Servo - March 2012

FIGURE 3. The finished wheel is shown on the right next to another wheel from the same batch.

FIGURE 4. A set of four wheels made recently showing near-perfect uniform diameters.

while the wheel is still spinning on the lathe to give it a smooth, rounded edge.

If you don’t have access to a lathe and want results like this, you’ll need to get creative. Similar results could be achieved with a drill press, a steady hand (or a vise), and a sharp file. It may also be possible to build or buy something that functions like an RC car tire truer which uses a sanding wheel on a parallel shaft to sand down the tread to a decent finish at whatever diameter you desire.

With the proper setup, you can easily create a large supply of uniform wheels to use on your small scale surface and cleaning the edges results in wheels that have little to no bounce and the largest contact patches possible for their width.

FIGURE 5. All three wheels started as 1.75" Lite Flites of supposedly the same width and have been turned to 1.125" diameter. The exact cause of the width discrepancy is unknown, but it is likely a manufacturing defect.

robots in a short amount of time.

The main point of doing this to your wheels is to attain the best drivability possible with a particular drive system arrangement. Cutting the wheels down to a concentric

The History of Robot Combat: Life After BattleB ts After the cancellation of Comedy Central’s BattleBots in late 2002, many in the building world felt lost. BattleBots had grown the sport of robot combat from an obscure niche activity to a national television event. Robot combat and BattleBots had become household terms.

● by Morgan Berry

Suddenly, the backbone of the sport was gone, and that left many with questions as to the future of the sport. Would robot combat continue to survive without the support of those national television audiences?

The builders did not wait long to mourn the ending of BattleBots. In fall 2002, Ken Gentry began planning a competition in Orlando, FL. Many hoped that this event — Robocide — would be the next “big thing” in the wake of the ending of the BattleBots television program. This first major event since