Evo

Total Time: 12 Hours

Summary

It's a battle bot. Made of PLA, and with a horizontal spinner. And, it's got a plasma arcing weapon!

Main Features

Let's start with the body. It's a thick walled, PLA body. Lightweight yet strong. The wheels? Also made of PLA, but coated to increase grip strength. Screws to hold it together and for easy disassembly (because we all know how much a battle bot needs to be disassembled).

Now, the electronics. Instead of going with the common N20 motors, I decided to go with stronger, larger motors to move the relatively large weight of the bot. I went with a 2200KV A2212 Brushless Motor due to it's low cost as well as good specs. It'll work great as the offhand. And finally, the main deal. I went with a 15-20KV AC transformer module to be able to make large arcs, or plasma fire.

June 16th

I thought of a general guiding design today and worked on the parts list. Overall, just generally diagramming and creating a good view over as well as picking parts.

Time Spent: ~1 Hour

June 17th

Today I made a ton of progress!

First, I sketched out an idea of what I wanted the battlebot to look like, just so I could have a reference.

After that, I worked on the wiring diagram. It was a little tough due to all the different voltages and connectors and the complicated wiring overall, but I got it. (It didn't help that aliexpress parts can be quite vague).

I also made the initial CAD. The base, the wheels, and the offhand weapon were all roughly designed today. Since the horizontal spinner is easily moddable, I can replace it right after it gets worn out which is great. I can scale it to be stronger but less durable, weaker, but longer lasting, and whatever configuration I want!

Time Spent: ~5 Hours

June 18th

I spent a lot of time polishing and finishing up the final design for the battle bot. I was thinking about adding bare 8 gauge copper wire to make it easy to change the arc length but I decided that stripping thinner wire and tinning it would be a much cheaper option. It better to just use random stranded copper wire and encase it with solder after testing what distance makes the best arc.

Basically I made the housing and polished it up a bit with cool graphics and tuning.

After careful consideration, I felt that the original horizontal spinner weapon would wear quickly and do little damage, so I designed a couple more weapons.

I ended up going with the one that you can currently see on the battlebot due to a good balance between many spikes and being sturdy. I also finished uploading, the BOM, and the README which is good because it's starting to solidify now.

After some constructive criticism from peers, I decided to move the wheels inward so they would be more protected. I also decided to swap PETG for PLA due to superior impact resistance although I'd have to sacrifice some heat resistance as well. I then changed the weapon a bit to be stronger yet still fulfill its purpose of guarding the plasma arcs by adding heavy hitters as well as making it thicker.

A project I was working on previously was requested to have the wiring diagram updated with the images of the complicated parts to make it clearer, so I quickly decided to do the same for this project as well.

Time Spent: ~6 Hours