If forums are your jam, you can attain the same information and pictures there but if the single blog post is what you desire then have at it. They won't be identical but the broad strokes of my ballistic assault on the English language will shine through. Crimes against punctuation notwithstanding.
We start with the result of a rainy afternoon spent inflicting Battlebots on my darling wife and pricking about in Solidworks. I came up with something really simple but pretty funky. I came up with Klaus and this is his tale.
A bit of a parts bin special and a low hanging fruit extravaganza on show but I am pretty pleased with how this little cutie is looking. Complete departure from the MotherLoader line but this may actually function as a result. Making a little use of the new dual brushed ESC I just snagged a beta version of from BBB it is fully brushed bar the token tickle saw which is run off one of my many 1806’s.
Featuring a lot of plastic both printed and sheet. The plan was to get away with only needing the arms getting lasercut and the rest done in house. It would be nice to have something fairly simple that is just reliable and ready to jump into all threats.
Bit the bullet and got a little bit of test printing done on the new lad with a bunch of ebay parts rocking up all at once. I got some £1 saws, some funktastic polyurethane belting and bearings waiting in the wings. I was pleased to find a BBB package in there too which featured the super cool fresh and new dual ESC.
I was determined to run brushed motors on this project to shift some of my Empire Of Dirt into service. I jumped at the chance to grab one of the beta run ESC units and pop it through its paces. The plan is to hardwire a 4ch RX straight to it just for minimum serviceability and then hard mount the brushless ESCs in a little nook near their corresponding motors and just run power lines and a signal back to base. I really wanted to tag in better discipline with wiring this as it could prove tricky due to size and the realist in me knows I will have to hot swap weapon motors as they are basically a consumable.
Around this time I just went full send on the model and just chucked out some quick n’ dirty test prints to get a minimum proof of concept. Pretty pleased with some of the guesswork clearances and such. Overall vibes are cute and angry so I’m well on track. Made myself a quick test belt and was pretty happy with how it turned out. It wasn't too bad at all but the thought of making seven more was not the most thrilling of proposals.
Slowly adding more detail and mounting points. Using all the favourite tricks of fasteners and hardware (although no shoulder bolts are present yet in a shocking turn)
This is a silicone mould filled to the brim with 30a Sunny Delight. The hub is just plain Jane ABS for now but I had the option to branch out to TPU or nylon when I get into the swing of printing all the chassis parts.. They just take a 12mm hex bore to be super standard and easy to swap out. 41mm OD and 18mm wide. The tread profile is base purely on aesthetics but I feel it will work pretty well and be quite resilient. Please ignore the pound of pork sausages masquerading as a hand...
I had revised some of the prototype print geometry and rammed them through pretty roughly to start working through the finer details. My goal was to have a wiring loom mostly completed with this as a driving test bed that I can then transplant into a proper chassis once parts were finally printed up.
I set about making a baseplate and some armour which involved trying out my latest deathtrap, a hot wire bender to fold up the rear making it all one piece of 3mm HDPE. Whilst it worked on 12v it lacked a bit of pep so I jammed one of my ole faithful Lidl Parkside 20v lithium packs and sat back to watch the fireworks. Big thanks to late, great Dale Heatherington for the idea
With that in hand I went about cutting and getting a rough idea of how I wanted the front panel to look. The wedge will mount loosely on two mounts between these printed pivot points to give me some chance at riding the floor. Forks aren’t off the table but they are a lot of work to make them work well.
Cut needs clean-up but that will come with top armour fitment I think. As it stands here it is weighing 811g on the incredibly well calibrated kitchen scales so there should be enough room to play around with setups should I wish to.
Now I'd come far enough down the road and I wasn't entirely feeling the saws so it didn’t take me long to flip up into some interchangeability! I was looking at this robot and trying to play out how it will fight in my mind alongside rumbling around MotherLoader ideas. Without going too far to the damaging darkside I do see hammersaws featuring in ML in the future. Being able to flick people up with the lifter then give them a gentle knock with a spinning lump would be a neat tactic. With this in mind I put together a minimum effort (i.e. more use of spares, spit and slight modification of the existing hammer arm) module to try out on this robot
Featuring a single tooth hardox disc I had for my antweights mounted on an Emax 2205. Much like the dual saws off a 1806 I am not expecting miracles it is just the minimum viable product for my nonsense. R&D on the cheap.
