Somatic Damage was a beast! You dished out some really spectacular yeets.
I like Nom’s face best though. 
Thank you! already ordered all the parts for an improved version! hoping to get the weight in for a hardox bar and maybe even poly-carbonate supports for the weapon instead of ABS.
i’m pleasantly surprised with how it performed, i did not expect it to throw bots as well as it did.
thanks!
i wish Nom did better, i had drive problems with it all the way through the event, i need to change the transmitter since its definitely starting to show its age now haha. aiming to switch all my bots over to flysky when i can.
Hey peeps, i’m working on a new 150g robot atm and i’m looking for quite a short brushless motor for a spinner robot. i’ve been having a look but unfortunately the only one i could find was discontinued… does anybody have some good recommendations?
I’ve been using the T-Motor F2004 1700kv in my undercutter, which is 17.25mm from the mount to the end of the shaft. It has a smaller bolt pattern than the standard 1806 though, 2x5mm and 2x6mm M2 screws instead. T-Motor F2004 Motor (1700kV, 3000kV) - Unmanned Tech UK FPV Shop
Thanks for the suggestion! will probably end up using it as it seems to be really good height wise
since yesterday i decided to work on a 4th robot for my future AWS Fleet, this is the work in progress for RDM (Random DeathMatch)
This is the CAD design for the bot so far, i’m planning for this to be a shuffler bar spinner, since it just popped into my head at work and seemed fun (And maybe also deadly if this somehow works out), i’m going to give it a bigger weapon than the one it currently has, as in the image there is plenty of volume to still play with, but other than that i’m happy with the way things are going so far, currently the bot should be just under 20mm high so hopefully will be able to hit opponents quite low down!
Not entirely sure at the moment how i’m going to make the shuffling work especially with a somewhat limited amount of space (vertically at least) but hopefully i’ll find a way to make room for it…
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Now that’s my kinda shit. Just remember you can always put the bot in corner to corner! Don’t be afraid to go bigger that 100x100mm as a footprint.
In terms of shuffling, you might want to set the pivot point to the side of the rotational piece in order to overcome the height restrictions. Example below
(Source: Luke Quinn)
Cheers! yea i’m going for corner to corner, which is how i’ve done the CAD for the robot. i didn’t realise that i had so much room to spare until i drew out the 10x10 square haha. that room will definitely be used up. I probably could just try and get it to fit in diagonally but i’d rather just play it safe and get it to fit in flat since its definitely a lot easier to design that way.
As for the shuffling mechanism, i didn’t think about a sideways pivot point to be honest, thanks for the suggestion! it would definitely be the best option with the height of my robot in mind. Only real issue for me is probably going to be cadding each piece out since i’m not really very knowledgable on shuffling mechanisms, but i’ll figure it out in the end!
I’m half-debating going between a 2 legged and 3 legged shuffling mechanism, 2 would probably be easier, but 3 would be a lot smoother, which probably means this robot wouldn’t kill itself whilst just driving. Will probably just go straight to 3 legged though
finally (i think) finished the cad for my new robot RDM, this is how it looks assembled in CAD, i need to make the chassis a little shorter to make room for screws and also going to move the screws further in too since they are currently a bit close to the corners, but other than that i reckon this is it done.
I don’t really know if i’ve designed the shuffling mechanism correctly to allow it to work, and unfortunately due to me having to order all my 3d printed parts since i don’t own my own printer, its going to take a bit to find that out lol, but i’m happy with how it all looks in CAD (With the limited shuffling mechanism knowledge i do have anyways)
I do wish that i could have made a 3 leg cam work on this bot, which was my original plans. But i just could not be bothered to figure it out, i am concerned that it might not walk smoothly enough and will hit the floor and die, but there’s only really one way to find out if that will happen, isn’t there?
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Hey people, it’s been a while, I may or may not have lost Interest in the hobby for a bit. Which is weird on one hand because being at ORCS 1 made me realise how much I missed competing and building robots, and how fun and enjoyable the people were too.
