BBB Brawl 2024

More Progress

A lot of progress has been made recently, most notably the pieces have been cut from black HDPE and assembled fully. The weapon motor has been mounted, and a mock weapon has been cut from a spare piece of plastic. It was quite easy making the final pieces, as we already knew the exact dimensions and how everything needed to fit together so it was just a matter of carefully cutting all the pieces and then screwing them together. Then we assembled the weapon stack. This consists of a 40mm pulley, with 4 M4 bolts running through it and through the weapon, which has bearings pushed into a 12mm central hole, and then the bolts screw into a plate with M4 nuts pushed into it. Then a 6mm shoulder bolt runs through all of this, plus the weapon bulkheads, and finishes with a nylock nut.

BBB Brawl

I was lucky enough to take a trip to the recent BBB Brawl event, and was even more fortunate that I could participate in whiteboard fight after the main competition! I was in a fight with Gruyere, Meanie Mouse, and Killjoy. This was the first time driving and spinning the weapon simultaneously, and also the longest amount of time for either. The fight highlighted some issues, such as the long wheelbase making turning slow, and the bare foam wheels not getting enough grip on the arena floor. This will be solved by a few layers of rubber cement on the tyres. However, everything worked! It drove, the weapon span, and although it was only plastic it proved that the concept worked. The wheels were quite easily removed by Meanie Mouse, a problem caused by the wheel hubs not having enough shaft to clamp on to, which has (hopefully) been fixed by moving the pulleys to the outside and giving the wheels more shaft length. Also, the forks, which were just corner braces bolted to the wedges and bent downwards, got bent upwards with ease.

Future Improvements

 I have now designed forks to be hinged from a front mounting piece. These, along with the two weapon designs, are going to be laser cut and ready for assembly by the end of the month. The mounts for the forks are going to be 3D printed and have a 4mm shoulder bolt running through them to hinge the forks. I designed the mounts to hold 3 forks each, and the two forks designs will allow for a lot of interchangeability with the ground game. I really feel like this project is nearing being finished, and we will definitely be ready for our trip to Robodojo in April.