This is a silicone mould filled to the brim with 30a Sunny Delight. The hub is just plain Jane ABS for now but I had the option to branch out to TPU or nylon when I get into the swing of printing all the chassis parts.. They just take a 12mm hex bore to be super standard and easy to swap out. 41mm OD and 18mm wide. The tread profile is base purely on aesthetics but I feel it will work pretty well and be quite resilient. Please ignore the pound of pork sausages masquerading as a hand...
I had revised some of the prototype print geometry and rammed them through pretty roughly to start working through the finer details. My goal was to have a wiring loom mostly completed with this as a driving test bed that I can then transplant into a proper chassis once parts were finally printed up.
I set about making a baseplate and some armour which involved trying out my latest deathtrap, a hot wire bender to fold up the rear making it all one piece of 3mm HDPE. Whilst it worked on 12v it lacked a bit of pep so I jammed one of my ole faithful Lidl Parkside 20v lithium packs and sat back to watch the fireworks. Big thanks to late, great Dale Heatherington for the idea
With that in hand I went about cutting and getting a rough idea of how I wanted the front panel to look. The wedge will mount loosely on two mounts between these printed pivot points to give me some chance at riding the floor. Forks aren’t off the table but they are a lot of work to make them work well.
Cut needs clean-up but that will come with top armour fitment I think. As it stands here it is weighing 811g on the incredibly well calibrated kitchen scales so there should be enough room to play around with setups should I wish to.
Now I'd come far enough down the road and I wasn't entirely feeling the saws so it didn’t take me long to flip up into some interchangeability! I was looking at this robot and trying to play out how it will fight in my mind alongside rumbling around MotherLoader ideas. Without going too far to the damaging darkside I do see hammersaws featuring in ML in the future. Being able to flick people up with the lifter then give them a gentle knock with a spinning lump would be a neat tactic. With this in mind I put together a minimum effort (i.e. more use of spares, spit and slight modification of the existing hammer arm) module to try out on this robot
Featuring a single tooth hardox disc I had for my antweights mounted on an Emax 2205. Much like the dual saws off a 1806 I am not expecting miracles it is just the minimum viable product for my nonsense. R&D on the cheap.
The orange hub houses a suitably phat ball bearing so the motor might last out the first impact. I realised that the disc is the ‘wrong’ way round for a hammer saw - part accident but I may test it this way round as it potentially could act as a terrible pokey vert stick lance if left in the fired position.
I love living in the future. That is the dual brushed BBB ESC, one 33a brushless controller for running the weapon, a bidirectional 20a esc to pop the arm up and down and the receiver all bound up into one 20.8 gram tumour. This gets wedged down the centre portion of the robot, buried deep under the axe mechanism. A neat, nifty not-yet-designed belt guard stops the pulley from sucking the wires.
It was at this point more AliExpress goodies were dropping onto my doormat. Such a shame to see but China wins out over the locals once again. I could have bought these hubs locally but for less money and only about a 10 day wait I got 4mm bore 12mm hex hubs, some pinion gears for MotherLoader and a bunch of xt30’s shipped 9700km.
Also worth noting I had been working under the running title of KLAUS since inception and as the time has come to chuck it at a competition and inspiration has completely failed to strike I set it in stone. Makes a welcome departure from trite _Loader traditions for now.
I squeaked out a sliver of steel from work and wrote a super quick and dirty program on the press brake so I can make a few hundred of these easily should I want to. Spares game on point. Material wise it isn't anything to write home about, it's S450 base steel and its galv coated as most of what I made at the time was. I printed some nylon mounts that bolt onto the front with captive nuts slipped into the bulkheads. I’m hoping they’ll be strong enough to form a decent method of attachment. I don’t intend this to be a vert facing wedge - horizontals and non spinners for sure. Given the way it attaches it has a decent amount of movement without being able to fold under the robot or form a point of extreme stability - I.E. the dreaded ‘thing’
Looking pretty swish if I do say so myself, serving up 2008 K2 realness. The whole mounting system was test printed in PLA-ST like everything else but will swapped over to nylon. I am hoping there is enough toughness but if it is going to feel shady I can swap them out for TPU. I thought about what sort of attachments I can have also - forks feel like a bit of a cop out but I might have to bite the bullet and try at least a little to have a chance of winning a fight.