Then on the other hand building these robots (soldering mainly) is an absolute pain in the ass for me, and it makes me regret taking interest in something so electronics-based. But oh well, my soldering is slowly improving, and this little bit here is boring anyways
When I last posted, I talked about ordering new parts for somatic damage, as well as some hardox bars too. And I had also shown off CAD for a shuffling overhead spinner named RDM
So… where are things now?
Somatic Damage:
All the prints for the new version of Somatic Damage have arrived, weight was a big problem with the first version of Somatic Damage, and to help eliminate that I shaved some weight from the back plate to give me slightly more weight to play with for some other hopeful upgrades.
Old butt
New butt
As it stands, I’m not too happy with how it looks honestly, as you can see above, the new rear is shorter and leaves some air room inbetween the top plate and the top of the rear, which i don’t really like, i think it definitely would have been nicer to just keep it at full height, like on the old rear. Though one good change that this version does sport, is that the middle section does now have a wall to protect it from spinners. Given how many wires are present at this section, i am VERY happy to have this as an addition to the bot, and i hopefully will be able to make more changes to the design of the chassis too, like making the rear look nicer by making it taller again, and also maybe even making the robot shorter if i can, we’ll see how much space i have when i solder it all up.
One of the biggest weight reductions for Somatic Damage have been internally, with the electronics. Instead of using the BBB dual ESC, I have gone for two Red ESCs, which make soldering a lot easier for me and weigh considersbly less too! I have also started using a 180mah lipo in my bots, which i have ordered from turnabot.
All of this weight saving is to get my robot under the weight limit, which it very slightly exceeded at ORCS 1, sitting at 151g(i believe?). Though these weight reductions were also for another planned improvement, which were my hardox bars, supplied very kindly by David Weston 
RDM:
On the last post, I showed off the CAD for RDM (which stands for Random Deathmatch). The weapon had changed quite a bit since, which was a very tedious process I must admit. Trying to balance an asymmetrical weapon (especially one as big as this one) is quite the task, but I managed to get it incredibly close in the end.
I sent all the files to be printed and ordered the electronics for it online (from the BBB store ofc 
). I was eager to see if my shuffling mechanism would work correctly the first time, especially with these tiny bearings that I managed to find online.
And here is how the bit looks in its current state!
The weapon on this one is absolutely awesome, and the chassis looks really nice too, however i did have to cut some plastic away as i put the slot for the wires in the wrong place… oops.
The big question is, do the legs work??? And the answer is… i’m not sure, they could? Maybe? There are just some problems.
Here is a photo of the legs for RDM, the slots at the front are to allow for a screw to thread through, which would keep the outer legs from falling off and keep them in place to stop them from rotating too far too.
However, the screw i bought for this is actually too thick to slot through the legs, meaning i need to make these slots thicker for that idea to work unfortunately. I was thinking about maybe instead slotting a pin through and gluing it into the motor mount, which would probably make these legs work ok in their current state.
As of now, no soldering has been done yet for this bot, and its currently not at the top of my priorities either, probably sitting at around 3rd right now. Though, making this robot has been a very interesting experience, especially trying to figure out and make a cam system that works properly for this design.
New robots:
I had also started 2 new robots after my last blog on here, which I shall introduce now!
First of all is my vertical beater named Night Light. This robot was designed in CAD just after Somatic Damage, and I managed to get the weapon for it finished and machined thanks to PCBway, which have been quite a wonderful service to use for weapons! The weapon axle fits (quite tightly) into a bearing which is press fit (also quite tightly) into one of the sides of the robot. Stupidly, I did not put any tolerances in place so everything was quite the nightmare to put together overall. HOWEVER, it did go together in the end
As it stands, all of the electronics are soldered on this one except for the weapon ESC to the switch. Other than that, this robot is basically done. However there are already some improvements I’d like to make to this design, which I’ll talk about another time.
The 2nd new robot I have started is called Viper, and it’s a 2 Wheeled-drive wedge robot based on Manta Ray, who was my first robot and also a kit robot from nuts and bots. Manta Ray was fairly successful, getting up to to joint 5th at one event, and I wanted to have a new robot that was more my design with a different idea. It IS based on the original Nuts and Bots kit, with some differences. One of the main difference physically is that this robot is printed entirely from TPU, this was one thing I wanted to try after seeing robots like Slightly Rubber. I thought it was quite cool. The chassis is heavier. However given that the robot is weaponless, I feel like i can quite happily invest that weight into having a strong chassis like this one hopefully is.
