Time period:
Start Date: February, 2022;End Date: March, 2022
Background
The SLIET techFEST ’22 was coming in a month. I was the head of mechanical design at Team Mavericks, a robotics team at SLIET. We had an array of competitions to participate in and we had very little time to prepare. Even so, an event that we were not going to participate in initially caught my eye, because it was obviously going to be the show stopper. The robo war. I decided to participate in it, and since our team didn’t have any manpower or resources to spare, I was told that if I wanted to do this, I had to do it all alone with little to no help, and I could not delay any of my other responsibilities.
This was just a show event, with not a lot of prize money attached (which was the reason my team was not planning to participate in it in the first place). But I knew the traction this event would gain, and I wanted to participate in it, so I did.
The Problem Statement
The event required us to build a 20kg+ battle bot. Team Mavericks had previously participated in RoboWars, using a design based on the popular “tombstone” battle bot. We still had that battle bot, but the chassis and weapon were rusted, the motors were taken out and there was no saying if any of the electronics worked. Being an obsessive compulsive person, I scrapped the entire bot and began making a new one. The only thing I replicated was the design concept. Other than that, I made the bot from scratch, smaller, heavier, costlier and much more powerful than the previous one
Important Hurdles
The main hurdle was time. I made the rough design and ordered the required electronics and motors online, and by the time they delivered we had close to 7 days to finish this whole project. My decision to scrap the whole bot for a new and better one would be a worthless one if we don’t manage to finish building the bot by the main event.
My Contributions
The entire project was my work (with some assistance from my teammates). I built the SOLIDWORKS Design of the chassis, went and bought the raw material, found a workshop and hired a technician to fabricate the bot according to my needs, researched and invested into the motors needed and other stuff. I also shopped around for the right battery and finally settled on using a couple of bike batteries that I rented for 2 days exactly (buying was too expensive).
I had good help, however. Aman and Salam (both teammates) helped out a lot with the mechanical part, and the electrical wiring of the bot respectively.
Resources
Links
This is a link to the Google Drive folder where I have uploaded some of the SOLIDWORKS designs. The SOLIDWORKS designs listed here are not complete as we just drew the necessary parts and did not focus on finishing touches at all, because of the overwhelming time pressure, but they might help you understand what we were trying to build.
Gallery
