Team Fission Combat Robotics

For this event Exposure was only a reserve but Photon was a main competitor   Photon With minor modifications since Rapture in August, Photon was ready to fight. With shorter forks and improved gearing I was really hopefully Photon wouldn't get stuck upside down and unable to flip back. The first fight of the day for photon was a 3 way against Got Any Grapes? and Aggro Wobba. The plan was to avoid being hit on the rear by Grapes quickly went wrong when a section on the carbon fibre lid flew off after contact from its spinner. I was delighted when Photon was able to flip back the right way up and carry on in the fight. After a tussle with Aggro Wobba, a separate hit from Grapes dislodged the base which stopped Photon moving properly. I withdrew during the unstick with Aggro after seeing the damage to Photon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pfFTds9S0Q&t=496s Got Any Grapes? vs Photon vs Aggro Wobba The redemption fight with DeuxBrie was never going to be easy. A box rush from Deu...

So between BITB and Rapture a whole new version of Exposure has been built, the centre piece of which is the Repeat Robotics hub motor and the larger, more aggressive weapon design. Due to the nature of hub motors, the robot went together very easily in a short amount of time, with the first proper weapon test being 2 days before the event! Exposure We knew our heats before arriving so I knew I was going to have a rough time with Icebreaker and Unstoppable Force in mine. We got set up quickly, and then I prepared the robot for my fight against Icebreaker: Due to pit issues it was stuck down, which was a huge inconvenience for a lot of people but oh well. The fight started badly as it was my first time driving the new version with the weapon on, resulting in me getting roofed almost instantly. However, I managed to get one small hit which bounced Icebreaker into the pit. Again, I didn't really know how to control the robot yet, and the turning was way too fast for me so I struggled ...

We took part in Robot Rebellion at the weekend, which ended up being a great event for us with Exposure taking second place! I will do a full write up soon, but for now here's a photo:

We went to Battle in the Burgh 5 recently. This is the last event for the current version of Exposure, and was also the first event for the brand new version of Photon. Exposure Exposure's first fight was against new robot Shark Bait. I was deliberately holding back a bit at the start, but then I got a good engagement into Shark Bait's PETG (I think) chassis which shattered, giving me a nice first win of the event. My second fight was against another newcomer, Sunstroke, a dual horizontal spinner. I started the fight with a box rush, hitting Sunstroke and unplugging its battery with the force of the hit. The whole fight last just under 3 seconds, with no damage at all to Exposure. My final Fight Night fight was against a spinnerless Sweet Tooth. Unfortunately, I think the force of the hit in the last fight slightly misaligned some things in the weapon motor assembly, so when I somehow ended up inverted, the weapon died which caused my first loss of the day. Onto the Round of 16...

So RoboDojo happened recently, with both beetles going in mostly unchanged from Brawl, with the exception of Exposure sporting a brand new timing belt for the weapon to try eliminate the random belt failures from previous events. Exposure My first fight was to be against Zephyrus, which a very weird robot to fight. I stuck the front wedge and hoped for the best. https://youtu.be/XIcwvei3bu8?t=379 There we go, that's what it should do! I'm a bit disappointed I didn't get him in the bin however. Fight 2 was against Kriegmesser. https://youtu.be/XIcwvei3bu8?t=942 It was going so well until it wasn't. However, no real damage to the robot at all and everything was still working! Fight 3 against Box N Wheels.  https://youtu.be/XIcwvei3bu8?t=1517 The weapon was sticking for some reason, and then the belt just randomly fell off. Also, there had been a lot of spinners just driving off the edge for whatever reason, and I couldn't escape that trend. Final fight against (a very...

 We made the long trip down to Bristol last weekend to compete in the annual BBB Beetle Brawl. We took Exposure, and a brand new robot in Photon. Both robots passed safety checks, and then we went into the fights! Photon Drawn against Icebreaker and Abracagrabra, the first ever fight for Photon was going to be tough. Hit by Icebreaker on several occasions, I was really pleased Photon was able to get back on its wheels using the hammer-saw arm. Photon fought on getting some good pins but things started to go wrong after a hit from Icebreaker which damaged the arm gearbox. The fight ended with a KO for Icebreaker. Photon was mobilised and Abracagrabra ended up in the pit. https://youtu.be/kNDo-p7mI_M?t=1062 Photon arrived in the arena without the hammer-saw arm due to damage from the 1st fight. The plane was to use the long forks and pin or push Jackhammer. Veering off the to the left right from the start, there must have been some damage to the drive I'd missed from the 1st fight, D...