It is mainly just an experiment at the moment, and it’s definitely not perfect, but I am hoping I can make this bot work effectively and efficiently in due time.
As it stands, I haven’t done any soldering for this robot yet, but I’ll get around to it all sometime soon!!!
And… for now that is all I have to update on this blog. I plan on continuing to solder everything up this weekend, and I’ll hopefully make a blog about that soon enough! My plans are to start with Somatic Damage and Night Light, but making plans is always easier than actually doing them
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howdy peeps! finally decided on a whim to hop back into building some robots. been doing work on a new version of Somatic Damage first!
current upgrades are some protection on the rear, some new weapon discs/bars and also changing up the electronics to help reduce weight, in the form of two Red ESCs and a small 200mah lipo which im honestly surprised works just fine. i am running into some SMALL issues with the fact that none of the motors feel like spinning, despite the robot having no blinking lights at all, but that is hopefully resolvable… any guidance on that would be appreciated 
but for now its nice to be back into things, will be designing a new chassis for Viper, and also some new legs for Wipeout (formerly RDM), will post updates soon!
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I don’t think i ever showed this off, but heres photos of the damage Nom recieved all the way back at ORCs 1, wish this robot controlled better as it was a lot of fun to drive!
also very surprised the head didn’t take any damage as it was easily the weakest part of the whole machine…
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howdy peeps!
all my parts for my robots have finally arrived, so where are things at right now?
Somatic Damage:
Somatic Damage worried me at first because with the Titanium disc it was sitting at 149 with the Red ESCs. however, changing the disc out for my heaviest bar had it sitting at 144g. unfortunately however, i dont have the weight for my heaviest hardox bar, as it sits at around 152 with that. but, more on that later
here is the disassembled body, everything is included there, the body, mounts, top plate ect.
Night Light:
Night Light is not as fortunate in terms of weight…
Night Light is overweight even without the top plate, which is not exactly the result i was hoping for honestly… i have a way to maybe cut a few grams, which i’ll get to later. and, i can also cut down the wires on the electronics which is helpful.
Wipeout:
Wipeout has been quite iffy for me, the new parts have arrived but i think a redesign of the legs and mounts are in order. it seems i did NOT consider how much sideways movement would be involved when i designed these mounts.
the mounts are designed to have a long screw go through the side to keep the legs in place, however the hole is way too close to the edge of the print AND also isnt far enough away to go in and allow the legs to move around it. i’m definitely eager to have a walker, especially one with a big scary weapon like this. but i think the best approach for now is to give the robot a good redesign (especially given all of these robots were designed back when the 4 inch cube rule was a thing)
i do have a small plan to upgrade these, and i wish i realised this in hindsight honestly. but im going to be upgrading the drive to N10’s instead of N20’s, which should shave 4 grams off of the weight for each bot. This means ill have enough weight on Somatic Damage to use the Hardox bars AND Night Light can finally be in weight too!
I’d love to get Somatic Damage ready for the BBB event thats coming up in the next few months, would be super fun to have a good outing with it and see how it holds up, i have a plastic ant i can take as well, which will be exciting since its a robot ive never fought with before, but ill show them off soon!
howdy again peeps!
been doing some soldering today on Somatic Damage, which has been a minor learning experience but, things are (mostly) smooth at the moment.
my N10 motors came in, and for weight reduction they have worked a wonder! but ill get to that shortly
i haven’t been able to finish soldering unfortunately, as it seems the new soldering iron i got has very little ability to do too much soldering before it decides its time to recharge… which was quite annoying at points i must admit (especially so when im very slow when it comes to soldering) But, i just need to solder up the weapon and i’m all done, which is exciting!
