I made a mini deathroll... and it's INSANE!

BattleBots one of the coolest shows ever made where 100 kilo robots battle to the death for our entertainment and one of the most badass robots to ever fight in the battle box has to be this death roll this monster of a vertical spinner has a reputation of hitting without quitting and considering it's built by an Australian team I'm quite the fan so when Hexbug released their line of miniature remote controlled BattleBots a few years ago like this tiny beta with real working Hammer I thought my dream of owning a mini death roll to call my own would finally come true but alas they never made one and that's just not acceptable so I made one myself this much death roll was designed and built uses some of the most advanced Manufacturing Technologies available from its multi-jet Fusion chassis to the weapon blade made from Aerospace great titanium and let me tell you this little robot is no joke oh my God oh my God if you're unfamiliar with combat robotics let me give you an ultra quick rundown these remote control machines fight to the death in a specially designed arena with three minutes to incapacitate their opponents through almost any means possible you can smash flip crush and Hammer your way to Victory and should both robots be working after three minutes the decision goes to the judges based on control damage and aggression let's be real no one wants to win through a judge's decision we want to win through all-out obliteration there are rules of course to keep things fair and for the entertainment of the crowd no projectiles explosives or radio jamming is permitted and just like boxing these robots compete in a strict weight class death roll is a heavyweight combat robot weighing in at 250 pounds or about 113 kilograms and its vertical disc assembly alone weighs over 24 kilos for my mini version I want to have the same ferocity as the original but in a much more compact package I want it to look as cool as the original with that crocodile profile the same gigantic disc and ideally a self-writing feature so it doesn't get stuck on back oh and it also has to weigh less than 150 grams to compete in the Australian ant weight class yes grams it's a crazy Challenge and I am here for it these are the bits that have to fit into it I've got two Drive Motors death roll has four Hub Motors in reality but there's no way of fitting that kind of thing within the weight limit and to control it I've got this tiny speed controller from bot bits and this even smaller receiver which receives commands from the transmitter the weapon itself will be direct driven from this mystery brushless motor that I've had for years and well it feels pretty powerful but I'm yet to actually test it and everything is powered by this tiny Lithium Polymer battery all of this on its own is already pretty complex and heavy so the frame will need to be seriously lightweight if there's any weight left for a decent weapon but how do you go about designing a mini clone of such a visually complex robot as death roll some sort of 3D reference would sure be handy so anyway here's the full production card of death roll I deleted all the components and bodies I didn't need leaving just the chassis and disc as a reference and got to work reverse engineering creating new bodies that matched the shape of the original but were able to accommodate the ant weight Electronics it was an insane design challenge but I eventually ended up with this so I've got the design of this Kick-Ass mini death roll and it's time to make it that's where this video is sponsor PCB way comes in PCB way is well known for their PCB fabrication services but where you're aware they have a whole Suite of Manufacturing Services available as well from 3D printing to CNC Machining laser cutting and even injection molding you can have your entire product failed through PCB way and this service is incredibly easy to use for this robot I really wanted to try hp's mjf process which stands for multi-jet Fusion it uses a pa-12 nylon powder for incredibly strong and detailed parts that don't require support material and for the weapon disc I wanted to try something really special grade 5 titanium now titanium isn't the hardest material in the world but it is incredibly resilient and has a density roughly halfway between steel and aluminum which made it the perfect material choice for this ridiculously huge weapon blade all you need to do is upload your design in STL or step format and then select what process you want what material and grade and then what finish you would prefer and PCP ways Engineers will take a look at your model and let you know if it'll work or if any changes are required and for example Riley got back to me really quickly with some possible problem areas in my 3D prints that were below the recommended thickness for the mjf process and they even provided screenshots but I said hey it's okay I accept the risky and then after a little while they arrived these parts look absolutely incredible the mjf nylon has this amazing black Sleek look to it and the parts weigh nothing but they feel so strong and rigid it's incredible but these discs wow these discs so they're titanium grade 5 titanium and they are just flawless and it seems that PCB way made three of them but realistically only need one spare so how would you like to win one of these incredible discs well keep watching the video to the end to find out how with all the bits here it's time to start assembly and it's fiddly work first things first the frame needed several threaded inserts to be heat set and to do this I used Naomi Wu's new heat set insert tool which is one seriously legit piece of Kit uses v-rolls and stops to precisely position and control the heat set tool so you can sync the inserts down into place without making a mockery of them where they're all wonky or you damage the part and I know it's niche but I'm just in love with this machine using it to heat set inserts precisely so they're not wonky or off center or they damage the part amazing unsurprisingly the frame components from PCB way fit together perfectly you cannot get this level of precision off fdm printed nylon there's no way it warps it shrinks to real pain to use these parts just right off the machine fit together perfectly and have the strength of that nylon so if you need precise AI strong Parts it's well worth trying out a service like this because the machine that makes this is hundreds of thousands of dollars there's no way you'd own it yourself but it makes perfect sense to use it as a service but the parts are actually very affordable and it lets you make incredible projects like this but by far the hardest part to get right in this build is the electronics you want to keep all the components as well protected as possible while still being connected by correct lengths of wire but you also need to manipulate them into place without inducing wire fatigue and breaking things or impacts shaking things loose during combat all I can say is it takes a steady