
sadly my very very early stuff was lost to time, my vert first bot design was actually a double spinner inspired by crippling depression, but just worse in every way, probably for the best that its been lost haha
the oldest cad i can still access to is this guy, which did end up being build, suijin
massive vert which i made after the first bugglebots, thinking that drizzle would be better if it could run inverted, 400mph tip speed iirc
although some other cads are older i figured i would cover all the never made versions of suijin in one go
(forgive the joints it wont let me hide them)
so this is what v2 was meant to be, a horizontal that could turn into a vertical! never built it as id spent ours machining its solid hdpe tube that i didnt really want to change it haha
skipping forward a few years but this was the last design for suijin, never built but was going to be a large disc with ali spokes, something like 500 grams of weapon
second oldest is this thing
the second feather i ever designed, supposed to be a biteforce mixed with duck sort of thing. hideous
next thing i can still access is this guy, supposed to be a cluster fbs with a hdpe shell
next up is this horific american antweight
i dont even know, i think this was back when there was no tip speed limit…
now onto some stuff that at least looks half baked
v1 and v2 of a featherweight suijin, very glad i never made these as this was long before i had any experience with laser cutting or even making things half decently, still it looks pretty cool
another attempt at a cluster, this time looking like a cursed rev 3
my very first version of chaac, my double drum/360 lifter bot, this one was far too heavy
the final version before it was built, this one being very flat and still far too heavy
i guess this one kinda counts to as it never competed with both drums and the 360 lifter, with the bot being abandoned soon after, fond memorys of burning myself on the red hot drum after its match with boring bot
ended up abandoning it since it felt like the only way to improve it was to go full 4wd vert
another bot of the dual weapon persuasion, again dropped since it felt like the best way to make it better was to make it a classic undercutter
a horizontal drum, always been fond of aluminium weapons with impactors, this one uses copper rounds as counterweights
another go at a full body spinner cluster,
this was around the time i started chatting with my mate simon szarko, and the start of our long running cluster campaign
my first of several attempts at a spring flipper beetle
uses a choo choo system, looks like a cursed bronco, originally was going to be pneumatic but decided i couldn’t be arsed to build a proper ram
my first of several designs for an overhead attack robot, the love of forks already showing, always had a thing for fully polycarb robots, not built one yet but its always been the plan
now we are onto some properly cursed stuff
my full body drum, i had originally built it as an ant weight (i think it was the first 150 gram full body drum ever built) and wanted to scale it up, for some scale the wheels are 220mm diameter…
this is the 10wd vert… why?.. more wheels better of course, plus i seem to remember the plan was to paint it like a aircraft carrier since it was huge (those are 22mm motors) the drive was split into a bank of 3 and a bank of 2, for redundancy…as if 6 wheels wasnt already enough redundancy
this is something, it was heavily inspired by double dutch with the dual spinners but i wanted much larger bars. how large? 500mm at beetle
they would of bent in a heartbeat but thats part of the fun. actually had the bars and tube cut but never got round to making it mostly because i had enough trauma of tube robots from suijin
a marginly more sensible idea
basically fat deadbod with again the ali insert bars
another lexan bot this time a flipper
as you can tell it didnt get very far before i realised how expensive and heavy polycarb is
an abononed upgraded version of my shuffling hammer bot futamishi. which was abondoned because i hated worked on it haha
as well as a hardox body version of it
heavily inspired by the infamous season 3 bombshell this bot does actually exist (well the frame does) but sadly the drive motors are now long defunct and i dont feel like reworking hardox, was going to be for a feather cluster which never happened
it would of teamed up with a horizontal, this thing also existed but was never welded up and has since been scrapped, was going to be a hub motor using a 5060
and a v2 version with a hub motor but more refinded, still have the bearings i bought for it (gigantic things) and the disc existed as well at some point i seem to remember but has long been scrapped
this was an american antweight, designed years ago when there was some talk of them becoming a thing, the bars did exist and i think still do exist, this was before i discovered 3d printing and so the body was waterjet hdpe (spenny)
a very strange looking grab and lift beetle thing, fully hardox lifting arms and for some reason a direct drive 22mm on the upper jaw… i can see why i never built this thing
a feather flipper designed around of pneumatics id stripped out another bot id bought for my 18th birthday. still got the parts but this thing never left the drawing board
these are some 175 gram bots designed for when bbb first made the 175gram 2v2 class (now defunked)
only ended up building a fbs and a drum bot for this class
now this might look a little familiar, this was actually going to be an updated version of futamishi for the subterranean showdown event before dolos was built in its place, you may be able to see the resemblance, actually not that much smaller than what v1 dolos turned out to be, just longer forks and a shorter arm/smaller weapon
so far ive only included things that were vagly shaped like a robot but this thing was too cool not to share,
its a auto reloading party popper machine built for bodge bots, used a linear geneva mechanism to ensure the party poppers were moved into the correct place every time, never ended up being build due to time/weight and the servo not having enough beans to pull the party poppers
now this, this is kind of a deep cut but this is v1 dolos, ikr doesnt look anything like a hammer saw with obnoxious forks. well this is what it would of been had things gone to plan, see dolos is actually a god of trickery, so this would of been a lifter, buut with a secret spinner inside!