I’ve had small problems throughout with the layout of the internals, mainly the fact that I moved the switch on this version which I did NOT take into account at first, but thankfully resolved! super happy with how things have been going, here’s some random photos I took throughout the day of Somatic Damage
the best part is, my idea to lose weight absolutely worked! the robot now weighs in at 147 grams with everything included, EVEN a hardox bar which I’m super happy about. I have a few bars for different cases, so having my heaviest bar on this bot be well within the weight is awesome news for me (less fortunate news for everybody else).
After I’m done soldering up Somatic Damage I’ll be moving onto Night Light, and praying that I’m as lucky with weight reductions as I have been here
heres some random photos below, which includes a new drum spinner i’ve been desiging and also a new body design for Wipeout that gives me more space to play with, ill also be redesigning the shuffling mechanism AND the weapon bar 
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Howdy peeps!
Just thought i’d show off some of the insane damage that Somatic Damage recieved this past weekend. Unfortunately, Somatic Damage is a VERY outdated design, from all the way back when the 4 inch cube rule was still in effect. From fight 1 i was having issues with spinner after spinner, with the robot only being taken apart more and more as the event went on.
Nom thankfully went unscathed, mostly… despite not winning a single fight. I’ll post an event report soon, since there is A LOT to go over… for now enjoy these photos!
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Howdy peeps! this post will be talking about Somatic Damage’s time at BBB’s June Ant Social, and also the future of the robot. I went 1-3 at this event, which is not ideal but unfortunately this Is an outdated design and it got some pretty unlucky match ups too… how unlucky? Well let’s take a look at that…
Fight One:
Somatic Damage’s first fight of the day was against a Horizontal Spinner. SD (which I will be naming my robot for the sake of typing) isn’t fitted to take on Horizontal Spinners very well, which is bad news for me as I’d end up fighting 3 of them… In this first fight, I got hit in one of the corners a few times, which actually ended up tearing the cable for the ESC out of the robot, which is crazy… because of that I lost my fowards and backwards drive, and could only turn after about 10-15 seconds of fighting… not ideal. By the end of the fight, they had essentially ripped both the drive wires to pieces, meaning I had no drive at all unfortunately.
This highlights a glaring (and worrying) weakness in Somatic Damage’s design. It is good that it’s shaped in such a way that it can force robots into the spinner, however the material IS NOT strong enough to be able to take any hits againat Horizontal Spinners. The corners are very thin and are essentially able to be sliced through with ease. which resulted in me losing drive. if he had gotten the other side of the bot, it would’ve been a lipo fire…
Additional damage in that fight is us losing the front forks, which would end up harming maneuverability of the robot to an extent which is also not ideal…
Second Fight:
SD’s second fight was against another horizontal spinner, and it was short, but not very sweet. I never realised that the front forks being completely absent would cause me so much trouble, but 5 seconds into the fight, I spun up and was knocked over by the speed of my own weapon… which essentially knocked me out completely. they got a hit in on my motor mount which sheared the threads on the 3d print AND managed to swing it round a whole 180°. However other than that, and a slight dink on the 3d printed weapon mounts, I was relatively unscathed somehow? hooray?
Third Fight:
SD’s 3rd fight was against Birdemic, which I was quite excited about because it was finally a robot that doesn’t have a horizontal spinner, which considering the current state of the robot was a gift from god, as by this point I had to get a Polycarbonate brace made to replace a sheared motor mount (Thank you btw!!!), and it worked!
I actually managed to drive pretty well, considering the damage. I avoided the pit whilst grabbed and also managed to keep my weapon facing them for a good portion of the fight. At about 45 seconds in, I managed to finally get a good hit which flipped them over, and managed to include a few follow up jabs as well. And, after knocking him over again I managed to get in another hit which sent off one of their wheels! After that though, they did get a grab on me, which must’ve tugged one of the wires off the ESC and killed the weapon, as when I checked the robot on the inside, the wire had come off, which meant I only had a quick soldering job ahead of me (as opposed to other fights where I was less fortunate)
Fourth Fight:
Speaking of being unfortunate, my last fight was against yet another horizontal spinner… I wasn’t really sure how to approach this one, as initially I tried going round the sides, but I eventually just thought, fuck it… and just went straight into the weapon to see what would happen. The answer was not a lot, and about 40 seconds in, one of my wheels AND the other motor mount had been buzzed off, sheared in the same way as my other one, which caused the top panel to come off too, exposing my reciever and ESC (and thankfully not my Lipo as some had believed). At this point I had decided it would be funny to try and crawl out of the arena, however I got caught again in another hit which caused the switch to explode, finally killing SD and ending its time at BBB’s Ant Social, at 1-3.