hand and a lot of practice but with some careful planning I was able to shoehorn it all into the chassis in future I would probably just go with an all-in-one controller like the malenky Nano that I used in my squishy robot pancake but I'm disorganized and didn't order a spare in time and my current one looks like this so yeah my suffering It's Your Entertainment I guess the drive Motors are designed to Simply secure in place with hot glue old school but it works and although I did design in a feature to support front wheels weight was quickly becoming an issue in this little bot so two rear wheels for now will have to do the weapon motor and weapon assembly is the final piece of the puzzle with the motor mounting into precisely sized bores in the frame uprights motor Hub is on one side and I installed a three millimeter bearing on the other to support the shaft again the Precision of the mjf process is incredible I didn't have to do any drilling or sanding to get these parts to fit together perfectly the weapon discs however did need a tiny bit of tweaking as I was a little bit too cautious on the internal diameter they didn't quite fit over the motor bill but that's nothing a Dremel and some pretty Sparks can't fix talking about pretty there is a property of titanium that I've always wanted to try out and that is anodizing it using electricity Titanium on its own has a slightly blue gray look to it which isn't half bad but you can easily change this into a rainbow of incredible Colors by simply running an electric current through the part and the process of doing this it turns out is ridiculously easy all you need is an electrolyte solution of some kind I just use baking soda dissolve into water some scrap titanium for the ground and a piece you want to anodize connected to the positive terminal of any number of in my case 9 volt batteries with each jump in voltage resulting in a different color due to an interference phenomenon of light reflecting off the oxide and the underlying titanium at least that's the limit of how much I understand the process it's very complicated I'm not a scientist certain voltage equals certain color and it's actually very repeatable so I found that three nine volt batteries which is about 27 volts gave a really really pretty purpley blue color that I absolutely love and it takes just seconds for the oxide to form so if you have some titanium lying around definitely give this process a go just be aware they need to clean all the dirt and grease and oils off the part first or it'll show on the surface I wasn't super careful doing my part but again this is a combat robot it's going to be smashed up so it doesn't really matter does it from here all I had to do was literally epoxy the blade onto the motor and do the final assembly and here it is my homage to one of the coolest Battle Bots ever made death roll oh [Music] now I'm planning to take this mini death roll across the world to open source in San Francisco but it'd be pretty unwise to do that without giving a good test first sorry bro it's one of our local antwing competitions to see what this little thing is capable of and here was the first spin-up test okay well I'm I'm no longer the robot with the biggest reach anymore oh my God [Music] [Music] um [Applause] [Music] um okay it's scary sounding for sure but that's not much of a test is it I wanted to give it a real Shakedown test and see just what this weapon is capable of so at the end of the event I went up against one of the other builders robots James built this little beater that actually won the event but it was pretty beaten up by the end of it we decided to check the two robots in against each other and do a few hits and this is how that went foreign [Music] [Applause] so that's insane this robot hits harder than pretty much anything else in the category but it comes at a price when this machine is flipped upside down it's stuck and a stuck robot is a dead robot now the real death roll actually has a solution for this it has a self-writing arm that will flip it back onto its Wheels when it gets stuck and I did intend to do this I actually bought this tiny micro Servo the intention of doing a similar arm to get this robot back on its Wheels when it got flipped but the weight just wasn't there these robots 150 grams is nothing and it all gets eaten up and I wanted to have some stylistic details on this robot so that just isn't wait for an invertibility Servo in there I do think I have an idea for a less elegant but very lightweight solution zip ties now if I put a zip tie in a strategic location right here on the back when it gets flipped there should be just enough spring in that zip tie to let it get back on its Wheels especially if the weapon is able to kick over a couple of times and bounce it back it's untested yet but I think that will be a good solution also something I didn't notice is the can got jammed into the side of the frame that's why it couldn't spin up right at the end but that easily solved a little bit more epoxy and unfortunately one of the little mounts where the screws are cracked now this process mjf nylon isn't as strong as injection molded nylon it's a little bit more brittle and it really did show unfortunately a weakness there this is so thin I've I did skeletonize this with an introvert's life to get it in the weight limit so I will try reinforcing that with a little bit of epoxy to see how it goes and I do have a spare frame that I did get done from PCB way to make this at least able to survive a few rounds but I cannot wait to bring this over to open source and I'm also bringing the new version of my squishy robot pancake yes I did rebuild it within the weight limit and I actually competed the last robot event and it did really really well so if you'd like to see a full breakdown and build report and competition report for the new version of pancake you can find that over on the Maker's Muse Community because I'm not going to be flooding this channel too much of Robot Combat content but if you're hungry for more you can join that Community for just five bucks a month you get access to behind the scenes content and awesome troubleshooting forum and a lot more so definitely check it out in the video description below a big thanks to pcba for sponsoring this video here on makersmuse and a big thanks to them for making these incredible titanium weapon discs and I did say you can win one of these I have a spare they will be giving away all you have to do is comment below with the ultimate robot comment design you would make what's your ultimate dream battle bot that would win the competition let me know in the comments below and I'll choose my favorite to ship out this disc to start you off on your Robot Combat journey and who knows maybe I'll make a homage to your crazy idea in a future video thanks for watching guys catch you later bye

Channel: Maker's Muse

Views: 46,474

Keywords: 3d, printing

Id: U2XaMzdnGUA

Length: 14min 12sec (852 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 02 2023