so whats everybody up to?

the forum seams pretty much dead. sense no one seams to be working on bot stuff i figured i would ask what everybody is working on?

I'm trying to get my ant and flea done for Bot Blast, but I've also got to work on my grad school research

Hopefully be in the machine shop a bit tomorrow and next week.

sweet. i look forward to seeing progress and seeing you at botblast

I'm at a rehab robotics conference in Zurich, not that I do a very good job of posting updates when I am working on bots...

Work. Thats about it :/

Very busy in the "non robotics" way, travelling and conferences and offspring's bdays, etc.

On the battlebot side, I have been helping a 7th grader get a 3lber together. We spent about 6 hours at the mill turning a 6 by 6 by 1.5 inch billet into the body of his 4wd wedge--still a good bit of other parts to make, but overall it looks like a solid design.

And I'm thinking about ways to make a 15lber with a vertical disk that weighs 6lbs also have a vacuum in it. We did this as kind of a joke that came out in excess of 22lbs for a demonstration, and it was just so destructively awesome the team wants to build one for real. It's gonna be a real challenge to make weight and still have good armor. Last calculations had it at 13lbs with NO armor at all!!

Lastly, I'm thinking about ways to turn a little training robot with a 'nondestructive' drum (uses colsons for the drum--it's called MooMoo) into a 3lber. I'm thinking we just do 3/5 of every dimension and it should come close. . .anybody done this? (i.e. reduced a 15 to a 3)

Oh and as always, my summers include planning which tooling to buy to start the year (i.e. endmills, taps, drill bits, lathe tools) Anyone find an absolutely fantastic but relatively cheap (under $100) tool worth buying?

looking for colleges

I've been keeping the progress thread up to date. Between work and Moros/Kobalos still running, I've only been working on Apollyon, so there's not been a lot to discuss.

@Don-What sort of college are you looking for?

i'm awaiting replies for my job submissions and going to greywolf scout camp next week. other than that, i'm constantly repairing my two RC vehicles (1/16 slash and blade mSR) atm i need a new rear diff. for the car and new blade grips for the heli. and when i'm not doing that, i'm playing starcraft 2 or similar.

working and things

MikeNCR wrote:

I've been keeping the progress thread up to date. Between work and Moros/Kobalos still running, I've only been working on Apollyon, so there's not been a lot to discuss.

@Don-What sort of college are you looking for?

tech school, im going for mech engineering

Don wrote:

MikeNCR wrote:

I've been keeping the progress thread up to date. Between work and Moros/Kobalos still running, I've only been working on Apollyon, so there's not been a lot to discuss.

@Don-What sort of college are you looking for?

tech school, im going for mech engineering

If you have any questions about RIT, feel free to ask. Just graduated from there this year.

Playing hockey with my friends and enjoying summer before I go back to school and have to graduate.

Don wrote:

MikeNCR wrote:

I've been keeping the progress thread up to date. Between work and Moros/Kobalos still running, I've only been working on Apollyon, so there's not been a lot to discuss.

@Don-What sort of college are you looking for?

tech school, im going for mech engineering

Really look into ME. Alot of people think they want to be ME's cause they want to work on cars or something and thats not it at all lol
I wish I had knew about my new major before,I wouldn't have started in ME

I just made the move from sarasota florida to towson maryland it's been tiring.

working on my beetle and a new ant for bot blast

also looking for a yob

@Cody ME is definitely not all that people think it is.

@Evan I've stayed in Towson before. Go to the mall!

looks like everyone is keeping busy, mostly with work unfortunately.

my summer is about the same. work screws up my schedule just enough that all i want to do is chill on my days off

Work, and designing a gigantic 3D printer with a cubic foot of build volume. Should also finish up that ant for Dragon*con too...

work is a pretty universal thread here... nothing different on my part.

@Don, check out Carnegie Mellon if you're serious about Engineering. The engineering programs are pretty good. But it's a pretty serious school and will be a lot of work (yes, that is personal experience talking haha).