I learned a lot about SD at this event, and had plenty of ideas on how to improve it aswell. Somatic Damage showed at ORCS 1 that it had real potential to do devastating damage and deliver monster hits, and all this time later it was still able to get some nice hits in too. It managed to both take a wheel off of Birdemic AND take a nice chunk out of another horizontal spinner’s bar. I think the fact that the forks got taken off in the very first fight impacted the robot’s ability to deliver those same hits it got before (at least in my opinion I guess).
Improvement plans: (written about a week ago)
Somatic Damage is currently flawed, but has potential. The forks come off way too easily, which is due to both a lack of spares and the fact that they are 3d printed. And, when it does lose those forks, spinning the weapon up too quickly causes the robot to fall over, which based on the second fight for SD is… not ideal. I would like to change the motor mounts out for some Polycarbonate supports instead, as that would hopefully make the forks much more durable AND make the weapon motor mounts stronger too (not that they’ve failed or anything, they’ve actually held up quite decently!!!)
Somatic Damage has also been going under a new redesign too! I’ve been changing the look and adding some more armour, namely changing the form factor for it to be wider and shorter length-wise, and adding TPU armour for the front and sides, especially covering up those very vulnerable corners… I’m not sure how this is going to effect the weight of the robot, honestly… and I’m still waiting for the 3d prints to come back so that i can assemble this new design, but I’m excited to find out and PRAY that I don’t have to do much weight reductions, I’ll be testing with a 3d printed mount for now, and if I have the weight I’ll be switching it out for Polycarbonate!
Lessons learned though, definitely bring spares next time…
Improvement reality: (written a few days ago)
The parts for Somatic Damage FINALLY came in the post, but with bad news.
One of the issues I’m having lately is that ordering from Treatstock has not been giving me the most desirable results. for this recent order, it seems some of the screw threads haven’t even printed, which means I can’t even mount some of the TPU armour to the chassis, and also some parts on Wipeout (who I’ll make a post on soon) are suffering the same issue. I’ll have to seek out some different services than the one I usually go for (or yknow, maybe buy a 3d printer but I’m not sure if I have the space for it)
Another issue is the bot is MASSIVELY overweight… its 167 right now (67 haha) which means I need to somehow shave off 17 grams of weight… (or 10 if I just use a titanium bar instead). I did make a few errors in the CAD Design of this version, such as making it too wide and also too tall, so I’ve managed to shave a little off from that, but definitely not 17 grams worth… so I’ve resorted to more drastic attempts, will those attempts pay off? find out in my next post about Somatic Damage!
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Howdy peeps!
It’s time for an update on Somatic Damage. I’m really liking the look of this new version so far! So I’d like to throw a couple of pictures onto the forum.
This new version has some lovely new upgrades! Mainly some TPU armour (4mm thick on front, 5mm on the sides) (i didn’t attach the fronts yet since ive had to reorder prints for them)
and also a wider body, I have also swapped out the weapon bar. At BBB June Ant Social, I was using a sort of “axe” bar that didn’t really have any sharp edges, which made it struggle to get any good bite to inflict damage on other robots, so I’ve gone for this more standard, sharper (and lighter) hardox bar in hopes it may do a little better this time!
There are however some issues…
As it stands, Somatic Damage is about 16 grams overweight, which is not what I was hoping for… I’m starting to run out of ideas on what I can do to reduce weight. If anybody has any advice that they could give me to help out I’d appreciate it a lot! I’ve managed to shave an impressive amount of weight off of the robot already, but unfortunately just not enough.
You could try a titanium bar as opposed to a HARDOX one, as it’s lighter and you’ll get the same tipspeed.
are you still on the bbb esc and receiver? swapping to a Malenki could save you some weight.