hi.
i am looking to start a combat robots club at the secondary school i work at. any one done anything similar?
Yo! So Iāve 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 didnāt.
Iāve 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 āstemā 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.
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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 weāve 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 āspinnersā that arenāt going to hurt anyone (including the other robots butā¦ yeah). If youāre 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 āassistantā 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 āarmourā 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 didnāt 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!
My DT teacher lets me make mine at the DT club but I have to bring the stuff but he is super fine with it
A bit about bodgebots that weāve done in school clubs / scouts etc: Bodgebots - Bristol Bot Builders
@moopās ant workshop kit parts:
related queston, i am scavenging bits from a former drone club, so have RX/TX for days!
but we also have a bunch of 250mAh 3.8v 1Cell lipo stick battery, are they of any uses to me? i know Ants tend to run off 2Cells .
It seems like it is possibly a very small world, if you are the librarian with the Pit Droid?
If so it would be AMAZING if you could get a club off the ground and you could happily say you have parental support if that would swing it!
Currently have one child at TS who loves Heavyweight Robot Combat and has built a very low tech, but immensely fun robot, but would die of teenage embarrassment if anyone found out.
Youngest goes up in Sept, he was involved in the larger robot build, but also has some BBB kits and now wants to build an ant/beetle with a view to combat, but the question is where locally?
Both are avid followers of Extreme Robots, and we met the guys from RCRobotics this weekend who gave them some very enthusiastic advice about getting started with antweights.
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I am the Librarian with the Pit Droid! (unless their are a bunch of usā¦.)
hopfully we are kicking off after the next half term, Tec are sorting out geting the hardware but budgests are supper tigt at the moment 
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primaraly we are looking at Y7 and Y8 to start whith , making non-destructive ants and an arena. wuld love to do a school trip to compeat at a event at some point if it all works out(i beleve thare is a place up near york?) .
My knowledge of robot combat mostly involves watching alot of NHRL and fiddling in my little workshop at home. I made a few Ants i found on the internet and am working on some designs of my own. but am faaaarrrrrrrrr from realy knowing what i am doing .
wuld love to meet a local builder for a chat!
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Hi all,
Sorry to tack onto a thread but it seems a very relevant thread I am also planning on starting a secondary school combat robotics club (Itās the in thing at the moment haha). We have a budget of around Ā£500 to hopefully get 4 robots up and running. We are planning for PLANTs and have a H2D with filament out the wazoo. I have an arena build already (we might be getting sponsorship to polycarbonate it despite being unlikely to need it for the first year as we are only plannign for flippers and grabbers until we get more established.) @RossR we sound like we are in a similar boat, mine is for Y10/Y14 however. Im thinking it should cover us for most parts, my concern revolves around part burnout. It sounds like i might be replacing N10/N20 motors regularly.
Any advice appreciated and to admins/citizens of the forum if i should/need to start this on a new post i can.
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I am no way an expert!
500Ā£ sounds like a solid start, We have half that .
i am in no way an exspert, just watch alot of NHRL and like tinkering. planing to learn as i go
defanatly worth keeping in touch and comparing notes! (may be even doing batel one day!)
Hi Ross, Hell yeah!
If the club goes well id like to come over from the channel islands and do a combat trip so that would be neat 