Mr Smashy's Progress Report

Progress Report

October 9 - Wow. Time flies when you are busy. I started my semester on coop, coding Visual C++ for Offshore Systems Limited's NG division. Much to my surprise three quarters of my department was laid off a week last Wednesday (myself being one of them), so I dropped back into school, 4 weeks behind... With all this free time (..ahem) I figured I should update the page. So here it is:

NEW PICS! Yup. Check out the pictures page for the pics from the Relic demo. Everything went well there, and we had fun, but our 1 battery pack from Bluestar ended up running out. We managed to get 20-25 minutes of hard driving out of it, which isn't too shabby. The trouble is, is that it was our ONLY one. Damn. So Mr Smashy has been shelved (literally, on the top of my shelves) until a comp comes along. I am still getting towards working on my Gerbil Bot, and I have a new project coming up with a team from my school who just won a North American Airborne Autonomous Vehicle contest. I was asked to get together a team to design and build a land vehicle for them. Not so much destruction, but cool nonetheless.

I don't see this page being updated too much more, unless another comp comes along soon. I am planning on building a new robot for any events in the medium to far future, so Mr Smashy may never see combat. A new page will be up for whatever project I am working on, and I'll keep you informed... that is if you want me to. : ) If you have any comments/concerns about Mr Smashy or the site feel, free to berate us at robo-wars@sfu.ca
August 17 - Yikes! It has certainly been a while! There is almost too much news to recap, so I won't bother with the whole Robotica thing. If you want to find out more about Robotica being canceled etc. check out either the Robot Wars Forum or the Team Hercules Website. I am really disappointed that Robotica didn't happen, but that didn't stop me from finishing Mr Smashy! (Actually as irony is very cruel, I finished the robot the night before I found out) So without further ado, here is a recap of what was done on the robot:

The kevlar/carbon fibre armour for the front of Mr Smashy was built. Using 7 layers of 5 oz kevlar and 3 layers of 5 oz carbon fibre, the armour was laid up in a section of 5" stainless steel heating tube. It ended up turning out really nice. Stiff, strong and light. I will have pictures posted soon, as I would like to get it painted before it is put up on the web. (the natural yellow+black=greeny yellow looks pretty yucky). The caster wheels worked well and BlueStar provided us with a test battery pack. There are full pictures of the finished robot and descriptions of its parts on the newly updated Pictures Page so go take a look. I am taking the robot downtown to Relic Entertainment tomorrow to show it off. There is going to be a video taken, and I will put it up in .AVI format. I would like to have it done in Real Video, but I don't know how to convert it. The robot will probably have it's front armour piece (unpainted) in place but none of the sheet metal will be there. It seems to have been misplaced.

Anyways, not much more to say, as the pictures (and words) speak for themselves. If you have any questions about anything on or about Mr Smashy, feel free to write us at robo-wars@sfu.ca
Buh!
July 20 - Well.... It's a short (month - 8 days) until our planned departure for San Francisco. Time is running out. I was busy enough with the robot and school, but now I am moving August 1st too! Very very busy indeed. Mr Smashy is coming along well. We have the weapon mounted and are working on some of the details about it. The welders managed to weld the weapon on the mounting plate backwards and in the wrong spot. This is after I stressed that "it has to be welded like this:", to which the old German man replied: "What? We're not stupid!". Well, I guess even "not stupid" people make stupid mistakes. I will have to work around this. We made the trip to BlueStar Battery Systems and they are going to help us with our batteries. Even if we don't use their LiSO2 cell's for Mr Smashy's main power, we are going to use their standard US army night-vision goggle LiMnO2 cells to power our reciever. These are the size of the 3v lithium batteries that you'd use in your camera, but they put out 6v with a capacity of 500mAh. Very cool. They are going up on the sponsors page as soon as everything is worked out. Also going up is a new Downloads Page. This is where the SORC logo, and it's variations are. My logo was voted in by the Society to officially represent us Robot-Combatants. Thanks to everyone who voted, although I feel kinda bad for the people who spent a lot of time (thumbunny?) rendering 3-D images, just to have me waltz in and win with a 2 minute effort. Feel free to extrude my logo to 3-dim, give it a mirror finish or mess it up in any other way you see fit.

