12 pound melty = 40k joules

That's right....40k joules (or more)

Its been awhile now since ive read the rules but i just had a thought.

Could a bot be not allowed to compete or failed at saftey because it exceeds the limitations of the arena?

I don;t know, but there will have to be a bit of arena damage before they determine that

Actually it will probably be more like 20k joules....

golly gee you had me so excited!

the rumble at the rock arena is being redesigned because of us already, wonder how your arena will hold up to that

My arena?

All I have is 4 1 x 10's and some stainless sheets...

The 3 already ripped the 1 x 10's apart, so ....

If you mean the little 10 x 10 (battlebot bill's) who knows

rjw wrote:

If you mean the little 10 x 10 (battlebot bill's) who knows

will! haha

looks like the 12/15 will be cut from a single chunk of alu and clad with Ti...Like the little spinny tort but with armor

fwiw here's kyle's picture of our 12 melty at franklin

took it off his photo bucket album

Is that the before or after picture? did it get chewed up at all?

Looks nice - Aluminum frame, Ti sheet exterior?

well you got your one event out of it, time to scrap it for a new one
Can i have it?!

there was a good size chunk taken out right next to the knocker but other then that that bots solid

Nasty gash near the knocker and a small corner smashed at the back.

At first, I thought that the gash happened when we were not spinning, but in looking at the video, it appears to be a result of the melty not spinning fast enough when contact was made.

the corner smash can be seen in the highspeed video, where the melty was not spinning and the lower rear corner lit up like a light bulb after ss hit it.....pretty cool stuff.

Cody Harris wrote:

well you got your one event out of it, time to scrap it for a new one
Can i have it?!

Sure come on down and get it

Here are some pics of the carnage from franklin

Top of bot looks undamaged



Nasty gash from the very first hit as seen in Kyle's highspeed video. SS's blade actually hit the back of my knocker....TIp speed difference was a factor there, but it made for possibly the biggest hit of the event



Wile Double trouble wasn;t moving, it got hit inthe back corner...in the highspeed video, you can see that it looks like the corner is lit up on fire. Here's the damage from that hit.

You know, I've been thinking - if a MELTY used the right motors you might just be able to fit the entire thing in a chassis under 1/2" thick, maybe even less than 3/8" (excluding motor enclosures and wheels). And that's a 12 lb robot I'm talking about, not a beetle or ant.

Jeff

Educate me...how does a 12 pound robot fit adequate power motors under 1/2" or 3/8" in diameter....?

This I have to hear....sounds exciting....

Jeff L wrote:

You know, I've been thinking - if a MELTY used the right motors you might just be able to fit the entire thing in a chassis under 1/2" thick, maybe even less than 3/8" (excluding motor enclosures and wheels). And that's a 12 lb robot I'm talking about, not a beetle or ant.

We may have enough funding at Tech to two hobbyweights later on, and I've been playing with a few ideas (as an aside, one of them is being designed right now as a training exercise/competition among the brand new members of the club). Specifically, with a MELTY the best option to keep internal components from moving around during operation is to not give them enough room to move in the first place [at least from my point of view]. So, if you could fit most of the robot into a frame milled from one plate of aluminum around 3/8" to 1/2" thick (everything but the motors/wheels/pulleys/etc) you could cut price and weight, and it might make balancing the whole thing easier at the same time. As for the drive itself, you'd need to fit that assembly into a separate enclosure that mounts to your main chassis (lots of bolts), probably made from another solid chunk of aluminum.

There are a few good pluses I see here, like if you could cram everything into a thin enough package, a steel chassis might just barely be possible [I think it could be done on a 15 lb robot]. Either that, or you can bump up the overall radius of the bot, and squeeze a few more kJ from a more efficient moment of inertia.

Funny, you say so convincingly..."the best way to ...blah ,blah, blah is to blah, blah and so on and so forth...

Do you really believe all this stuff?

So build it and let's see how it works out... we need to have some serious melty wars in the near future.

Personally, I think that my 12 needs more energy like it needs glass wheels and a plastic knocker....but that's just my opinion...show me the way

this is where that like button would come in handy

The way I see it, the biggest technical hurdles (after successfully assembling the electronics for a melty) are:

A: Making sure it won't knock or spin itself to pieces
a: As a subset of that, making sure the internals won't tear themselves apart
B: Getting the whole thing at least reasonably well balanced

The fastest way to both of those [in a design built from scratch] is removing all unnecessary air space on the inside of the chassis; properly restrained and constrained electronics & mechanisms are the deciding factors on durability in any robot. In the case of a melty, properly executing that in a design is even more critical than normal because of the extreme operating conditions they experience. On top of that, limiting overall space used is normal practice in battlebot design already for obvious reasons.

sorry but i think thats just asking for a captain obvious comment

That was kind of the point, actually - it was a bit of a response to rjw's question "Do you believe all that stuff?"

And besides, he did ask for clarification on my earlier post. Is it really my fault if the clarification isn't as exciting as everyone hoped?

I was just hoping for a REAL 3/8 " to 1/2" thick solution.......

I guess that I just misinterpreted.......

RJ,

I might be calling in the next few days to get educated on the melty stuff.....

You have my kids asking questions I cant answer at the moment....

Besides, My Sons robot RockO might be getting a new title: retirement/sparing partner for the other robots.

Wifey says she has to see if we can afford building a new one for him....

Maybe a Melty Design??? (would be interesting to learn it all and put it in his new design)

Right now he is designing a 2wd wedge/backside beater.....

Imagine an 8 Y.O. designing with Inventor....... Gotta Love it........

FRISCO