Strange Brew is Team Stupid's first robotic endeavor and is quite a force to be reckoned with. A powerful pneumatic lifting arm and over 2 horsepower of electric muscle keep this beast up and running, tearing apart the competition. A mix of speed, torque, weapon power, and strong defense make this a force to be reckoned with. It is done entirely and competed in the November 2001 and May 2002 Battlebots competitions on Treasure Island. Brew is being upgraded to deal with a new breed of robots that will make their presence known as the years progress.

UPDATE:
The robot named Ground Zero in for the middleweight class of battlebots, due to conflicts with the disaster in New York being referred to as "Ground Zero" will henceforth be referred to as "Strange Brew"

Major badness has happened with the timing pulleys and trying to fit a single stage in such a squat robot so Strange Brew will be using a 2 stage #25 chain reduction, and the wheel size has been decreased one inch due to some bad math on my part (this has been returned to 6 inches). We will also be using the weight limit increase to our advantage by using brass ballast to get us RIGHT at 119.9 pounds. The single 20 ounce CO2 tank has been returned.

The old gear reduction may be for sale eventually, so stay tuned.

Woo! We're back from competing at Battlebots Season 4.0 and it was a complete BLAST. I have never had so much fun in my life and Strange Brew performed very well for a first time competetor. Unfortunately we never got the brass ballast or anti-wedge skirts on in time but we still managed to kick some buttocks and we WILL be back with Strange Brew again, alongside our new Superheavyweight meanace Chester the Nitwitted Half Brother, and eventually a lightweight named Microbrew! Watch out!

YEEEEEHA! We're back from Battlebots season 5.0 and it was something out of this world. Brew did go down, but she didn't go down easy! Unfortunately only got 2 fights under our belt this time around, but they were good ones against worthy opponents. Read about them below to continue the legacy of Strange Brew.

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 on sides and rear, 1/2 inch on the front.
Arm Material: Heavily milled 1/2 inch aluminum plate
Anti-wedge skirt: none at the moment
Min. Arm strength: 300 pounds
Approx. arm strength at point of contact: 750 pounds
Weight: 116.5 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

FIGHTS
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.


Fight # Opponent Starting Square Summary
1 The Grimlin, a 2 wheeled wedge with spikes that was frighteningly similar to Psychotron from last season...
 Red Wow! I couldn't believe it myself when we turned on the bot...and it WORKED! That blew me away. Even the weapon, with those new kick-butt pneumatics, was fully functional. This day was a bit of a strange one, like the ones before it. 72 hours prior we had gotten through our visual inspection, but then had to wait three full days before our functional testing began. As soon as we finished our testing we slapped in a new tank of CO2 and got in line to fight. The man we were fighting was a guy named Jay whom I had talked to many times online before and since. Very nice guy. He actually registered his bot before he started building it as far as I hear, but needless to say it was quite impressive for only a few weeks worth. The steel wedge on the front was really REALLY tough. He says it's the same steel they line the beds of rock carriers with. COOL. Anyhoo, our bot works, his bot works, and off we went! Both bots showed impressive speed, especially his considering he was using wheelchair motors. We both rushed eachother and he suprised me by being able to get underneath Brew once or twice. Brew got underneath Gremlin and with a mighty push of the big red button we flipped gremlin into the air. On impact the supports for his radio receiver broke and he lost power. Brew wins by knockout.
2 Darkness, a 2 wheeled thwackbot utilizing a large pickaxe with a heavy steel handle.
 Red Well Brew actually worked again! I think we figured out what we're doing by now. The original plan was to just let darkness spin in place because you don't get any points for spinning. When the match started, I noticed that Darkness didn't spin nearly as fast as I thought he did so I decided to just ram him anyway. With a mighty thrust of the accelerator we pushed under Darkness and shoved him around a good amount. At one point his pickaxe became lodged in Brew's right armor panel just above the pressure regulator and the match had to be stopped to seperate us. The lifting arm got bent and some pneumatic hoses became dislodged, effectively crippling our weaponry system. Darkness definately won on damage but when we went to the wall, darkness always hit it first. I had control over this fight and stayed on him as much as possible, but we were pretty banged up by the end so the judges gave it to darkness with a tough 22-23 decision. Jack said that one of the darkness team members congratulated us on our victory while we were shutting down the robots because they thought we won, plus there was some booing in the crowd, which made me happy.

(special thanks to Jim Smentowski from Team Nightmare for the images.)

PICS
Ok, I've had you all on hold long enough. Strange Brew is done entirely and put on a show already. Here are some spiffy pictures of Strange Brew.
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

Brew's Rebuild
Strange Brew, our baby, has gone through some fairly major upgrades to prepare for Season 5.0. The main points to make are that there is heavier armor in the front and the pneumatics are both faster and more powerful than before. Under the "hood" the wiring is much cleaner, the batteries can be charged while still onboard, and best of all the weight has been redistributed to get more weight over the wheels and thus get better pushing power. She's looking quite scary. Here are some pictures of the upgrades she's received.
New pneumatics, a picture of strange brew's new pressure regulation system. On the right are the old mechanisms, a paintball regulator and paintball tank used as an accumulator. The fancy contraption on the left is a super high-flow regulator from Victor that puts out more gas than grandpa after thanksgiving, allowing us to skip the buffer tank with no loss in performance.
Brew's Damage sustained during the fight with Mobster, these are both 1/4 inch thick Polycarbonate (lexan) panels that were on the front. The one on the left was pierced by a spike and the one on the right was cracked diagonally by a hard ram from both bots. That was a VERY good match.
New cylinder and valve assembly that will be used on brew. The valves are on the left, the cylinders on the right. In their little subgroups, the old parts are on the left and the new parts on the right. Unfortunately we won't be using the new cylinder because in our design the rear endcap needs to be rotated 90 degrees and that is not possible. The valve, however, is much smaller and easier to mount than the huge old one. Thanks SMC!
Brew's new baseplate is much nicer than the old one. It is unpainted 6061 aluminum so it is nice and shiny. We also saved enough weight to be able to leave the middle in and not have that ugly steel grate. Brew's pretty!
Distribution blocks have been added to brew to make the wiring infinitel simpler. Remove one panel, undo two bolts, and the battery terminals are free and ready to be placed in parallel and charged. Wonderful Team STUPID Innovation here.
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!

Here is the evolution of parts that were to be used in Strange Brew. Parts that were used in the final version are Bolded

Armor: Spring steel, Polycarbonate.
Drive motors: Windshield wiper motors, Bosch750s, NPC64038s, EV Warriors.
Batteries: 18ah powersonic lead-acid, 12ah powersonic lead acid, 2 3000mAH Battlepacks
Wheels: Colson Performa's. For some reason these were my first and last choice for wheels.
Weapon cylinder: 2 inch bore 8 inch stroke, 2.5 inch bore, 10 inch stroke.
Valve: Parker-hannifin 5/2 1/4NPT valve, Direct acting cast aluminum solenoid valve with 3/8NPT ports (season 4.0), Internally piloted stainless steel SMC valve with 3/8NPT ports (season 5.0)
Pressure regulation: Victor nitrogen regulator, high-flow paintball regulator (season 4.0), Super high flow Victor SR310 CO2 regulator (season 5.0).