As far as the rest of the robot is going, I have gotten the radio interference under control, literally. As it turns out, it is not good to run your motor wires right under the receiver : ) Big thanks to Andrew Lindsay for giving me some good suggestions. The supporting castor-wheels have been installed, and the sheet metal armour has been cut to size. For the front of Mr Smashy we are using kevlar/carbon fibre -- for no real good reason, other than it is something fun to do. I built a small three layer shell of kevlar to test the mold and the strength. It was really light, and fairly hard to break through with Steve's new Snap-On pick-hammer. I think we will use 6 layers of kevlar and 3 of carbon fibre for the final build. I will be putting up pictures of Mr Smashy on the page right before we leave, so that those of you not making it to Robotica can imagine our robot beating the crap out of the other robots. This may or may not actually occur though (we are hoping to draw against Dr Inferno for the first round). I will also post all of the battery info once it is finalized, as well as the technical specifications, or "Mr Smashy by Numbers" if you will. Happy Roboting!
July 1 - Happy Canada Day to everyone! A day off school; one more day to study.
BIG NEWS! Mr Smashy is alive!! Fred, Bryce and I drove him yesterday with moderate to high success! Very darty and hard to drive in a straight line... Also very fast and powerful and very, very smashy! Broke off some weaker parts, but that is a good thing, as it tells us what we need to improve on. The Vantec's case came apart during testing and made awful rattling noises. That was a slight disappointment. The run-time is also a concern, as with batteries about half the capacity that were are planning on using, Mr Smashy runs for about 5 minutes, without pushing anything. I think the batteries may have been damaged due to un-equal voltage levels during discharge (yikes!). Hoping to get some outside support in the battery department. No pictures taken yet, and we'll probably keep the weapon designs under wraps until ROBOTICA. More updates to come!
June 21 - Wow, talk about inactivity on the site! Sorry about the giant delay. New news, is good news. Mr Smashy will be attending Robotica in August, so all featherwieghts beware!! : )

In robot news, I found these super cool fasteners in the shop which I am using to attach the armour to the tube frame. The Mr Smashy should be running by the end of the month, if all works as planned. That leaves 1.5 months for weapon/armour development. Not too much time, but I think we'll make it. Need to go pick up some Kevlar cloth and some braided metal wire. I was thinking that razor barbed wire would work well, albeit hard to get. Do you know how hard it is to find a snow shovel in the summer? Even in Canada, I can't find one. If you have any ideas how to get a shovel or barbed wire, give us a shout.

In other Canadiana news, in an effort to keep the Canadian content of Mr Smashy high, we have decided to use Robertson head bolts and screws (a Canadian invention) throughout Mr Smashy's construction. (I don't know if the Americans know what a Robertson screw looks like, but trust me, it is miles better than Phillips, Allen or Slot). Every bolt and screw is a Robertson head, except the set screws for the pinions.

In gear news the screen saver for our gear supplier Delta Dynamics is now coming along, as I have found some source code and it is going to be available for download here or on their soon to be up site. I also made some cool animated pointers with a gear theme in mind. Those will be up too.

