Rovengers: rage of saltron (aka the best bots ever*)

[morgan_ls (Morgan Larner-Smith)]

*citation needed

me and simon szarko have been building clusters on and off for the last 5 years and known eachother for nearly 7 years.

our clusters have been running since the 2020 champs sxs and have never been beyond the top 32. our goal for the last few events was a top 16 finish and weve not quite managed it. this is where i would do a bit of a breakdown of the previous bots we have fun but that feels like far too much work as we had many robots over the years. rovengers however were always multiple parts which we could sub in and out depending on the opponent. if we actually built them well they would of been pretty good. alas we did not and simon has been busy so we havnt really ran proper clusters for a while

the design for rovengers 2 started when i showed simon some cam lifters which he started to design and came up with this beast

they had 4 servos between them and some 3mm hardox forks. would of been very annoying to face

however as time went on and we signed up for champs we realised we really didnt have time to make them with cam lifters so we pivoted to these

it was around this time we also decided the main weapon should be rage bait hence the faces and slogans. we did mess with the idea of printing them red and spraying them skin-tone

this was built and we hastily did the POM for them however we were worried with the brushed drive and dolos’s horrible forks we would get stuck constantly

around this time however i was watching some nhrl for some sion action and ended up watching hook em a cluster with tpu forks and a small front lifter which did quite well. this sparked an itch to redesign our clusters to more closely mirror these https://youtu.be/qjYnOyVG54o?si=aUXuEbQFW_V7x3lD

so we came up with this

baleen forks to get under verts and large outer forks for corraling smaller bots (each robot is 300mm wide) this fitted our wanting to make them annoying and competitive so we decided to press ahead with these for champs. so a rush build was in order

they are powered by repeat compacts with a 4s 450mah battery (could of been much smaller) and some lego bbb wheels from the store which gave excellent traction. they also use the same fork mounting system dolos uses with 8mm hdpe rods

around this time we messed with a few configs

a wedge for horizontals (which was printed way too thin irl)

an anti mo/hammer saw config. was redeisgned to have some forks facing down too so act like a trap. didnt end up printing it due to not thinking it could actually print. plus i was fast running out of tpu

and finally a really dumb wajoo config. a 2mm sheet of cf which in theory would let us get under and shove them around

we also messed with some magnets

these were about 2mm off the floor so on the real versions we went for the magnets 4mm off the floor with spacers if we wanted more traction

i also made some 3mm ali top plates just in case we draw anything overhead

however with my printer running low on filament and time also running short (like 1 week away from the comp) it was time to build the second bot

this came together much faster as you would expect and i made sure to print it a bit lighter just incase we had weight issues

am i glad i printed them lighter haha. just 1 gram in it the night before the comp

took a final glory shot before hand and we were good to go.

all we wanted was a top 16 finish so between both our driving and my design “expertise” for the ground game we prayed for a kind draw and to not bring them back in a bin bag. we had 4 bots we really really didnt want to fight. that being mo-problems, swoop, wajoo and chopstick

[morgan_ls (Morgan Larner-Smith)]

champs 2025 aka the luckiest run ever

(all photo credits in this section go to stuart camp)

BBB Beetle Champs 2025 - Full Competition - Bristol Bot Builders Beetleweight Combat Robots

we got to the event early and passed tech check with flying colours (just needed to draw an on off direction on the lid) and came to 1480 which was a nice surprise. all we had to do was grind out our tpu lids a little as they kept touching the cans of the motors.

Eventually we learned our opponents for round 1 would be Lilith and Mo Problems. now we really didnt have anything for mo other than 1 horizontal wedge so i put that on my half and simon ran with the baleen forks to counter Lilith. our plan was to hang back to wait for lilith to box rush mo and then whenever lilith tried to run we would feed it back into mo. then hope for mo to die

as you can see in the event above this didnt exactly go to plan. dave rushed us instead and took a couple massive shots from mo disabling it. at this time simons half died and then came back with 1 side of drive so it was down to me to 1v1 mo. i decided to try and bait rob to hit me near the out zone and it somehow worked! mo went over the wall and we went on to the top 32

simon for some reason decided these were the best bots ever and ran with that in the interview

