APSF Robotics
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Sapphire Kit 16 oz Antweight bot "Blue Vixen, while you are on the shelf waiting for your next redesign, we took the liberty of making you a clone, only 1/60th your size." "I shall call it, Sapphire Kit!" Design: In general, Sapphire Kit is intended to be a scaled down version of my LW Blue Vixen. Just like the bot it is named after, this baby fox-bot will have a two wheel rear drive via a Tamiya dual motor gearbox and a vertical "Fox-Tail Spinner" disk weapon. The exact weapon motor and gearing has not been finalized, but power transfer will likely be via belts. Optional future upgrades: As the bot is intended to be a baby Blue Vixen, a few different "Fox-Tail Spinner" shapes will be created and tested out with Sapphire Kit before they are implemented on Blue Vixen. I may also switch to different drive motors depending on how the Tamiya dual gearbox works out. Attack Tactic: As Sapphire Kit is a nippy bot wielding a spinning disk weapon, attacks will consist of driving quickly at the opposing robot and using a combination of ramming/pushing and striking with the spinning disk. Current Status - under construction First official event for Sapphire Kit is Steel Conflict 2, Feb 7-9, 2003, at the L.A. Fairplex in Pomona, CA. Updates: Dec. 15, 2002 - A few months back, I hacked a few servos, attached wheels to the servos, and put them in a little plastic body with the disk & motor from the Backlash Metal Mechanics kit and entered it in LVSF #3 as Sapphire Kit. The bot had very poor performance and went 0-2, but I mainly intended the bot as a way to see where the weight goes when building a robot with a 16.0 oz weight limit. I now refer to that prototype bot as Sapphire Alpha. Now for Steel Conflict, I want to make a serious version of Sapphire Kit. Thus far, I took a piece of 0.032" Aluminum and bended it around the components I plan on using, and mounted a mock-up blade while I design the Fox-Tail disks. That ended up weighing 15.6 oz, so I've got to figure out where I can reduce weigh (mainly in the body and those disk supports) to allow more weight for the weapon system. I have soldered my Sozbot ESC to my Tamiya dual gearbox and Futaba FP-R113iP 3ch PCM rx, but it is looking like I screwed something up when I was desoldering the rx header pins and/or directly soldering the servo cables because when the ESC has power applied, the BEC is providing 5V across the servo V+ & Gnd pads but I have zero volts between the V+ & Gnd pads on the rx (I already verified that the wires do have a connection between the rx & ESC with an ohm meter) Progress Photos
The following companies used to obtain the parts
for Sapphire Kit. Sozbots - Good selection of small scale robot specific components. Antbotics - Another site specializing in small robots. Tower Hobbies - Used to obtain various RC equipment. Hobby Town, USA - Nation wide hobby store chain. Additional RC equipment and Tamiya gearbox sets. Home Depot - Primary hardware store that various nuts, bolts, castors, and other misc. parts came from. Other local hardware stores were also used for other misc. parts.
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