CAD with Solidworks

If you have never used Solidworks before, I would recommend starting with the Vertanux1 Youtube playlist. You’ll pick it up quickly!

Once you’re ready to jump into combat design, here’s a guide series tailored for combat.

Mechanical Design Guides for Combat Robots:

Taking a combat robot from concept to winning in the ring is a fine balance of a few constraints:

You’re limited to 3 lbs - Remember this includes wiring, screws, and electronics!
- Materials - Your entire robot won’t be solid titanium (that would be cool though)
Kinetic Energy (Weapon Bite)
Ease of Operation
Mechanical Simplicity
- Complex Mechanisms are more likely to break.
Manufacturability
- Can you 3D print and waterjet most parts?
- This isn’t a Mars Rover - You can make/modify parts by hand

I printed a 1:1 drawing of this aluminum fork piece and punched some reference points on the plate. I cut it with a bandsaw and sanded it down.

Robot Archetypes
- Spinner robots are a predominant combat robot archetype in pretty much every league and weight class, but in the 3-lb division their simplicity makes it the status quo. Spinning a weapon to build up, store, and release kinetic energy is mechanically simple, reliable, and low weight cost to do. Spear robots exist too, they are just usually much harder in practice to implement effectively.

There’s immense diversity in robot archetypes. There’s so many types of spinner robots, as well as spear and flipper bots.

Nic’s robot Fang, moments before the gear system fatigued the plastic housing during the second match.