Strange Brew v1.0

Vitals:

Name: Strange Brew
Driver: Dan Wiseman
Designer: Dan Wiseman
Weapon: Unique front-hinged pneumatic tosser
Power source: 2 24 volt 3 amp-hour nicad packs in parallel
Drive: 2-wheel tank-style drive with omnidirectional ball castors
Wheels: 6 inch Colson Performa wheels
Motor: 2x 1 horsepower EV Warrior motors
Top speed: 14.5 miles per hour
Max pushing power: 202 pounds
Gear Reduction: 2 stage 11:30, 18:40 for a total ratio of 6.06:1
Base: 1/8 inch thick 6061 Aluminum plate
Armor: 1/4 inch thick polycarbonate plastic.
Arm Material: Heavily milled 1/2 inch aluminum plate
Anti-wedge skirt: none at the moment
Min. Arm strength: 250 pounds
Approx. arm strength at point of contact: 750 pounds
Weight: 112.5 pounds
Width: 36 inches
Length: 36 inches
Height: 6.25 inches
Wedge angle: 35 degrees
Approx. battery life: 5 minutes
Special Features: Self-righting mechanism, lot of power, modular design.
Max Stall Current: 250 amps
Reservoir size: 20 ounces
Weapon power: Liquefied CO2 gas
Pressure: 150 PSI
Speed Controllers: 2 Victor883 24v electronic speed controllers from IFIRobotics

Strange Brew v1.0 is the first incarnation of Team STUPID's flagship combat robot in the middleweight division. 2 horsepower of electric muscle, 3 methods of attack, a rock-solid frame and a high-power pneumatic flipping arm keep this machine up and running, tossing opponents like flapjacks. It's mean, it's low, it's BREW.

Everything with strange brew is there for a reason. Here is a rough approximation of how the engineering was done:

Well, Strange Brew is a fairly unique machine but every inch of that robot has a sound engineering reason behind it. Now I take you through the design methodology of the robot known as Strange Brew.

Strange Brew began her life way back in the year 2000 when battlebots season 1.0 first aired on Comedy Central. It reminded me of the Robot Wars special they had on the Discovery Channel several years prior. Dozens of designs were drawn up on the computer but the very first conception was a spiraling spinning wedge similar to S.L.A.M. or Reactore. This prooved to be a bit over the top for our first attempt so we studied the designs of successful robots and the failure points of others very closely. Then the design came: a lifter. But how? My father, being very experienced with cars, figured on hydraulics for this purpose. Research led us to believe that hydraulics were too heavy to implement in a 120 pound weightclass. But so far we had this: a middleweight lifter.

But what was this phantom lifter supposed to look like? After viewing and reviewing tape-recorded episodes we noticed that the very low robots seemed to do the best and one, Biohazard, seemed to be the best of the bunch. From there, Strange Brew (then named Ground Zero) took on a 4-sided wedge shape. Originally Strange Brew hinged on top towards the rear like a normal lifting bot. It also had small pipes in the front that were cut like surgical hypodermic needles. We also planned on it being 2-wheel drive from the get go, but after attending series 3.0 we got an idea from John Reid of Killerhurtz fame: Magnets. The original design for Strange Brew called for a ring of Neodymium magnets in a ring between the two wheels. This later prooved to be impractical.

As I continued research on the internet I began to understand what kind of power needed to be in these things, what kind of armor I needed, how the frame needed to be built, etc. From a car-building buddy of my father we settled on Threaded Nut Inserts (nutzerts) to mount the armor. Aluminum was the material of choice for the frame because of it's impressive strength to weight ratio and availability. The drive motor choice went through several mutations before we decided on the lightweight and powerful EV warrior. The original reduction was intended to be a 1-stage 7.2:1 reduction via timing belts. The current incarnation is a 2 stage chain reduction and has worked very well so far.

A major design flaw we noticed among many robots is that should they get flipped over, they are completely disabled. Since Strange Brew's design did not lend itself well to invertability, we decided that the lifting arm must be able to self-right the robot should the need so arise. With a lifting arm hinged in the front on such a squat, wide robot it became aparent that this could not flip the robot back over. Then it came in a flash of brilliance: Front Hinged Lifter. To our knowledge this is the first time a lifting arm has been implemented in Battlebots with a front-side hinge. This also creates numerous benefits not seen by conventional lifting arms: it carries through the stroke. The lifting arm traces the same natural arc as the robot it is throwing so it is constantly accelerating the object in question. This means that the front-hinged lifting arm can throw many times farther and higher than a conventional lifting arm of the same strength. It seems to have been a very wise design strategy that shows much potential. It also makes Strange Brew a very unique machine.