wedge says “mo pls hit lilith”

sucks to suck rob (love ya)

we didnt have too much to fix, rob had cut the wheel guard up on gold and bent the screws on blues guard which would make it tricky to remove. the reason blue died is simons old recievers and transmitter which we think have given up the ghost. luckily i brought a spare reciever and transmitter as i suspected this would happen and we were good to go

this put us up against duexbrie and cheese themed 4wd egg beater with a unusual aluminium beater. we figured we should be able to get under from the front fairly easy and hoped that there weapon would hit the floor enough to disable it. it being aluminium didnt really matter for use given we are all tpu it would bite regardless

this nearly went very badly as i got inverted and beached almost immediately. leaving simon to carry and carry he did. brie hit me after i was immobile and killed there weapon. giving simon the opening to ram them against a wall and immobilise them

we had no damage after this fight and were into the top 16! so anything after this was a bonus

revron

this was going to be interesting as we were pit neighbours. revron looked very solid in its first few fights dishing out lots of damage. however it didnt look the most mobile so we figured we could get round it. however the weapon was much better suited to cut through our tpu if we got hit

this went to plan from the early moments. we were able to pin revron several times. sadly he did manage to get a hit on the back of blue which was party my fault and killed one of the drives. so i knew then we needed to get it down the pit asap to avoid it getting a hit on me knocking us out

moments later however revron burst into flames as there weapon esc gave out handing us the win. although lucky in that it caught fire i was pretty confident we could of won regardless as we were out driving them

damage wise Simon got onto wiring back in a new motor and i went and ground out our aluminium lids for motor clearance like we did to the tpu ones as we next had swoop

we were not feeling confident going into this. we did have some anti big wheel forks but we felt they would just be ripped off. so we decided i would armour up with the aluminium top armour and wedge and simon would try to hang back and go for the pit

this didnt go to plan and smoop got a couple big hits on blue killing another drive motor and causing it to emit the magic smoke

ouch

this left just me driving gold. however i did feel i had a chance as smoop hadnt really managed to bite me and i could mabye get it to bounce in the pit or the out zone

and we somehow did it! i rushed for the pit release and swoop managed to bounce themselves onto the sidewall and with a fortunate driving error drove over the wall and out

this got us to the semi finals against chopstick….oh god

of all the robots going to this event this was the one we really really didnt want to fight. and with a big repair job from swoop we were left scrabling to get them into the arena. the legend sion lent us a drive motor for blue as we had went through our spares with the ali top armour on both and one of the four long forks between us we made weight and got into the fight

blue got flipped very early on and with a massive belly shot was killed in one hit leaving just gold left. i did manage to get round chop stick for a while and the ali lid worked way better than expected but i just couldnt do anything to get them towards the pit. eventually they got an excelent pin and cut through 2 of the wires to one of the sides of drive. and with the other side propped up on blue we were out

this left us with our biggest repair job of the day. we opened up blue expecting a repeat to be cut in half or something. turns out chopstick had cut through the battery and somehow didnt catch fire. despite us sticking warning labels on the bots andy ignored them and stabbed our lipos smh

(pov youve just asked simon to wire up a 3rd brushless motor in 2 hours)

this meant we could get both into the arena for the third place playoff against chucky

(you can see the massive cut in blue from chopsticks)

sadly we didnt realise but one side of blue got filled with what we can only assume was swaft from the lipo jamming up the motor (sorry sion) we tried our best but untimatly chucky had way more drive power and the flipper meant we could be rendered pretty useless without a way to get back over. we were able to get under chucky from the front with the forks but this didnt really matter as sadly blue did get beached twice on the little mini bot but chucky rightfully got the win (really we should of been counted out when we both got stacked and each other and were quite lucky the mini bot was jammed under us causing an unstick)

so after a very fun day of competition we managed 4th in one of the biggest events of the year and easily our best achievement as a cluster team (and Simons first top 4 in going on 7 years) so these will 100% be returning. i can only speak for myself but despite all the work they are some of the most fun ive had doing robots for a long time

main lessons were that we needed to move the motors further into the bot to prevent them being hit from the back and bigger wheels so we can unstick outselfs. and finally some grabbers/lifters would be really useful to help force people down the pit. we will also be shrinking the main body a bit as we had loads of space inside that we really didnt need

other than that they worked great for a v1 of a build

some very rough cad for a v2, with a lifter/grabber so we can self right and hopefully unstick ourselves much easier as well as other more control with a grab

until next time! rovengers assemble!

