An Antweight Battle robot for an upcoming competition. Haven’t heard of combat robotics before? It’s basically custom RC cars with weapons
trying to destroy each other! This bot is my first Antweight bot ever! It features an agressive design with angular features, a powerful vertical rotary weapon, and wide front prongs to guide oponents to the pit!
Cat-Aclysm was an amazing bot to fight, and I thoroughly enjoyed the build process, so thank you to everyone for your support, whether you helped me buid it, liked or viewed my devlogs, or just wanted to see some custom RC cars destroy each other. It did not place as well in the competition as I would have liked, but I do have lots of good feedback and stuff to improve.
Cat-Aclysm placed 12th out of 18 robots in the plastic ant class, winning 1 battle and losing 3. On the first day, the bot’s weapon unfortunately blew up in every single battle due to a structural issue, which was promptly fixed through lotsa overnight work and no sleep, and then Cataclysm won its first battle on the second day!
The battle bot is finally complete, and I will be shipping the project after this final devlog! Attached below is one of the fights with my bot, as unfortunately the rest of them are too heavy to attach. If you would like them, as well as some much more explosive fights, DM me on slack for the full videos! Enjoy!
I will be continuing the hobby of combat robotics, so look out for some of my new robot designs that will be coming soon!
Firstly, before i keep going on about what i did to finalise my bot, i want to thank everyone who followed along for the journey, liked my devlogs, gave me a comment, or took the time to read the nonsnse i type. Thanks for all of the support and im so excited for this bot to fight this weekend! I will upload videos for anyone whos interested!
The wheels that i purchased unfortunately did not fit on the motor, so i had to design my own, with rubber grips. It was a pretty quick process, and i got the sizes perfect first try, and solved that problem pretty quick!
Unfortunately for me, i forgot to account for the space the wiring would require, so there wasn’t enough space left for the battery to fit. To accomodate for this, i did a pretty makeshift solution, and slightly raised the section above the battery to allow it to fit!
I have suprisingly made a mistake when calculating the weight, as the bot is severely underweight, weighing in at 130.98g! This is nothing to worry about, the weight is well below the 150g limit, and provides me with a bit of buffer in case something happens.
I soldered together all the components of the bot at UNSW, and unfortunately did not lapse my lead fume filled hours spent attaching wires to more wires. I suprisingly got the circuit right the first time, and it funtions perfectly!
Thanks for reading this log if you made it this far, and hope you will be supporting my bot for this competetion! Ty! An image of the bot is attached below!
My maths test is finally done, so now i have some extra time to work on this! Sorry i havent posted a devlog in a while.
Im logging 4hrs of tweaking the design, making tiny changes to make it ready for printing with ABS! Some of the things i changed were;
This bot is officially registered into the competetion in 2 weeks as… drumroll…..Cat Aclysm! This name was chosen since the bot looks kinda like a cat from the top profile.
I began to solder together the parts of the bot, involving very intricate wire splicing because i thought it would be fun to add 2 LEDs instead of the required 1. :/
Thats it for this devlog! Thank you for reading if you made it this far!
Thank you soo much @RR for approving funding for my project! Sorry I haven’t posted a devlog in a while, I was ordering parts and doing the final tweaks to the design. All the parts have been ordered, and I’m currently waiting for delivery.
I lowered the chassis by making the wheels closer to the floor, and sloped the front armour to restrict my bot from getting picked up from the front or outmanoeuvred. This also allows my bot to scoop up other bots and guide them into my weapon blade.
I split the chassis struts into seperate parts so they can be printed flat, which makes them stronger vertically. Then I added mounting holes for M2 screws, which directly screw into the motor. Then a channel was extruded to route the motor wires back through the chassis and to the ESC and the Malenki.
This project will be taking a back seat for the next week as I wait for parts to deliver and due to upcoming exams! I’ll finish the build pretty soon after though, as the event I’m competing in is on 20th September!
I also purchased the controller for the bot, and will need to set it up myself soon! It is a Jumper T16 with replaced ribbons. An annoying thing is that i have to charge the batteries using a specific LiPo charger that I don’t have, so I’ll need to get that.
Thanks for reading this devlog if u made it this far! Hope you’re as excited for this bot as I am!
this thing is awesome, ty for the readme changes!
please avoid buying filament until I get back to you on what is/isn't allowed
approved!!!!
Hello! Great work on this project! Before you can be approved, you need to make the following changes:
- All parts should be sourced from Printing legion. Therefore, you do not need to by the 3D printing filament yourself. Update the BOM to match that.
