hi.
i am looking to start a combat robots club at the secondary school i work at. any one done anything similar?
Yo! So I’ve done this in my primary school. I also know Paul has done this on the past ina secondary setting.
Happy to chat through what worked and what didn’t.
I’ve also branches out into external after-school and weekend clubs.
Let me know 
Hi, yes I ran a club at a secondary school for about 3 years. It was very popular with the Y7-9 pupils. Had some 6th formers turn up for a short while.
Not going to lie I put a lot of effort and time into this but did get funding from the school through “stem” club funding.
I built an arena and variable speed bot chassis the pupils could use based on their age.
Happy to answer any question you have and here is a picture of what some students managed to achieve.
they look bonkers! love them!!
got a meeting next week with the teck teacher i am teaming up with(i am but a humble librarian) going to talk funding. luckily the school already has a bunch of radio gear from a drone club kit they never got round to running(FLYSKY FS-i6S). think we will be runing an hour a week after school.
any thing in particular we need to be on top of/aware off?
i am a keen fan of combat robotics but have only ever made a few simple ant wedges/flippers, never competed or taught tech(but i do know my way round a soldering iron, printer, fuson360 and roles of gafa tape.
my partner in crime is an experienced tech teacher , but their only exposure to combat robotics is watching robot wars back in the day.
Keeping it simple is absolutely key. Workshops we’ve done as BBB used to use just servos (either 360 or regular) for everything as that simplifies the kit right down to a battery, receiver and servos, also allows the kids to make ‘spinners’ that aren’t going to hurt anyone (including the other robots but… yeah). If you’re looking at secondary you could definitely do something more akin to regular ants but 100% stay away from spinners. Suddenly becomes very expensive and very dangerous.
I was never brave enough to do this stuff as a club when I was teaching (but also ran the FIRST LEGO club so was busy enough) so massive kudos for jumping in.
ace! thanks
indeed , we dont have the budget for anything too kinetic 
i was involved in a first robotics club a few years ago , that was fun but i was defiantly “assistant” on that one.
I had some clear rules set out for designs e.g No sharp items such as screws, nails, knives etc. No tools can be brought in, only the ones provided could be used. Any violations of these rules were instant bans from the club. I did not want to promote any pupils to bring in prohibited items.
The pupils had to bring in all their “armour” and other items they wanted to use on the bots to make my life a little easier.
I had soldered all the components myself with JST plugs so it could be plug and play and a switch on an arduino that would reduce speed of the bots.
TBH there are many different ways you could go about this and the level of effort you want to put in yourself behind the scenes. I was worried if I didn’t supply them with plug and play components and a chassis(which was literally just a box with holes to mount N20 motors) that they would get bored quickly as on my trial runs of the club the pupils mainly just wanted to fight my robots instead 
.
Any way, happy to show off more stuff from my old club as I do miss it!
thanks for sharing looks super fun!