[McMullet (Sam Roberts)]

Great driving all day and I loved the vibes in your interviews.

Thanks for the write up!

[Wither (Luca Dingemans)]

seeing the rovengers fight has made me wanna redo my cluster haha, they were certainly one of the bots of time wen hobby version

[morgan_ls (Morgan Larner-Smith)]

we were so sure we were going out early so figured it would make for some funny irony

[morgan_ls (Morgan Larner-Smith)]

do it clusters are great fun!

and there are plans. rovengers spinfinity war is too good a name to pass up…

[KitCat (Vlad)]

This is amazing. I do wish you would have gone with the cam lifters (my favourite weapon) but cool nenetheless! What’s the reason for the comb forks?

[Hoppin (Siôn Williamson)]

V2 makes me feel like Kurt cobain

[morgan_ls (Morgan Larner-Smith)]

cam lifters would of been more fun but probably allot more hassle for a cluster

and the comb forks seem to be the in thing at the moment for fighting verts and egg beaters so figured we would give them a shot

[TeamChiffChaffs7 (Edwin Hicks)]

i fear for what will become of this robot

[morgan_ls (Morgan Larner-Smith)]

Well a v2 is now more officially in the works

The main things we wanted to improve from next time is getting some proper weapons on them. the wedges were fun but we always felt having some way to influence the battle would greatly improve them so we have a servo and either a lifter (that can double as a grabber) or a pure grabber depending on the opponent and we good we need our ground game to be. these can be swapped with a dovetailed secondary arm so we dont have to remove the servo every time and can swap it out much faster

the addition of weapons lets us also self right and wiggle off of walls which was a big issue in both the fights we lost

they are also got a bit smaller

slightly less wide and the body is less deep allowing for more armour on the bodys themselves

we also moved the motors forward to avoid being hit in the back and breaking them, we are going for the just cuz blitz lights as they are a bit smaller and come with a 6mm shaft standard. the other main change is 4wd this will let us put full power down much easier and allows us to run magnets much closer to the floor as we wont need to worry about the front forks flexing and them touching the floor

magnets in blue

wiring has also got tidier with the motors actually sealed up now.

the other main change is the armour. its now 1.5mmcf top and bottom with a thicker tpu back to better avoid rear shots from verts. along with there being much less back there that can be damaged. the front and ground game remains moslty unchanged with 8mm hdpe rods holding in the front baleen with a slight angle change on it and also changing the spacing so we cant get stuck together if we go nose to nose

for anti hs we will have 2 options. one which will be a ti plow the other will be the standard tpu front. this will force opponents to pick between a stabbing black for tpu or a blunter blade to deal with metal

and of course the main weapon from last time returns in the from of insults written on the back upgraded as well

overall we are pretty excited to get these built and are hoping to be able to get them into brawl, if not another event later in the year

[Craig (Craig Croucher)]

Nice one! Feel like that ticks all the boxes I hoped you’d tick with a v2, better drive and some form of active weapon. Look forward to seeing how they come along!

[TeamChiffChaffs7 (Edwin Hicks)]

Rovengers: End Game (both of them are End Game clones)

[morgan_ls (Morgan Larner-Smith)]

Rovengers: Rage of Saltron

with brawl fast approaching i figured now was a good a time as any to write-up the build process of these new clusters

these are the first time ive actually built a beetle lifter (that wasnt 360) so there was a bit of a learning curve, starting with the cad, they mostly stayed the same as the previous post externally but the insides changed allot as the build progressed, rather than jump between cad and reality ill just do all the cad stuff now

rear armour with large chamfers to get the shoulder bolts inplace

unused split anti hs config, we decided to go to a solid jointed version for strength

and finally how the front rods work in the bot. we decided to move away from hdpe rods as for tpu forks they were overkill and difficult to put in if the holes missaligned (plus for some reason aliexpress refuses to ship me 8mm rods and instead ships me 12mm) so we decided to go to either cf (for stifffness) or polycarb(for less splinters) we will try both and see how they fare