- You do not have any recordings or any form of journaling for your project. If you have any recordings, please attach it to this stardance project, and if you don't have any recordings, please make a journaling folder, similar to something like this to prove that you made it yourself: https://github.com/Jay-Tai/Custom-Keyboard/tree/main/journaling
- You do not have the firmware attached to your project for the bot. Please add that.
Once those changes are done, submit again, and we will take another look! :D
I quickly CADed up a test rig adaptor for the weapon, to allow me to test the weapon’s centre of gravity and damage using a small 3V motor i had lying around while i wait for the approval of funding so i can buy the brushless motor it was designed for. The 3V motor only reaches around 8000 RPM, which is much lower than the 20,000 RPM the BLDC can provide.
I 3D printed the adaptor with some PLA, and assembled the rig with a stable base. I used the motor mount that came with the 3V motor to secure it to a wooden block (and yes, your eyes do not deceive you, it’s a massive domino peice), so it doesn’t move around while testing. An Image of the rig is attached below.
I have everything ready to test, now i just need to wait for my funding to be approved so i can purchase the required fillament for the Robot! As soon as i get the fillament and print the part, i will be releasing a devlog showing the testing of the weapon on the rig!!!
Thank you for reading this far lol! I hope i get the funding soon so i can begin building!
While I was waiting for the project to get approved for funding, I decided to add a small cover for the screw switch, and generally touch up the design. I countersunk the screw holes for M3 screws I bought (hopefully I can get re-imbursed for these as well) and designed 2 types of covers for the screw switch on the robot that turns it on. The two designs are attached in the image below, so please tell me which one I should keep on the bot! (Spikes or the flat, boring, plain cover)
My bot is slightly overweight, around 5 grams over, and I need to drop dead weight, especially from the chassis. I tried hollowing out the front prongs, but this actually increased the weight as it added more walls, meaning a denser design. I then adjusted some slicer settings and thinned the walls of my bot, which got the weight back under the limit. Unfortunately, I would prefer to have some margin as I still need to add hot glue to stick in the motors and the PCB, and my bot is currently 149.8 grams (the limit is 150g).
To solve this issue, I plan to make the blade thinner, which does mean it will have a lesser reach. If anyone has better suggestions to drop weight, pls let me know in the comments since I really would prefer to keep a wider blade.
P.s if anyone has name suggestions for my bot, pls tell me down in the comments, i currently have no idea what in going to name it
After careful consideration, I chose the aggressive vertical front spinner as my final design. I have moderate to extensive experience in Onshape, so i used that to begin designing. Before beginning to design, i found STEP files for N20 motors and used the dimensions from my planning stage to place in the electronic components. Then i began with a roughly shaped sketch of the design, which i extruded to the desired length. Then I shelled it out with a 2mm wall to allow space for the electronics.
My weapon blade design is based off James KIrby’s D.E.S blade. The weapon support struts are extremely thick as many bots have lost their weapons due to broken struts. The weapon uses a BE1806 motor and a 20Ah ESC to drive it. The weapon unfortunately was not big enough to house the motor, so adjustments had to be made to allow a larger weapon.
An extremely helpful individual from the university provided me extensive feedback upon the design, which significantly improved my design and allowed my robot to remain under the weight category. Thank you!
If you made it this far, thank you for reading! If you have any suggestions for my bot, I’m always willing to improve, so please tell me in the comments below. Thanks!
I’ve always been intrigued by battle robots, and when I discovered that there is a competition near by that hosts mini battle bots, I was immediately drawn to it. I did lots of research into it and discovered there were many categories and classes. I decided to make a bot for the Antweight plastic class category, and one that would easily be upgraded to the open class category. An example battle bot is shown below (not mine).
The Antweight Battle Bot competition is a miniature combat robotics event where custom-built remote-controlled machines face off in a bulletproof, enclosed arena. This weight class serves as the ultimate entry point for engineering hobbyists due to its low cost, minimal space requirements, and strict design constraints.
I first sketched out the motors and electronic components used for the battle bot at a 1:1 scale with dimensions, to give me a better sense of the sizing of the parts and to start thinking of the arrangements.
After planning a base robot in my mind, I finalised 3 main robot designs I liked. I sketched these 3 out and asked for input from a few people who have experience in this field, including Angus from makers muse (the YouTuber). I decided upon the vertical spinner design with aggressive front forks. My 3 bot sketches are attached below.
