| Forklift | |||||||||||||
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This isn't a guide to building robots, just my own meandering experience, dotted with stuff I found in my design sketchpad. The Idea behind forklift was to produce a cheap, simple and reliable robot. We weren't too concerned about armour... we figured that we wouldn't win, so better to loose spectacularly! Forklift was our first attempt at a robot. The original prototype robot was very basic.. kiddie bike wheels powered by windscreen wiper motors. A microswitch and relay setup gave us 5 speeds on each wheel. This wasn't enough though... The robot still tended to go in circles. However, it did more than most robots at the audition. If we passed, we would spend some more money on it. |
 The basic chassis. This original design had wheels on the inside, although this proved to be unstable. We moved them to the outside, and it looked like a wedge on a trolley. During the audtitions, we were asked a number of times to take our robot off the trolley. |
  The forklift runners. These were adapted bed wheels running down ERW tubing. Note the lovely straight lines, and arithmetic! I don't need a calculator! The forks were raised and lowered via a winch and pulley system. We used stainless steel cable, which was flexible to feed nicely round the pulleys, and had a breaking strain of a quarter of a ton. |
After Passing the audition, we invested in a pair of wheelchair motors, and a speed controller. These were 20 quid from a local wheelchair service centre. I needed to build a subframe to mount the wheels on. After the upgrades, we ended up with a robot that was far better than many in the main event (we only got into the heavyweight reserves) I guess that its just that the crappy ones that got in were fully working at the audition (we didn't have a working weapon at the audition) |
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Forklift was never intended to be the ultimate weapon, nor was it intended to be invincible. It gave use the chance to learn about building robots. One thing I did learn is that its very easy to loose control of your wiring. I had to rewire the robot 5 minutes before the cameras started rolling, and all of the wires were the same colour. We did get on, due to a unique system of knotting that helped identify the wires. The next robot will be completely modular, with multi cored cables running between the various boxes. These cables are also easier to protect from fire I was up until 3am the morning of the filming. I took many shortcuts, most of which involved those useful cable ties that just zip up around things. I used it to keep the bodyshell on, and the batteries in. Unfortunately cable ties are not fire and heatproof. |
 The Body shell. I welded this up in an afternoon, and it wasn't at all wonky! |
 A sketch of the microswitch cam. each microswitch triggered a relay. We used this to control the fork winch |
Forklift expired in the Heavyweight Reserves melee, after loosing its forks, and suffering sunbstatial external damage. The evil sir killalot was responsible for slicing through the winch mounting, and dumping the robot on the top of a pile of other flaming robots. I think we were 4th of 6 to go, which wasn't bad by my reckoning. I was dissapointed not to recieve the "most comprehensively destroyed" trophy. Perhaps if I get into series 3, I might make one - the forklift memorial trophy. After removing the charred components, however, we discovered that everything worked. Dispite falling apart, the robots welded subframe protected the main components from harm. |