 We went down to York for our first event of the year last weekend. This was the first event for my new antweight, Isotope. It uses a lot of the parts that Fallout (now retired) used, and is a 2WD vertical spinner. Exposure Exposure went into the event mostly unchanged from Burgh. It had a new, slightly lighter chassis but was otherwise identical. The first fight was a rematch of last Dojo's final against Shuv-it 2. Unfortunately, the weapon belt problems returned for no real reason, so the weapon was dead and the fight became a driving battle. Due to the design of Exposure, it is very fast in a straight line but the weapon normally slows the turning down. However due to the lack of weapon, it was very twitchy and hard to drive and I ended up being pitted. The second fight against Sweg Demon and the third (another rematch) against Bash were similary disappointing. We forfeited the final due to having issues with the drive motors that all decided to happen at the same time. Repulsio...

 We competed at Battle in the Burgh on Sunday! Here's how it went... My first fight with Exposure was against Wee Twosers, a two-part cluster armed with vertical spinners. This fight was fairly simple, I picked a target and hit it, then they both ended up upside down. However, both outer forks were damaged, so they were not used for the rest of the event. Fight 2 was against Ultros. The first hit exposed Ultros' internals, so I backed off until I got the confirmation that we could carry on. The second hit left Ultros stranded over by the pit, where it was counted out. Exposure's final fight night fight was against Speeny. From the start I managed to smother Speeny, and give it lots of good hits before it stopped moving. This is one of the best, most consistent flurry of hits I've given out so I was very happy! On to the round of 16, I would be facing Limiting Factor. The left side drive was binding a bit, so when I got the first hit I was unable to capitalise and got st...

 Due to flexible nature of the TPU bulkheads we have used at Dojo, they allowed the weapon to flex which melted parts of the bulkhead. This led me to design some 8mm HDPE bulkheads to resolve this issue. However, this gave us another issue: where to get them made? Thankfully, the computer science department at the University of St Andrews was able to help us, and these parts look amazing! Many thanks to them! Because of how many horizontal spinners are going to Burgh, I now have a total of 4 wedges, one of which is solid TPU! The robot also weighs in 7g under the limit with four forks and a TPU lid, and spins up with the new weapon ESC. Spare wheels have been cast, and we’re pretty much ready for the weekend. Let’s hope it goes well!

 I promised a full event report, so here it is! Upon arriving at Dojo, we unpacked our stuff and got the robot set up in its heaviest configuration. This weighed at 1.496 kg, a whole 4g underweight! Good start! Before the final fight list was drawn, Baby Dead Bod was forced to drop out of the competition due to a broken weapon motor, meaning we wouldn't have to fight it for once!  Exposure's first fight was against Boom Zoom, a well-driven and aggressive lifter. As it was my first time fighting with the new version, I was nervous about fighting such a well-controlled robot. At the start of the fight, I span up and spent some time trying to get a good angle and also avoid being pinned or flipped over. I managed to hit his forks, inverting him, and after he self-righted I got round the back and pushed him into the wall, which caused him to be launched over the divider wall! I wasn't expecting anything like that to happen! (Thanks to Thomas Yau for sending us this footage earl...

 What? Somehow we ended up getting second place with the new version of Exposure! I will post the event write up later this week...

 All metal has arrived and parts printed, and we just about got in weight (more on that later)! The first important parts to do were: printing the chassis, weapon uprights and front armour. Then, after quite a steep learning curve, we assembled our 1806 conversion drive without much difficulty. We had our first go at casting polyurethane wheels, and they came out really well and feel really grippy. We then had to wait a little for our new metal parts to arrive, and I decided to re-print the wedge with more walls. However, we finally ran out of green TPU! This meant we had to use the black TPU that we had difficulty printing, but after a few setting changes it went perfectly. Once the metal had arrived, it was time for a test weigh in. This unfortunately weighed in as 1.595kg with the heaviest setup (4 forks). Even with just two forks, it was around 55g overweight. This led to us completely redoing the wiring, trying to cut out as much unnecessary wire as possible. I reprinted the w...

This post will document our progress on the second major version of Exposure. Main Upgrades: Custom 1806 conversion drive 3D printed chassis 4s battery Cast polyurethane wheels Double supported weapon motor Invertibility 'horns' Threaded inserts and bolts Less range of motion on the forks  The first thing to do was design the new parts. After a lot of CAD work, this is what it looks like: The anti-horizontal setup has changed to be a single piece TPU wedge with much thicker walls and a shallower angle. The old 22mm brushed motors have been swapped out for 2500kv 1806 brushless motors connected to 19:1 planetary gearboxes. These are powered by BBB AM32 drive ESCs. The new, longer forks have a slotted hole in front of the pivot hole to limit how far they can move up and down. All fasteners on the robot have changed from woodscrews to M4 bolts with threaded inserts, and the wheelguards are held on by M5 bolts and T-nuts reverse mounted in the chassis. The weapon system is very sim...