how much salt could of been saved if this was what dolos wound up as, sadly the part i had deisgned for the centre of the whole thing (my first ever cnc part too) came with the holes in the wrong place (my fault) so it was shelved in favour of a large version of my antweight at the time vidar. which was what dolos was meant to be called. but the name wasnt changed and so dolos became the hammer saw shit you see today!
another one of my current bots but arguably allot nicer, zeph, this is what v1 was meant to be before major design revisions, it orginally had wheels in the frame! (weird i know) and a large disc with vertical facing teeth, a last minute pivot was made to go to bars for more bite and its green colour scheme
now back onto truly abanonded bots
these are a 3 way wedge cluster (designed about a month or 2 before bbbs legendary run at 22 champs) themed after the 3 minis from Italian job (in colour anyway)
i guess we are back to the batshit crazy stuff
this was designed after the mediocre performance of morigan (my only really sensible robot a 2wd egg beater) wanted something with more punch, 110mm hdpe drum with bolt teeth that would of torn out the moment it got bite lol
a more sensible v2 of the morigan, the drum was laser cut but never assembled due to tolerance issues and lack of enthusiasm for something i felt was too meta (despite the drum weighing nearly 600 grams)
now this is something ive always regreted not building
after having suijin shredded at a very small event in loughborough by mini spiny mk1 (mini pp3d) i really wanted a thing weapon on a small frame, but didnt want an undercutter, so made this, basically designed to be an optimised inverted cripping depression with lots of steel armour on its nylon frame, may be something i revisit someday
now for another cluster that kind of existed, a drum and horizontal pairing,
the drum was fully build, a hub motor but was way overweight so i bought some magnesium to make it from for v2 which never happened (still got the mag) and this version was put to death at a dojo where it got a kicking from endboss and now serves as a target for dolos
its twin was going to be this undercutter, the weapon was cut but nothing else really
this was designed to be built for battle in the burgh 2, but never ended up making it, it has 2 drive pods which can move allowing it to turn inverted and when it gyros it can keep 3 wheels on the floor (in hindsight this is where the ideas for yam started) never built it as it would be split in half by any decent horizontal
another bot designed for subterranean (this time the second one) it has a pair of horizontals that it could swap out for a set of forks and 1 blade of 2 sets of forks
now for the first design of a dolos feather
based on a early version of dolos, so tiny weapon massive body and massive forks, wheel to wheel is was 900mm wide and 1030mm long, very big boi, and as you can imagine way too heavy
another feather, this time a pair of abandoned versions of my feather ring spinner falak
this one was built but not ever really properly (fightfest 22 was a cursed event for me), always been so proud of the way this thing looks, easily my best looking bot imho
and a hideous undercutter version, because clearly the solution to a very complex robot was make it even more complex
more feathers in the from of an undercutter/overhead bot, drawn in jan of 2023 so im not sure if it was inspired by chilly daddy or designed before i saw it
either way i dropped it because it was huge and i didnt want to just steel his design haha
and then a pure overhead version, i think i still have the ali frame but for sure still got the bars and the forks, was supposed to be for fight fest 23 but ran out of time
might make it at some point or use the frame to make a sportsman or something
the 90 degree gearbox is at least getting reused in a now hobby!
finally back to some beetles
v1 and v2 of a crusher i had designed again with the subterranean event in mind, i had seen antithesis and thought it looked fun and wanted to give it a go, never built it because it was gunna be spenny and i knew i couldnt do better than what jeb was doing anyway haha
back to clusters again this time of the feather persuasion, again a v1 and v2
they both feather the front wheels doing all the normal driving and steering but the rear wheel is on a massive motor and could be used as a “ram mode” to power slam full sized bots into walls, one uses a far too weak motor for the arm and the other uses a scootie, as you can imagine no armour so were sportsman and this started my love of angled wheels, i mean just look so much cooler
another feather, this time big zeph v2, was designed in a rush to try and get something ready for fight fest 23 reusing many parts from adrestia (the overhead) but never came to be due to time and money
and that will do for now, about 3/4 of the way through all my old cads but from now on there are folders within folders and frankly i cant be arsed , if theres any bots you want more details on im happy to dig them out and see what i can find
if i have an idea i have to cad it to get it out of my head, hence the very large collection of strong things
, mah poor bank account screaming.