BATTLEB TS RETURNS!
Stories from the Trenches
● by Kevin M. Berry
During April 21–26, about 64
bots brought their owners to
Vallejo, CA for the much anticipated
return of BattleBots to the
public stage. The results of the
competitions are closely guarded,
with each competitor signing a nondisclosure agreement. SERVO, of
course, honors those agreements.
However, personal stories aren’t
part of NDAs, and we asked the
community to send us favorites from
this event. Two builder’s responses,
are published here, to help the
unfortunates who couldn’t go (like
myself) visualize a little slice of a
bot-head’s dream week.
Dave Shultz contributed two
stories ... “These both entail the
Bot Dudes, which is myself, Terry
Kolody, and Steven Vitulli. We are
from San Diego, CA and the bot’s
name is Hugs and Kisses check out
Photo 1 (
www.botdudes.com).
Story 1: The Heat
Treaters and the Fire
Our story starts about one and
a half weeks before the competition
when I sent a purchase order to a
heat treating company in Los
Angeles. The orders were to pick up
parts from me in San Diego, take
them to Los Angeles, harden them,
and have them ready for us to pick
up on Tuesday before the event. We
had to drive from San Diego to
Vallejo, and mapping tools much
less sophisticated than Google Earth
told us that their shop in Los
Angeles was on the way.
They did pick up our parts on
time, but somehow missed the
important bit about having them
ready on Tuesday. When we
stopped by to get everything, they
were exactly as we last saw them —
not hardened. So, we arranged for
a place in San Leandro (near the
Oakland airport) to harden them,
and they were extremely accommodating. We actually dropped the
parts off at 8: 30 p.m. Tuesday night
before driving on to Vallejo. At this
point, Hugs and Kisses was running
perfectly. All we had to do was bolt
on the hardened armor and we
were ready to go.
The heat-treater in San Leandro
was completely different from the
one in Los Angeles. Not only did
they promise a one-day turn-around,
but they also called us Wednesday
morning to tell us that they were
concerned the hardening process
might ruin one of the parts. They
wanted me to come down, stress-relieve some sharp interior corners
on one piece, and remove all the
scale on a large piece of tool steel.
So, I made a trip down to the
Oakland airport from Vallejo to do
just that, and made my way back
up to the BattleBots pits. The three
hours were not really wasted, but I
really started to dislike the drive
from Vallejo to Oakland and back.
The hardened parts would be
ready later that night and we really
had nothing to do since the bot
worked perfectly the last time we
turned it on. So, instead of sitting
around looking at each other, we
decided to weigh the machine
on the official scale in the pits
and get as far through tech
inspection as we could without
our armor. Shortly after weighing
the machine, we found something to do since Hugs and
Kisses decided to catch on fire.
We didn’t power it up. We
didn’t strike a match. There
wasn’t a blow-torch in sight. We just
lifted it onto the scale, weighed it,
and put it back on the cart. We
were just standing there, having a
nice conversation with someone
when it started smoking. Electrical
smoke. The smelly kind. As you can
imagine, we moved quickly to take
appropriate action. And by “
appropriate action” I mean we stood
there looking at each other asking
“What the hell is going on?” as
smoke drifted out of the machine.
I know you might think that
“appropriate action” would mean
grabbing the tool needed to remove
the top and do something useful
but since we had no idea how this
happened, looking at each other
stupidly seemed the right thing.
After 15 seconds or so, we started
taking the top off. It seemed like an
eternity before we could see into
the machine. Meanwhile, a crowd
of cell phones had gathered to take
pictures of the “professional” bot
going up in smoke.
There were flashes going off
everywhere as people snapped
photos, and one particularly bright
flash came from inside the bot as
the capacitor in one of the speed
controllers exploded. The guy
manning the scales had a fire
extinguisher in his hand and seemed
very reluctant to use it. He looked at
me apologetically as if he would be
PHOTO 1
SERVO 07.2009
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