The forum always dies every summer, since a lot of the school teams don't do much over summers.

@Camden - RC stuff is awesome. I've got an 1/8th scale Kyosho Inferno GT that I converted to brushless that goes ~70mph on 4s. It can easily go 100+ if I up it to 6s and change my pinion. And those little Blade helis are tons of fun too. I haven't had a heli yet, but I've had a Parkzone Ultra-Micro Flyer T28 Trojan plane that was a a lot of fun until I lost it haha.

Although I did do something Battlebotsy about two weeks ago! I built the start of a fleaweight in one night in my garage instead of my shop cause I was bored...



I'm gonna end up making my own wheels and it's going to be lightened quite a bit, and I'm gonna add a
pancake outrunner from hobbyking and make it a bar spinner.

Oh, and turning a ThinkGeek R2D2 trashcan into a remote-controlled ringbearer for a wedding, and enjoying the newness of Google+ haha.

Koolaid64 wrote:

sweet. i look forward to seeing progress and seeing you at botblast

So my department's student machine shop is closed for the summer since they're shuffling things around and the other two machine shops on campus I went to couldn't take personal projects and/or were backed up for months...

The odds of me making it to bot blast are dwindling...

Hi everyone. I've been away for a while, not that anyone has missed me...



I'm still advisor to MLEC, but not doing any R & D on my own.....



I've been needing to lose weight, so I came out of retirement and can be found on tennis courts around Miami and Ft. Lauderdale.



An offspring to this is that I've been tinkering with racquet stringing and ball launching machines.



the ball machine is similar to robotics. dc motors and gearboxes (cheap stuff) I am modifying a low end machine. So far added a 4 button remote, bigger battery and am working on adding features thru a programmable Atmel chipped board (left over from the melties...hahaha.)



btw: anyone hear....Rich Olson took my code mods and tweaked them into a brushless openmelt code!!



Also, I heard that Mike Gellaty built a decent dairy weight melty and did very well at GCRS.



Anyhow, I'm still around (kindof) and willing to help with any projects, if they are interesting to me....blaaaah



c ya



Send me an email if you need me



Richard

going back to school on monday you know what that means freshman to teach and robots to rebuild so its going to be a good year
I AM A SENIOR NOW (frisco thought i was a senior like 3 years ago and never stopped asking me haha)

ya it should be a real productive year we have i think 6 robots to rebuild but it shouldnt be to bad depending on the turnout in the class we will have to see how many freshman get thrown in

Stephen, enjoy senior year while it last and DONT slack off

I spent the past summer working and saving up for some spending cash for while at college.

I am currently in Bangalore, India studying Mechanical Engineering at BMS institute of technology.

Classes haven't started yet, so I don't really know how much shop access I will have for personal projects and such.

There isn't really any battlebots type community here, though i have hopes to start one. If not I will try and build something to compete with for when i come back to the states during summer breaks. (Anyone know any popular event that occur between April and September?)

The only project I have going on right is motorizing my skateboard, but thats sorta been put on hiatus untill i can find some nicely paved roads...

Probably won't see anyone at any competitions anytime soon, but will still be browsing the forum to see what y'all are up to!

KK bye

jeeves_m_d wrote:

(Anyone know any popular event that occur between April and September?)

Early reports are that BotsIQ (from now on I'm gonna call it that instead of "Nationals" for obvious reasons) will be at the Miami Beach Convention Center sometime in April. There is a meeting of the local teams (not directly connected to BotsIQ, but since Nola is gonna be there the questions naturally get asked) this Thursday night, so I should have more unofficial info by then.

And my updated status-the 3lb billet wedge turned out nice. That kid has potential. He will probably take it to GCRS in November. The team is back in school and preparing for our recruitment kickoff. The plans and tests for the disc/vac 15 are moving slowly but steadily--at least 4 students have pledged to get it done. And of course my Seniors want to build another 120 drum bot (like the world needs more of those). My plans to make a 3lb version of MooMoo have been indefinitely tabled. . .