 We had a trip out to Ferry Fair recently. It was great seeing all of the display robots and having a chance to fight with my dad's antweight! Here is some footage taken at the event.

 We took all three of our robots to York for our second RoboDojo event.  Exposure Exposure's first fight was against Percussive Maintenance XL. As the fight started, I got a good hit and flipped him over, however the belt once again snapped. This left me to be bullied around the arena for the rest of the match and the judges decision obviously went to PMXL. We rejoined the belt for hopefully the last time, and waited for the second fight. The second fight was a rematch against Little Grey Fergie. The fight started with me getting a good hit, then another, the another! The belt stayed on for the entire fight! I did have a bit of a scare when one of my wheel guard screws came loose and high-centred me, but I just managed to wiggle free and give a few more big hits before my opponent tapped out. The third fight was another rematch against Chucky, and like last time, I was bullied around the arena and pitted. However I was very happy that the robot managed to self right on the wea...

 Here is the full event video, I will write the timestamps for each fight. BBB x LHG Summer Showdown 2024- All Fights - Bristol Bot Builders Beetleweight Combat Robots The venue for this event was lovely, however the constant rain was a bit annoying, especially when it dripped off the marquees down the back of my neck! We arrived at the venue and went into the tech check with the heaviest setup we could run, and passed safety with no issues.  Fight 1: (06:46) My first fight was against Om Nom and Carbon Copy. I was happy with this match up as I would be the only spinner against a grabber (?) and a cluster bot. The fight began and I quickly engaged with one of the halves of Carbon Copy, using my full weight to push it into the wall and slice some material off the front wedge. I then reversed to give myself a bit of a run up and hit the cluster again, this time ripping the wedge off and slamming it into the ceiling. Whilst this was happening, Om Nom had somehow gotten stuck with...

 This weekend we traveled down to Newcastle so my dad and I could help out at the Extreme Robots shows. This was such an amazing chance to meet the builders and learn how events like this work. My job for the three shows over the weekend was to help Dave Weston run the antweight arena, which was a lot of fun, and I was driving one of robots for a lot of time, so it was great to practice my driving skills with more control-based robots in the antweight class. We met lots of very nice people who were more than happy to talk about their robots, and give advice for our own robots. I was also interviewed for Extreme Robots TV!  It was amazing to see all three shows and be able to go backstage and see damage up close. Special thanks to John Findlay for allowing us to come and help out!

Because the Robodojo events have an antweight competition along with the beetleweights, we decided to make a couple of ants to take to the next event. These follow the same theme and colours as Exposure, but are a little less competitive and more of a chance to try new things and make robots that are fun to fight.  However, I still wanted to make a spinner. So I thought for a long time about how I could make a spinner that would be entertaining, but not too serious, and I eventually settled on a 4WD large undercutter design. The plan was to make the chassis as small as possible but make the weapon as LARGE as possible. The actual chassis footprint is only about 80 x 65mm! This was printed in PLA+ with 2 walls and 30% infill, which feels nice and strong. It also runs on 3S LiPo because why not, and uses a 2700KV 1806 motor to power the weapon. This gives a theoretical tip speed of 319mph, or 34,000 rpm with the largest weapon. Also, due to the battery voltage, we couldn't use the ty...

 Our trip to Robodojo earlier this month highlighted a few issues that needed to be resolved. Most of these problems were to do with the weapon assembly, which had way too much flex and caused us to lose the weapon in our first fight. Also, the 3D printed parts were PLA at the event (uh oh) so they needed to be re-printed in TPU with a slight redesign for some parts. The fork mounts needed a way to stop the forks rotating under the robot like they did in York, and the weapon spacing needed to be increased. After looking at different companies that could print what we needed, we decided that it would be easier (and probably more cost efficient) if we bought our own 3D printer and TPU filament. This also opens up a lot of opportunities for printed antweight and beetleweight chassises.  The first step for improving the weapon was to move the weapon bulkheads outwards and extend them backwards to the piece that separates the drive motors from the rest of the robot. We changed the ...

We took a trip to York at the weekend to compete in our first official event as a full competitor. Upon arriving at the venue, we realised we would have had no chance of finding it if we didn't have Thomas Yau there to point us into the right building! We were among the first to arrive, so we had time to set up and grab some space before the rest of the competitors, and spectators, arrived. With a total of 31 antweights and 12 beetleweights, there was barely enough space for everyone to work on their robots. The competition format was a sort of group stage format so everyone got 4 guaranteed fights but could have more in the form of playoffs. Fight 1: vs Baby Dead Bod This was an absolutely terrifying first fight to have, Baby Dead Bod is an immensely powerful horizontal spinner so I was not happy to face it this early on. That was quick! A single hit on the weapon was all it took to flex the weapon into the pulley, sending it flying and completely shearing the motor shaft. This wa...