That's all for now. Buh!
June 7 - Pictures of all the welded frame and other parts are all here check them out! Mike and I spent 8 hours combined in the shop on friday working with the frame and wheels getting them set up and cleaning up the ugly welds. The frame is SUPER strong: I can jump on it with out it even flexing. I have a feeling that it cannot be broken by any weapon that will be in the featherweight class. Now we need to start focusing on the armour and the weapon system. I guess this is where the fun begins. To start with, I need to go by a large snow shovel.... you can probably guess what that is for, but I bet you don't know what is going to accompany it. (of course you don't cos you're not me.. right?).. Oh well, mid-term tomorrow. Time to study.
June 3 - THE FRAME IS FINALLY WELDED! That's right. I am going to the shop on Friday to get everything prepared for construction of the sub-systems. Finally, Mister Smashy is coming together. I took some snaps and they should be up soon. In other news, as of today, the site has been up for 4 months. With 1680 visits, it averages to 14 a day. Not too busy compared to the "popular" RW sites, but I am glad some people stop by! If you are having trouble viewing the frames on certain browsers Email me and I'll see if I can figure out whassup. I heard rumors that my site didb't work with Internet Explorer, so if you are using IE, and you can read this then Email me to quell my fears. Tis all for now.
June 2 - Well... I'm up late again doing school work, so I thought I might update the page. Tomorrow (actually today) morning I am going downtown to H&H Sheetmetal to finally get Mister Smashy's frame welded. This has taken way too long to get done, so I hope as a consolation, it is done right. In other news, Delta Dynamics has finished making our final set of gears and we are currently in the process of building them a screen saver to put on their as-of-late-not-up website. Once it is done, I will put it up in a download section of the Mr Smashy site. I am also planing on putting up a .wav file of our favorite Styx song: "Mr Roboto". Well, that is all for now, come back soon!
May 25 - It's been a while, so I figured the site could do with a little face lift... If you haven't noticed, I've switched up to a frames based site. Some people don't like frames, but I just learned how to use them, so they are here. I think it makes navigation a bit quicker, and the site just looks cooler. As far as REAL work, not too much has been done as of late. The metal is all ready for the welders, that is once I find one... We have ALL the equipment necessary to build Mr Smashy, but we need the frame welded. It is a frustrating position that I am in. Oh well. Other changes and updates to the site: 2 new sponsors. First we have up our gear supplier, Delta Dynamics, and secondly we have our school, SFU's School of Engineering Science. I'd personally like to thank both of them, and all our sponsors for their great support and encouragement. That's all for now, but I'll post new pictures in the next week or so for you all to look at.
May 10 - Wow! what a week... Some of you may have noticed the page went down. This is due to the Director of the Academic Computing Services at SFU. Apparently my name got mentioned a few too many times around the office, so he decided to get my attention. One meeting and apology (from him) later, the page is back up, sans sponsors page. The sponsors page will be moved to Tripod, just to keep on the good side of the law. In robot news, we are looking for a TIG welder so that we can get the frame under way. We have almost all the gears now. Hop over to the pictures page to take a look at em. There are also some pics of my work space and other crap. Not too much else to say. Back in school, so lots of stuff to do again. For a good time, check out Carlo Bertocchini's robot wars forum at http://www.customforum.com/robotwars. It is finally a decent technical based forum, without all this British TV gibberish.
April 30 - Just for good measure, I'll do an update today. The gears are done! Many, many thanks to Garth at Delta Dynamics for machining a set of gears for Mr Smashy. His company will be up on the sponsors page very shortly. School starts again on Monday, so that means the shop will be open for us to finish up the prep work on the frame. I can't wait to get it all put together! In other news, I finally cleaned my working area at home, as we are having a party tonight to celebrate Slam City Jam, the North American Skateboard Championships' visit to Vancouver, so we might just have some more photos of the Kiwi to show you. Team member Frederick Ghahramani returns from Ottawa this Saturday as well, to finally see in person what we have been up to.... My film is at the photo-mat, so more pics should be up this weekend. Visit again soon!
April 29 - I put up a page with all of the team members on it. Click here to go there right now! I'd also like to thank Andrew Lidsey and all the other people who wrote me to offer suggestions to help the interference problem. I hope to get everything running smoothly once the motors are installed.
April 28 - The speed controller worked, the motors worked, the batteries worked. Running 3 7.2V 1500mAh packs, the motors wound up pretty good. One major problem. Radio interference. To test, a servo was attached to the throttle channel on our JR 622, at some motor settings the servo was uncontrollable. Capacitors have been soldered in place, and the interference is still really bad. Possible reasons: siting next to my computer, overhead florescent lights, the fact that I bolted the caps down rather than soldering them to the motor's can (which is damn near IMPOSSIBLE!). So for the moment.... buh. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Email: robo-wars@sfu.ca
