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Welcome to the technical reference wiki for Duke Combat Robotics. If you want general information about the team, see our website.

Semester ant-weight build schedule

Students work in groups of 1-4 to build an ant-weight (1lb) combat robot, with an internal competition being held at the end of each semester. Students are strongly encouraged to keep to the following schedule to ensure they end up with a robot they can be proud of!

Week	Fall dates	Spring dates	What to work on
	late August - early September	mid January	(Pre-season: first ~3 weeks of classes)
1-2	mid September	late January - early February	Wiring harness, "scrap bot"
3-5	late September - mid October	mid-late February	Research and design of prototype bot. Figure out overall shape, how to attach motors, etc. SendCutSend* order #1 happens at end of week 5
6-9	late October - early November	March	Fabricate and assemble full robot in detail, test it in the box, see what's bad, fix it, etc. SendCutSend* order #2 happens at end of week 9
10-12	mid-late November	early-mid April	Do test skirmishes with your robot, refine as needed.
13	early December	late April	Competition! Typically the first Saturday or Sunday of undergrad reading period.

* SendCutSend is a commercial service that offers precision cutting of many materials. We especially use them to order laser cut AR500, an armor plating steel suitable for combat robot weapons. See technical tutorials below for details.

Major pages

• Battery management
• Making your first combat robot
• Access to TPU-capable 3D printers in Hudson
• Tyler Wheels: 3D printed wheels with silicone tread

Fabrication tips

Tyler Wheels

(TBA)

Weapon fabrication with SendCutSend

One of the easiest way to get really strong, resilient weapons is have them commercially laser cut out of AR500 armor plating steel. Info:

• We do this with a service called SendCutSend. The club will do two SendCutSend during the semester, so mind those deadlines.
• Figure out how your weapon will mate with your motor, gear, pulley, or whatever.
• Ideally, 3D print a prototype out of PLA or TPU and prove it works before ordering in AR500 steel.
• Look up the thickness on the SendCutSend site, and post the material, thickness, quantity, and the DXF file(s) to #sendcutsend on Discord.
• A number of generic weapon designs are available here.

Weapon hubs

(I need to expand on this) A hub affixed to the BLDC motor is the most common way of coupling a weapon to it. The common cheap and reliable solution is an A2212 motor with a TPU hub that hugs the entire body of it retained by a 1/8" shaft collor on the output shaft. The weapon is then mated to this hub via friction or fasteners.

Tip: if your weapon can slip with respect to the motor, that will help to protect the motor from shock loads during hits.

Meta-information: About this Duke MediaWiki

Access: This wiki uses the same underlying software as Wikipedia, mediawiki. To edit, you need to login (upper right of the page) and to have been granted edit access. To request edit access, ask Tyler Bletsch to add you. All club members are eligible to get wiki access; just ask. Note to Tyler: You can edit who has wiki access at your policy group at this link. Details here here.

Editing: The various edit buttons bring up different editors, but all do the same thing. Use your favorite.

Making pages: Link to a page with a new name, then go to that empty page and edit it to add stuff there.