The frame is made of the exact pipe that it is made of for a good reason: the metal yard had a LOT of it and it's very strong. Strange Brew's frame has a lot of triangles and reinforcement all around. The frame also contributed to the name itself. One day while out in the garage we had a local classic rock station on the radio. Strange Brew by Cream came on and we noticed what a cool song it is. We started listening to the lyrics and it all just fell together. "She's a witch of trouble in electric blue, in her own mad mind she's in love with you. (with you). Now whatcha gonna do? Straaaaaaaaaange brew, kills what's inside of you." That was that. We were going to annodize our aluminum frame a nice electric blue which is visible beneath the clear polycarbonate armor. After 8 months of planning and 5 months of building we had a mean, blue killing machine!

Approximately 10 minutes after performing a quick spin and self right test, Strange Brew 1.0 was loaded into the back of the truck and took off for Battlebots Season 4.0.

Fight #	Opponent	Starting Square	Summary
1	Commando: a beefy plowbot powered by 4 npc 64038s. Helluva torque.	Red	Woohoo! my first fight and I was nervous as all HELL! I think I went to the restroom at least 5 times while waiting in line for the fight. Off we went into the arena and turned on, taking quite a while because we had to take the whole side panel off to do so. Eventually we got powered up. The box was locked, the lights were on and we fought! We took off out of our square like a bat out of hell. We made contact closer to his side of the arena and soon into the match and soon realized that to our dismay our arm was not working! Analysis after the match showed that both wires of our team delta switch were attached to negative. We also had no traction! We slid around the floor like a hockey puck but luckily we managed to stay on him. His plows were rather low and he accidently high centered himself a couple times but we were unable to take full advantage of this because we had nearly NO traction. Our wheels were 6 inch Colson Performas that we turned down to 5.5 inches on a lathe. It turns out the hub is rounded beneath the tread and we had less than 1/8th of an inch of tread on the ground which was blown clean off the wheel in the first few seconds of the fight. We spun a bit and got in a couple good hits and won by judge's decision.
2	The Mobster: a fast robot powered by 12 volt zappy scooter motors and 4 wheel drive. Big steel spikes on the back and a partial wedge on the front.	Red	Woohoo! We made it through our first fight and we got into the ring. Badness! Half of the drivetrain was not responding! We had to postpone the match for a bit while we figured out what was wrong. It turned out that our jackshaft had become dislodged on the left side of the drivetrain. We patched it up and restarted our match. The match started and we both bolted out of our squares at full speed. At our first hit a good chunk of the left front lexan panel clean off, cracking it diagonally and scaring me. We circled around eachother and then I rammed him from behind and one of his spikes went through the right armor panel, narrowly missing our speed controller and buffer tank. Though this was the only match in which our arm actually functioned, Mobster proved too low to get underneath. Mobster got high centered twice, but we freed him both times. Late in the match, he high cetered himself on the ramp and I was about to go free him again but the ref told us to let him die and just go and dance. Won by KO.
3	Psychotron: a very low wedge powered by wheelchair motors with small spikes on the side.	Blue	Once again, something went awry. I was getting no response from the robot at all. We postponed the match again and took it back to the pits. We determined it to be a dead receiver battery, so off I went frantically running through the pits looking for a fresh one. Eventually we found one and thanked the man that gave it to us and OFF WE WENT! We came back into the ring to discover, to my horror, that the right side was translating, but the left was not though I could see the wheel spinning. Dad went in and discovered a screw sticking out of the bottom (one that held the regulator in place) and he pounded it flat with a sledgehammer. We have determined that two things happened when he did that: the threaded nut inserts that held on the front panels were severly weakened and one of our ball valves on the pneumatics system was shut off, disabling our arm again. We managed to get underneath Psychotron a few times and if the arm was working we probably would have been able to flip him a few times and win the match, but we put up a good fight despite losing by judges decision 27-18.

PICS
Here is a small sampling of some pictures of Strange Brew's initial build.
The first known picture of Strange Brew's development, the frame just starting to be assembled.
The EV warrior mount, aka the huge waste of time
A nice closeup of the drivetrain. We got rid of the brass in favor or the much lighter aluminum to hold our bearings.
Us cutting the floor
The old timing belt reduction, Another big waste of time.
The parrot that built our bot
Showing what the weapon looks like when actuated
A very scientific test of the weapon
Action Jack milling the new aluminum bearing holders
Jack lightening the lifting arm
The bot's beautyshot at the competition.
The imfamous Crystal Geyser radio system
We were impressed with the way Strange Brew performed, all things considered. We had some problems and Brew is always a work in progress, constantly being improved. To see how things evolved, go to Strange Brew 1.5.