I'm wondering about the floor, some way of holding the walls in at the base up against the floor would be handy.
I was wondering about ratchet straps, lay them down first, then put the MDF over them, then ratchet them up to put some tension on there.
I was thinking of steel strapping because its thin but its too hard to use. Attaching the walls to the floor would be good, but it'd be hard with putting it together and pulling it apart and keeping a flat floor surface in the arena.
If you really wanted to protect the arena and possibly add a hazard to discourage the hand grenade spinners you could make the floor sit say 100mm short of the walls and put a barrier wall up there attached to the floor, that can take all the damage from spinners hitting the walls and be free floating inside the arena effectively.
I don't know but we *may* still have some of that conveyor belt at jeffs place, that seemed pretty ideal for a barrier wall? _________________ Mechanical engineers build weapons, civil engineers build targets
Fri Oct 17, 2014 2:06 pm
Nick Experienced Roboteer
Joined: 16 Jun 2004
Posts: 11802
Location: Sydney, NSW
I don't think it has to be that complicated. The QLD arena has three heavy base plates per side, each with a slot that the panels drop into. The idea is the panels overlap the base plates and hold the parts in a straight line. In practice, the is some movement that allows the wall to bow out a bit.
If the base plates had a stiff interlocking system separate from the panel grooves, the wall would be much stiffer and straighter with about the same complexity and set up time. After helping to set up the arena this year, I am sure that keeping the complexity as low as possible is the top priority! _________________ Australian 2015 Featherweight champion
UK 2016 Gladiator champion
Joined: 16 Jun 2004
Posts: 11802
Location: Sydney, NSW
Let me know how you go with planning for Motorama; if I don't get my lightweight finished for Robogames, I'd go to Motorama instead. _________________ Australian 2015 Featherweight champion
UK 2016 Gladiator champion
Motorama is earlier. So dunno if that would work. Unless your considering ditching the lightweight by Feb and just taking your feathers. Anyway off topic.
Sorry for the inactivity. Yup it's end of year exam season, but also thesis submission season, so the entire club executive has been busy. The annoying thing is the student society funding committee have also been affected by this and it's really frustrating when they only reply to emails at a rate of once a month.
I'm tempted to pull the plug part-way as I don't want to rush things, particularly as arena construction needs to occur. My main preference would be to construct the arena over summer and test it, but hold off on the actual competitive event until later in next year. This would allow us to do things one step at a time and ensure that our first event is a good one. People can voice their viewpoints below if they agree/disagree with this.
With these things pushing it back doesn't always help. Just leads to same issues later on as people are always busy. Is there anyone other than yourself keen to organise/run this thing?
The period from Jan to Mid February is likely to be the time where people are most free out of the whole year from uni work. It's just difficult as people are away.
You could push it back but only difference come March will be that instead of being away, the reason will change to people being busy with uni work.
If your looking for my 2c my proposed timeline would be attempt to get funding, venue and insurance tied down before New Years.
Then Jan build arena.
Few weeks of building for demo in O week / week 1
Event end of Feb/ first week of March.
Gives you a chance to show off in front of first years and gives people about 2-3 weeks to knock a robot up for comp. I could probably provide enough bots for a demo and would get competition in before people get busy.
While trying to get stuff done inside semester will make it easier for some things what I have seen every semester with QUTs robotics club is keen people week one or two. By week 5/6 all the momentum is gone as everyone is busy with subjects. Then they attempt to build up to something at end of semester as people get even more busy and ends up with nothing happening for their competition. Been same cycle for about last 5yrs, i gave up on them after trying to help for first few of postgrad.
Joined: 19 May 2010
Posts: 3973
Location: ipswich QLD
Building the arena from scratch will be a big job. I'm not volunteering.. but could the QLD arena be brought down for the event? It would be expensive by rental truck with that many km, but it will save you guys weeks building it…when you could be concentrating all your energy into building a killer robot.
That said ...would be great to have more than one arena in the country he he.
No response from the events committee at uni, whom we first contacted in early October and have contacted more and more angrily in the following months. Not sure what's so hard about responding to emails, but it looks like we won't be getting the go-ahead in time to hold the event in February.
I'll post here when they respond, and we can go from there, but the original plan can't be fulfilled.
A two day workshop (in a place with lots of scrap available) with a comp on the third day using those rules, would be an amazing event, but that sort of thing doesn't work in the university environment. University is great for easy access to venues, but not much else... I'd sure as hell attend such an event.
Now what am I going to do with all this polycarbonate... got like 1/4 of the required amount... Beetleweight arena anyone?
Gasworks/Bus Depot sheds would probably be best place I can think of but they fill up on sundays for markets so not sure if that would be feasible.
Also though of MakeHackVoid but my experience with hackerspaces has been less than positive in the past and I also don't think their place is big enough for this sort of activity.
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