Got it all swapped over to the cheap and cheerful esun nylon. Quite like now it looks with the white as it’s a little different for me and it helps that orange pop just a tiny bit more. Managed to sort out my drying setup too and after a few false starts I managed to get some pretty respectable parts. I also bumped the speed right down and I am loving the results. Parts feel great after a few days sucking up moisture in the oppressive humid jungle of Yeovil.
Note the difference in the bulkheads. The far one was sopping wet by comparison. It will be relegated to spares duty. I popped a few more plugs in to the wiring so swapping out panels and parts is a lot easier than the MotherLoader series. Planning on driving it hard into dangerous places so I expect to have to repair a lot more!
Despite feeling pretty confident with printing nylon after a few false starts, making the chassis of Klaus did teach me a lot of little tricks and just hammer home the fact you just can't cut corners with this and get a good part. Low, slow and dry. There is no substitute. For my setup I need to start prepping about 8-12 hours beforehand if it's been a while and a good 2-3 hours if its been over a day since its been dried out. Also tree supports continue to be a godsend.
At this point I thought it was appropriate to pop it on the scales. Bit of a pleasant surprise, weight is looking pretty good! I was aiming to have a substantial lid in 4-5mm polycarb with an alu backup for fighting hammersaws and the like.
I was planning to have a simple little life just laser cutting out the arm parts and replacing the prototypes in a relaxed afternoon but due to unintended financial penalties (i.e. being temporarily embarrassed as it was near the end of the month) the quotes I had returned were reasonable but untenable. Go Go Gadget backup plan!
It wasn’t too serious in the end as I managed to cobble something together for some pocket change using some aluminium flat bar and gratuitous 3d printing. It still has the 11x5mm bearing support pushed into a printed axe head. This bolts to the aluminium with four m3's which mimic the motor mount pattern so it's a universal part.
The whole assembly doesn’t look too dissimilar to the ideal and who knows, it may work a little better (and be easier to fix due to alu’s easy bending nature) It’s a tad longer than the originals which was a tweak I think will help it with the reach. The semi structural smile is still in place. After all, t’ain’t nuthin can dull Klaus’s sparkle.
I plucked out the last of the wet printed bulkheads and installed the final ones. The whole robot comes apart pretty easy so swapping out parts won’t be too painful. I am pretty proud of the weird captive nuts I have jammed in the back where space was at its tightest. The front has a little more meat so it has screw in inserts.
The lid has finally been made - I went for a slight risk with polycarbonate. Even at 4mm it probably won’t be the most robust or impact resistant but everyone loves a clear lid!
Also in my poverty inspired laser cutting drought I did away with metal forks and have elected to run with plastic ones. While they won’t be as pointy , spikey or resilient as their steel counterparts these should have a bit more give while still letting me cheaply poke around under people (and their robots har har)
I made a distinct push this time to go in and polish up all the little bits I was unsure about or had a little niggling feeling they’d fail. I have an awful tendency to get complacent and gloss over fairly glaring flaws in my robot, even with available time to address them just out of pride (admitting the infallible narcissist made An Mistake) or fear that I’d make something worse so I leave it. Well this time, motivated by a Schwarzenegger documentary I knuckled down and started fixing all the little horrors and quirks I could in the days remaining.
The arm was the biggest point of contention. Firstly I was worried about the motor for a couple reasons. Anyone who has dabbled in the fickle business of DIY brushless + gearbox knows that pinion slip can be an issue (as well as an embarrassing medical complaint) As this motor was going to have an even harder and more brutal life than normal with the blunt stops and direction changes I elected to go belt and braces and have a go at silver soldering the pinion on. It worked really pretty well and I got a nice clean joint - only inhaling a small cloud of vaporised acid as a by-product.
