Design Philosophy
The design philosophy of Very Original is based on one thing, how can I improve my machining skills. To do this, I minimized the use of all 3D printed parts, having the robot's armor made out of UHMW rather than the standard TPU. I also wanted to try making a 4WD combat robot with a beater bar. The beater bar has a spin up time of 1.5s, as well as having a kinetic energy of roughly 1kJ, for reference the energy needed to launch an opposing 3lb robot to the roof of the arena is roughly 50J. That way if I even get a glancing hit, my opponent gets launched into the air.
There were some issues with the initial construction, due to time constraints, I wasn't able to machine the pulley, rather I had to print it out of glass filled nylon, with the power inherent in the weapon, this caused the pulley to explode after disabling the opponent's weapon. Additionally, the wheels were not designed well, the rubber treads were not thick enough causing it to peel in the arena, and the wheels were difficult to replace. Lastly, the robot wasn't as fast as I wanted it to be, with a top speed of only 11.6m/s.
The next iteration of this robot will be different, since I will no longer have access to the machining equipment at my school, my plan is to have the robot to be mostly 3d printed with the exception of the uprights holding the weapon in place and the weapon pulley which will be made out of 6061 aluminum. It is planned to optimize speed and weapon spin up time, where I am aiming for sub 1 second spin up time. This robot will be called "Reduce-Reuse Recycle" referencing the fact that I am reusing as many parts as possible, it currently has a top speed of 18.9m/s, a weapon spin up time of 1.1s, and a weapon energy of 730J since if it hits an opponent at a higher velocity it can deliver more of the energy to the opponent. Since this is directly proportional to the velocity of the robot, it will deliver rouhly 62% more energy to its opponent. To get similar results at the old velocity it would need to deliver about 1.2kJ of energy into its opponennt, a 20% increase in delivered energy.
