LATEST NEWS

01/11/06:
RoboKnight actually wins two out of three fights at House of NERC. In RoboKnight's first fight at HON it soundly beat a mechanically challenged undercutter. In its second fight RoboKnight got totally blown apart, but was salvageable for a third win. Unfortunately dad had to leave on a business trip and otherwised missed the chance at placing third.

11/07/05:
Robo Squire and Darth Bot created. The newest bots to join the team. Robo Squire a Fairy and Darth Bot an Ant are ready to participate at PennBots this coming weekend.

11/02/05:
Mouseasaurus, Team Crazy Dad's first fairy weight (150g) bot is complete! Built from a micro RC car this little mouse has a steel tail and aluminum armor and looks pretty impressive given its still 2 oz under weight!

10/16/05:
House of NERC ! Competing with the big boys RoboKnight made a respectable show winning 2 out of 3 before having to leave early.

Robo Knight

Robo Knight is our first robot. Being an engineer at heart (and professionally) I didn't want to just create a simple wedge bot like most do when they first get into this hobby. Instead I researched building combat robots quite a bit books, web sites and forums.

Vitals:
Armor: Carbon Fiber, Lexan
Weapon: wedge (primary), lifter (seconday)
Motors: Copal 60:1
ESC: Scorpion HX
Wheels: LiteFlight 3"
Receiver: Futaba FM
Battery: 9v (2)
Record: 0 for 2

Perhaps the most interesting, and perhaps the only original contribution I made to this bot was the decision to use plastic tie wraps as the primary mechansim for fastening the armor together. Originally I tried to use screws, nuts and those little elbow brackets that come with erector sets. But these proved to be a little ungainly - and more importantly heavy. Since this is an antweight bot it has to be 1lb or under. In the end it turned out that after I used the plastic ties instead of screws and nuts I had enough weight to spare to enable me to pack it with an extra 9v battery (wired in parallel). The main reason for the extra battery was to get me through an entire competition with having to worry about cutting the ties to open it up (the one disadvantage of using plastic ties).