It had to be Re-Roll. As a vertical spinner with a wedge, it was right in line with the current meta. Designed to deal some damage, take a beating, and control a fight when necessary. It had to have multiple wedge attachments to effectively battle different opponents. It was perfect. I just had to get it ready in time.
Over the years I've gotten worse and worse at taking build photos in the process. I get so into the build, I forget sometimes. An honestly looking back, it doesn't seem worth it. Most of the people reading here only really care about the finished product. In light of that, I'll keep this update short, focusing on the changes that happened from the original design, to the finished product.
In general the build went really smoothly. The main issue I had was being underweight. Which is definitely a good issue to have. The issue seemed to be the 3D printed parts. I do my best to keep the weights in check, but definitely missed a few. It's a tedious task to get 3D printed parts accurately. My current system is as follows:
- Design the part in Solidworks
- Export the part to an STL
- Import the part into Prusa Slicer
- Slice the part in the designed material, perimeters, and infill
- Take the output weight, and over ride the mass properties of the part in Solidworks to match
To do this for every part at this scale for every change takes a ton of time and can lead to a lot of mistakes. I think I have a plan to better predict these weights in the future, more on that in another post eventually. But for now, if anyone has a better suggestion, I'm all ears.
With the extra weight I was able to do a few things:
- Re-design the weapon disk spacers to be partly aluminum for more MOI and a continuous pulley in the center
- Increase the thickness of the wedglets in the vertical configuration to be more durable
- Replace the Botkits wheels with custom TPU core, urethane treaded tires, courtesy of Matt Lantry
- Add TPU bumpers to the horizontal configuration for more armor
All that being done, Re-Roll still came in under weight. I already have a few ideas for a next generation design. But for now I'm super proud of how it turned out. I never expect to win an event, but I'm really excited for the potential of this robot. Plus, I think it looks pretty.