Featured This Month:
Features
20 BUILD REPORT:
Cloud of Suspicion
by Thomas Kenney
22 MANUFACTURING:
Laying Out Your Work
Area by Blake Hooper
27 PARTS IS PARTS:
2.4 GHz Radio Fail-safes
by Thomas Kenney
Events
24 EVENT REPORT:
Robothon Robot Combat
2008 by Rob Farrow
28 September 15 – October 12
Results
ROBOT PROFILE – Top
Ranked Robot This Month:
26 Micro Drive by Kevin Berry
20 SERVO 12.2008
BUILD REP RT
Cloud of Suspicion
● by Thomas Kenney
The wedge is one of the oldest
and most successful types of
combat robots. The effectiveness
of a simple ramp with good drive
power has yet to be matched by
any other robot design. However,
throughout the years the wedge
has managed to become the
most hated design as many claim
they lack any sort of originality
or excitement. There has been,
however, a small community of
fast, well driven wedges that
provide a good amount of
excitement as they bounce
around the arena. It was these
robots that inspired me to once
again jump back onto the
wedge bandwagon, this
time in the three pound
beetleweight class.
Like I have been doing
for all of my recent robots,
I did all of the robot’s
designing in Solid Works
3D CAD. Before I could
begin drawing up the
chassis however, I needed to
know how large it would be, as
opposed to simply tinkering with
it until everything fit. To do this,
I took all of the parts I had,
(substituting paper cutouts with
the correct dimensions for the
parts I did not have) and laid
them out in the most compact
configuration possible, while l
eaving some space for wiring.
It is important to have your
robot’s dimensions as small
as possible. Not only does it
decrease how large of a target
your robot is, but since your
chassis components will be
FIGURE 1. The robot is drawn
up in Solidworks CAD before
construction begins.