I was also a little worried about wire eating from the rotating back end of the 1806 and wishing to brace it back against the frame to keep it in place. I drew up a quick motor guard and slotted it over the motor while I had it apart to secure the pinion. It was really nice to have this time to go over and pick up the niggles - something I will strive to replicate. I mean, the other option is doing it properly from the ground up and I'm not about to lie to your faces and say that's on the cards.
While the O rings were great for style and acting like a clutch they slipped way too much to be consistent and reliable at self righting. After a brief consultation with the void at large I found I could scab in some GT2 timing pulleys in without modifying a thing. Technobots has these phenomenally cheaply so I just hit go and ran with it
They needed a back breaker tensioner to get enough wrap and synch up the centre distance but other than that it was pretty much a drop in solution. I drilled and tapped the aluminium pulley for the aluminium arms I made previously and had a quick play. Very responsive and much more grunt.
While the stock pulley was great, my lathe-less existence was hurting me that I couldn’t knock a bit off the boss then make up a spacer and have it central.
Luckily I live in the future where you can just hit send on a part and get exactly what’s on your screen in mere hours. I drew a 59 tooth GT2 pulley (just to ease some of the ANGRY tension I had foolishly added) to replace the 60t aluminium one and printed it in ABS. It has the interlocking geometry for the arms. I just threaded direct to the ABS which works really pretty well (it shouldn’t, though. I toyed with the idea of heat press inserts but I only had them in 6mm length and I figured a physically longer bolt was just a better idea.
I also knuckled down and printed something to give an extra little bit of security in the form of a link flap. Again just ABS it pivots on one of the mounting bolts for the lid and latches on an M3. With a little bit of Klaus branding to, after all the link can’t fall out if its stuck in a K-hole
Getting to a finished state here and I was pretty happy with how it was setup. I had a good deal of options, wedge could be mounted front or back and I could have up to 4 forks on the front. I fitted two with magnets 3 and the rest were just free floating. Weight was pretty tidy as I flew well under even fully laden with the kitchen sink setup
Can’t beat a bit of branding either! I actually found I quite liked the wedge on the back. Might be something to design in to any later versions. The idea of being able to fend off attacks from the back while I poke around with my forks at the front is pretty appealing with the culture of 3 way melees.
So ends the build of Klaus which was a pretty laid back affair - even with the mad rejigging of the weapon arm at the 11th hour. I had some goals in mind for the bot, principal being “Don’t be MotherLoader” which it isn’t and therefore is infinitely successful. I wanted something that could drive hard and BOY did that succeed. The robot drove beautifully, was blisteringly quick and respectable in the power department. This was dulled slightly by the fact I drove it horribly. Just normal fat fingers and poor responses. Slow and steady would have been the best approach but that just was not on the cards. I had it doing figure 8’s and such on the kitchen floor quite handily but obviously this doesn’t compare to actual combat or proper target seeking. I took the dual rates down progressively in each of my 3 fights and by the last one my throttle was at 90% forward, 75% reverse and my steering was down from 80 to 60%. Must have worked as I went the distance - even if I lost.
The self righting was a let down in the end BUT I will take a slight victory here as even working the handful of times per fight before the grubscrews slipped and galled the shaft is a couple times more than it would have done without the extra effort which probably bought me a collective extra 20 seconds of invaluable fight time.
The direct drive motor was never going to make it past the event but I gave up after the second fight expecting it to do anything. It is not a write off as it stands but it is very, very unhappy. I will not be doing this again. I think it counts as a hate crime at this weight class.
Overall a messy performance but not without valuable data. I liked working on Klaus and thinking about how to make it better. Simplifying will help (though it is already fairly brutalist in its approach)
I hope 2024 will bring another version of Klaus in some form. It is absolutely on my list but that is a long, boring and expensive list. I also hope this forum post plagiarism copypaste gangbang worked okay. I did jiggle around the wording a bit here and there but tried to keep the tone pretty similar.
Thank you for your time as ever. You may find more of me and my work:
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