after some testing we found the cf assembled lifter arm just wanst going to work and so decided to go to a tpu arm with cf rods inserted into it as well as a redesigned servo mounting system, previosly it looked like this

which was a tpu U shaped peice that the servo screwed into and then bolted to the base. this was going to prove tricky to impliment so instead I borrowed heaviliy from the ssp kit and had a cf cover over the servo and some nice keying features for it to rest into. talking of these are pretty much 2 ssp kits in terms of drive and weapon power which is kinda funny

with the cad pretty much complete it was onto the printing process. they are all printed from tpu as all things should be with some pla top and bottom plates for testing

printed parts and all the goodies i bought for them (oof my wallet)

decided to cast up some wheels much earlier than i usually do because i wasnt sure how the drive belts would react, turns out they did pull a little tighter on the tpu than normal and so i had to toe out the rear deadshafts by 2 degrees

did a first electrical test fit and powered on the servo to get a feeling for self righting

next up was to weigh it and then do a full wiring job. was very happy with the wirring less happy with the weight. the prints were all lighter than the real deal and it was missing the carbon fibre so i decided to make some custom rear axels

so i made some magnesium rear axels and custom nylon bushings saved a crap tonne of weight and was going to be much easier to assemble with a bolt instead of a nyloc

and as you can see they saved a crap tonne of weight

all the set-ups for the bots. we got an anti hs wedge, a baleen config and a long fork config thats lighter to run ti lids/other attachments

next up was trying out the lifter arms with the cf rods in the tpu prints. its crazy how much stiffness this adds and would recommend others give it a go the rods weighed nothing and was much stiffer than a solid tpu print

with all the prototyping on the first version the second version came together very fast and they both came under weight minus the cf

another new thing i did with this build is actually designed all the bolts to use the same 1 or 2 tools rather than the usally birgade of screwdrivers i bring with me so these use plastites which is my first time using them and my god are they so much better and it means the top can be removed with a 2.5mm allen key and a t10 torx bit (i bought 2 of each for extra try hard)

so yeah thats the bots done for now, they just need the cf which should be arriving soon and then a paint job!

turns out theres another cluster going to brawl, if anyone with access to mess with the draw is reading. come on that first round melee would be really funny

although because these are the rovengers and we wanted to really play them up this time we went and did these

because why not

simon also cooked on the new rear logos

so with that we are 90% of the way done for brawl the last few things are resoldeirng some 7.4 volt becs to replace the 5v becs some more wheels and fitting the carbon fibre. our hope for this event is to get some non cheezy wins and mabye recreate some of the magic from there first run since these ones are sooo much better than the last versions, which of course means they will go 0-2

oh and finally

simon your proof of spin is nearly due

see you at brawl!

[Hoppin (Siôn Williamson)]

Why are you miserable

[TeamChiffChaffs7 (Edwin Hicks)]

google schadenfreude

[morgan_ls (Morgan Larner-Smith)]

I curse you with “fusion not responding”

[morgan_ls (Morgan Larner-Smith)]

huh thats pretty neat

[morgan_ls (Morgan Larner-Smith)]

the carbon fibre arrived so it was time to pretty them up!

the gentlemen looking very dapper

and in weight! its nearly light enough to run the ti lids ontop of the carbon fibre as standard

talking of Ti i gave the anti hammer saw/crusher top armour some unique personality too. these wont quite run like this as we will need to swap to lighter side armour but it means we have 1mm of titaniium a tpu air gap and then 1mm of carbon fibre underneath with some small ti bits we can strap on the lifters too. should be pretty strong

finaly bits now are a cradle which simon is working on

, some locking bars and a few more stickers for the rear of the robots

I also need to mess around with the magnets a little. honestly we are tempted to run without them since we havnt really been able to do much testing with them and on wooden floors they drive really nicely. since the 2 options we currently have for magnet at nearly no force at all or stick to the fridge level force which feels like allot to put through these fairly small drive motors. we will likely see on the day

other than that all finished! which feels wrong as im normally scrambling on the night before the event… its going well…. too well