It's been a while! If you have been wondering what I have been up to out in my garage, here it is:

It's a remote controlled robot that has a slot in the top that you can put various targets. The whole idea is that the robot is "bullet proof" against .22's and shot gun blasts so as your plinking away at the target payload, it doesn't matter if you hit the robot.

Here is the robot base by itself. Everything you see here is made from steel and welded together. The robot has four motors (on for each wheel) which provide it with 4WD. It is pretty good at running around in the foothills without getting stuck.

Here is is driving around.

And here it is taking some fire! It's been a fun project for sure! We are currently building the website and tooling up to make and sell a batch of them, so if you want one watch this space for more info!

Getting ready for the games!

Robo Games is fast approaching and I have started putting HotStuff back together.  The robot will look really Similar to last time, but I will be making a few small changes to hopefully fix the issues I had last year.

Last year I lost all four drive motors in my final match due to them overheating.  I had to run three matches in under an hour, two of them back to back and it was just to much for my poor little motors to handle. 

My Solution to this problem is to utilize the exhaust from my Co2 powered lifting arm.  The exhaust comes out ice cold every time I cycle the grabber or lifter on my bot and up until now I have just vented it into the robot, but now I will flow it directly into my motors, should help keep them cool. 

In the above picture you can see the holes I drilled and tapped in my motors to be able to screw in an air fitting.

This is a Sheet of .125 6-4 Titanium I picked up on Ebay.  I will be replacing the .25" thick lexan wedges on the front of my robot with it.

How am I making the weight for the Titanium wedges? By replacing the three heavy valves on the right with the three light weight valves on the left.

The old valves weigh 2.5 pounds.

The new ones weigh just over half a pound.

Here is the robot as it sits today, more to come as the games get closer!