low and behold Lil' Timmy.  the spawn of drinking really, really old port and playing Halo till 3 in the morning with my buddy Paul.  After our thumbs cramped up, we flipped to cable and low an behold an episode of Robo-wars was on.  Leaning over to Paul, I drunkenly said,"betcha I could build a robot that could kick your robots ass!"  Contracts, rules and a due date were drawn up, and the pictures below explain it all, kinda.  More Videos to be posted soon.

Video of the turret testing is complete, video of the battle will be up in a day or two as it has to be edited, too long to upload at 16 minutes


Safety alert: All though this is merely a photo instructable, I must stress the danger of building something like this.  My augur could easily kill someone, the rockets could literally poke an eye out, not to mention some brain tissue.  My buddies flamethrower is a very very bad dream waiting to happen.  Use extreme caution when working on anything like this, safety glasses, thick gloves, protective clothing, hearing protection, and always when working with metal, a full face shield.  Even something as simple as the chain drive on the wheelchair motors, all though it wont kill you, your hand going through the gears is gonna be hamburger.  In addition never mix 10 year old port and xbox, your just asking for it.

Robot details:

• 45lb stainless steel augur spun by an angle grinder at 13000 rpm. 
• Pitch forks on hinges are angled in the front to scoop under the offending robot and guide it, into the augur.
• It also has an aim-able turret firing 112 roman candle shots. 
• The shell is welded 1/8" plate steel and is capable of being lowered or raised to defeat other robots flip type weapons. 
• Driven by 2 wheelchair motors, the 4x4 drive-train is capable of carrying me around the backyard in long grass. 
• Napalm soaked sponges that contain numerous rare earth magnets are designed to brush up to the offending robot and stick with the help of the magnets.  They then become targets to ignite with the roman candle shots.
• The real beauty of Lil' Timmy is the psychological weapon, long winded explanation below.

When my friend Paul moved up to Kitimat as a summer student he was forced to leave his child hood friend behind, his dog daisy - aka his kryptonite.  Now just like any group of friends do, when your bored you start doing mama jokes.  I always chose to pick on his nationality as both of Paul's parents are from Ireland.  His mom drinking baileys in the kitchen till she passed out were always good for a laugh at Paul's expense.  The concept behind all this is to semi-convince Paul that we convinced his mom in a drunken stupor to fed-ex us his dog, to ease his home sickness.  The Daisy seen below was constructed of a plywood skeleton cut aviation style, sheathed with hundreds of cardboard scales hot glued to shape and scale.  Had to give the local postal office credit as they gave me official mail labels for free to post all over it.  The Daisy parcel would then be dangled upside down on a long rod, forcing Paul to use his own robots weapons on his beloved childhood friend to get at my robot. Cue the evil laughter, muuuwawhahahaaaahaahaaa. 

Note: all of this is in good humor, we both have a twisted sense of humor.  If I thought any of this would actually hurt his feelings, it would be halted immediately.

Paul's robot was named Brutus, the Irish OVERLOAD.  His main weapon was his flame thrower, basically a fuel pump that resided in his robots shell that squirted out gasoline into a path of sparks provided by a roof mounted angle grinder.  Some small rockets mounted on the side were mostly for show. 

Lastly a word on our "robots" - OK, they are not real robots, as per the Wikipedia definition found below

• "A robot is a virtual or mechanical artificial agent. In practice, it is usually an electro-mechanical machine which is guided by computer or electronic programming, and is thus able to do tasks on its own. Another common characteristic is that by its appearance or movements, a robot often conveys a sense that it has intent or agency of its own." taken from Wikipedia. 

Ours were basic tether controlled over size electric cars.  Using hundred foot tethers kept our robots cheap and dependable.  We both worked at a mill where we had access to long lengths of armored cable each containing 16 wires.  Plenty of wire combination to drive our robots.  Using tethers also allowed us to keep the 24 volt batteries at the control booths, negating the added weight on the actual robots.  Paul's gas fed flame thrower was simple a length of tubing zip-tied to his tether feeding in the gas.  At his control booth he had a 10 gallon drum off gas that the tube fed into.  Using tethers also allowed us to do these fighting beats on the cheap, no expensive speed controllers or other hardware you wouldn't want to see getting toasted, literally. 

Thanks for looking and make sure to vote and or rate me, to let me know what you think.  Please feel free to ask any technical questions or how to queries.