BattleBots

In reply to alfadriver :

That was a great match. When I saw tombstones weapon taken down, I was in shock. That's only ever happened one other time. Props to ray billings for driving it into the ground, on fire and all. 

In reply to Mndsm :

If it went to the judges, he had a good chance of winning, and there was more apparent damage to Rotator- with it's entire weapon shattered.  That would have been a really tough call for the judges- Rotator was really taking it to Tombstone at the same time as being the most damaged.  But then the fire, and it was obvious that Tombstone really took it.

Great match, as you say.

In reply to alfadriver :

I would have given it to Rotator just on aggression. He went straight into the mouth of the scariest spinner in the game. Think of who he's beaten. Paul...whatever his name is. Minotaur. ALL of the heavy hitters. 

Bringing this back up, as the BB season has restarted with the golden bolt tournament.  

This isn't really about that, thought- but about the materials they use.  I've noticed in previous shows, when they talk to the teams, they commonly use tool steel for the spinning weapons.  And just saw a video from the Tombstone team that talks about it- where they have to really carefully heat treat the shock tool steel to make it tough enough.

Seems to me they are using the wrong material.  For what they are doing, they need as much toughness as possible over hardness- since, as we have seen before, it's not uncommon for a spinning weapon to lose because the material fails.  And many times, it does not take much of a flaw to propagate a crack leading to premature failure.

If it were me, I think I would use something more like a spring steel, where it's designed to deform and then come back to it's original shape.  For all of the weapons now, it's not about cutting up the other bot, it's about transferring as much of that energy to the other bot- taking the shock load as reliably as possible.  

I think.

I have a text document with some Battlebot building notes that I update whenever I watch the show. It's not cheap though, teams say the fabrication cost of a spinner weapon alone is in the $5k~$15k range

In reply to GameboyRMH :

For many of those spinners, the cost is not even close to being ended- the Tombstone video showed 4 blades, 3 of them were destroyed, the 4th had a lot of work to do.   And he talked a lot about the complicated heat treatment that they do on all of them- so it's expensive metal and very expensive heat treatment that is done to them.  For a disposable item.

The quality (mostly reliability) of the bots has clearly been stepped up in the last few seasons.  The weapon motors at least, seem far more powerful.  I am not sure if this is new tech, or just more money thrown in.

I am also rather curious how much those battery packs, that tend to go up in flames, cost.

I still find it very interesting and entertaining.   Still a good variation of designs / tactics etc.