April 27 - Vantec has partially redeemed themselves. The guy at Vantec called me back this morning to tell me that I had not connected it up correctly yet. Ugh. I feel so stupid. Oh well. In other news, if you are into newsgroups, there is now alt.robotwars. I spend too much time on newsgroups already, so here is some more time I get to waste! Go there, and keep it alive.
April 24 - Bad news was bound to happen.... Hooked up the Vantec and the JR 622 radio to 2 of the motors. One motor worked. The other motor didn't. Not good. After changing motors, plugs, and everything else it was concluded that the one side of our Vantec RDFR 22 was DOA. I have not been impressed with this company so far. They quoted the hobbie shop I dealt with a price and then shipped it COD at a price 25% higher. Not too professional. My favorite part of the speed controller is how they "engrave" "T" and "S" into the plugs for the receiver. I guess you can call a soldering iron an engraver! I had to trim down all the melted plastic just to get them to fit. I just called Vantec about their bunk ESC, so hopefully we can get this resolved. In other bad news, I went to school on the 22nd only to find that the ENSC lab and machine shop are closed until next semester (monday, may 4th) so all real progress with the frame has come to a stop. That was a waste of 1&1/2 hours on the the 135 bus. But, even if we could get in there, the welding plans at Rocky Mountain are sketchy at best. Subsequently, they have been *temporarily* removed from our sponsors list. Anyone know how to TIG weld?
In dumb webpage news; yellow is the new official complementary color to the predominatly blue and black world of Mr Smashy's homepage. All the ugly green was removed. Yuck! What was I thinking?!? These colors will probably be close to the final color of the robot... My friend steve works/goes to school for autobody repair. Do you think a nice metal flake metalic pearl coat would look good?
April 22 - Daily updates are pretty cool... Anyways, I threw a couple of pieces of Mr Smashy on the flatbed scanner... Take a look at them on the Mister Smashy Page. Heading up to school tonight to pick up some .001uF caps for the motors and some solder too. Maybe I will drill some more holes too. Only if I am lucky.. ; )
April 21 - What's that?... Reverse chronological? Finally figured out that this is the way to go. Added a new LINKS page, with all the links that you will ever need. Looks like Mr Smashy will be welded this week or the next at Rocky Mountain. In other good news, Robot Wars 1998 is looking more promising since Marc Thorpe sent out his latest letter. Jump to Team Delta's Site for the newest updates.. Let's just hope this one pulls through!
April 20 - Put up Screenshots from Homeworld, RELIC Entertainment's upcoming release. It looks pretty cool.. check out more on RELIC here
April 14 - Lots of stuff: Spent some time in the SFU Engineering Science Machine Shop working on the metal. Drilled a couple hundred holes. Going back tonight to drill a few hundred more. Fun stuff! We got our JR 622 FM/PCM radio this weekend as well. It is tuned for ground frequency which had to be custom ordered. We should be receiving our Vantec this week too. I also picked up a HUGE leeson DC motor from RP Electronic for $5 on Saturday while buying some shrink wrap. I don't know what to use it for yet.. but we'll figure out something! Updated the main index.htm page. Also listed 2 new sponsors. Both are notable, for very different reasons. Firstly being Relic Entertainment who, being our MAJOR sponsor, have been really good to Mr Smashy and the whole project. The second being Svend Robinson, a member of our national National Democratic Party. He gave us money. Hooray for the left wing! That is all for now, there will be some pictures of the machine shop and our materials, as soon as I get my current roll of film out of my OM-10 and processed.
April 6 - After having some luck (wink, wink) at the border, we have received our metal from John Bryum at OnLineMetals.com. Everything looks great! I took some pictures of all Mr Smashy's materials and his construction site, and those should be up soon. We should be receiveing our Vantec and our JR radio this week too! It is all coming togethor....
March 25 - The pictures are up! Click here to see 'em!
March 24 - We are not going to be slowed down by this week's news of legal problems between the two organizers of the event. Anyways, we have received more parts, the tires and the main bearings. Thanks to Dave Brown and NTN. John from OnlineMetals.com tried to ship us the metal, but it got held up at the border! Damn the government AGAIN! We have a plan though, and we will be getting the metal next week hopefully... hee hee...
I have put up some pictures of some of our materials on the "Mr.Smashy" page. I am getting pictures of the frame mock-up developed, so if they aren't up yet, they will be soon. Eng-Oi!
March 10 - The web-site has been totally revamped. Note the new Main Index Address: http://www.automatum.com/robotwars. There are two seperate sites now, the one you are on now and one that is more technical and less fun, that is for the sponsors. Click here to go to that page.
March 1 - We've got the motors running... They are looking good. We have our first sponsor OnlineMetals.com so we are on track to have the frame done by the end of the month. We are getting the frame welded at Rocky Mountain Bicycles by Gillian Horsfield. Thanks Gill!
February 18 - We got motors!
That's right. Not just one either.. not even two, or three, but FOUR of them. They are huge! Working on the principle of using up weight for batteries and motors, we will have the speed and power necessary to make mr smashy a contender.
We got the motors from a surplus dealer in the states. They are rated at 3 amps at 22v, 7000 rpm. Paid about $105 american for the 4 of them. Duty and other border crossing business was $40 Canadain. Damn the government!!
February 3 - The web site goes up.. to rave reviews... uh actually not, because the original web page was really bad.
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