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r o b o t sr o b o t s

62 American Machinist September 200162 American Machinist September 2001

B Y P A T R I C I A L . S M I T H • M A N A G I N G E D I T O R

deadly competi-tion is about tobegin as two op-ponents enterthe ring. It’s asimple con-cept: two goin and onlyone comes

out. That’s what happens everyweek on a show called Battle-Bots, where techno-geeks, aver-age Joes, industrious kids,and even some machiningfolk duke it out usingrobots. But these aren’t theaverage industrial workhorserobots that weld or handle partson a machining line. What a BattleBot does is inflict robotcarnage, with an eye toward re-ducing its opponent to a smol-dering wreck of metal.

For the uninitiated, BattleBots is on cable TV’sComedy Central network. Theshow pits radio-controlled robots against each other inthree-minute bouts, and the ob-ject of the competition is to ad-

ReadyDesigners, engineers,and manufacturersbuild the perfect fighting machines.

to

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Mutant Robotsteam sponsor

CincinnatiMachine

made superheavyweight

Diesector’s 7-lbhammers out ofa 50-lb block ofsolid aluminum.

September 2001 American Machinist 63September 2001 American Machinist 63

minister as much damage as possible. Robotscan use weapons such as hammers, pickaxes,rotary saws, and lifting arms to beat, stab, sliceand dice, or flip their opponents into submis-sion. The robots compete in four weight cate-gories: super heavyweight, heavyweight, mid-dleweight, and lightweight.

All fights take place in the “BattleBox,” a 48-ft2 ring that brandishes such destructive haz-ards as kill saws that pop up unexpectedly fromthe floor and heavy hammers that pulverize anyrobots wimpy enough to be pushed into the cor-ners of the ring.

The show, which has a legion of fans, hasdrawn in competitors from a number of disci-plines and industries — the metalworking fieldincluded. Among the participants are a machinetool builder, a CAD/CAM software developer, amachine shop, and several mechanical engineers.

Team Mutant Robots: Tazbot and Diesector

Two BattleBot champions are Tazbot andDiesector, built by Donald Hutson, a mechani-cal engineer who works in the Machine Psy-chology lab for the Neurosciences Institute nearSan Diego. Tazbot, a heavyweight, is a wheeledrobot with a pickax weapon mounted on a 360°rotating turret. It has aluminum diamond platearmor mounted to its main body by rubber

shock absorbers. Diesector, a super heavy-weight, is a wheeled robot that can drive onboth sides, an important defense against an op-ponent that attacks by flipping its competitors.The robot has a chrome-alloy tubular framethat acts as an exoskeleton. Between the tubesare 1⁄8-in.-thick Grade 5 titanium panels.Diesector’s weapons are two hammers that canrotate 360° and 40-lb front jaws that can bitedown on the competition.

The design of both robots is fairly complex.Hutson says the turret mechanism on Tazbotwas challenging, while Diesector’s ability todrive both right side up and upside down whilehaving its weapons work was equally difficult.In fact, the layout of the jaws on Diesector, saysHutson, was particularly tough. Two 1,000-lblinear actuators control and support the Bot’shardened-steel jaws that open up to 43 in. andoverbite themselves by 14 in. Fortunately, CADsoftware — in this case SolidWorks — helped inthe design phase.

But however sophisticated his design tools,Hutson’s machining resources were fairly prim-itive by most machine shop standards. He fash-ioned the jaws on the front of Diesector, for in-stance, using a bandsaw and a MIG welder.The jaws did what they needed to do, but Hut-son says that his machining capabilities oftenlimited his designs.

That recently changed,though, with the entranceof a new sponsor for hisMutant Robots team: Cin-cinnati Machine, Cincin-nati. “It’s almost scary —the possibilities that haveopened up with Cincin-nati’s capabilities,” saysHutson. “It has reallychanged my way of think-ing, because, you tend todesign based on what capa-

bilities you have. Now,I’m starting to seewhere I can make somepretty neat changes and

enhance the robots inmany ways by havingCNC-machined partsmade to exact toler-ances out of solid

chrome alloy or titanium.”The first test of his new

sponsor was a redesign ofthe hammer weapon on

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Donald Hutson’s Tazbot is aheavyweightrobot with apickax weaponmounted on a360° rotatingturret.


O ne unforeseen benefit of the BattleBots competition is that it has raised the profile of the manufactur-ing and engineering professions, giving them a shot of sexy robot appeal.

Part of the reason why, says Charles Habermann, is that the competitions are a fun, but practical appli-cation of mathematics, robotics, mechanical engineering, and electrical engineering. “You have to know alot of different disciplines to manufacture a BattleBot,” he states.

Donald Hutson agrees, adding that the competition incorporates engineering skills, and actually battle-tests them, a sure hook for the mechanically minded. “I get e-mails from kids all the time,” he says, “andthey ask what software I’m using, what kind of titanium, and how they can machine it. They want to knowhow I built my robots and how they can build one themselves.”

Patrick Campbell has also witnessed this excitement. “It’s great, seeing 16-year-old kids interested inlearning about machining, welding, and all the related things you need to know to build a BattleBot. Ithink it’s a better way of spending your time than playing video games. You’re forced to build somethingwith your hands, and with that goes a lot of learning and appreciation for the guys that do it everyday.”

The competition has even changed how some adults view machining. Just ask Hutson, who hadto learn how to machine parts to build his BattleBots. “Design and manufacturing are two differententities,” he comments. “You can come up with the greatest ideas in the world, but you still have tofigure out how to machine those parts. And generally, engineers work on one side — where they aredoing this crazy design — and then the machinists are saying ‘This is impossible; you can’t makethis piece. Why don’t you do it this way?’ There’s always been this battle back and forth, and I thinkit’s great to blend the lines between the two.”

Changing the image of manufacturing

Diesector. Originally, the robot had two pick-axes, but Hutson scrapped that design soon afterwinning the super heavyweight championship.“I barely won the final fight,” he recalls. “I’mwinning and all of a sudden, my weapon gotstuck in the floor.” If it hadn’t been for his com-petitor’s “help” — basically it cut throughDiesector’s arm during the fight — Diesectorwould not have been able to free itself.

“That’s the product evolution; you come backand fix the things that are broken,” says Hutson.So, when Hutson redesigned Diesector, he de-cided to use hammers rather than pickaxes. Andthis is where Cincinnati stepped in.

“Donald wanted a beefy hammer that coulddo some damage to his opponents,” recallsKevin V.G. Bevan, vice president and generalmanager of Cincinnati’s Value Machine Busi-ness. The weight of the 12-in.-long hammers,however, was critical. To keep Diesector underthe weight limit, they couldn’t weigh more than7 lb each. And one other complication was thatCincinnati had to produce the hammers in just acouple of weeks.

As soon as Cincinnati received the IGES filefrom Hutson, it had some of its applications en-gineers take a look at the design. One of the firstrecommendations they made was to hollow outthe hammers to reduce their weight as solids,which was approximately 15 lb. “That was agreat idea,” says Hutson. Once the weight prob-

lem was solved, Cincinnati went to work.The company machined the hammers out of a

50-lb block of solid aluminum using one of its5-axis Arrow 1250 VMCs. “The billet waswhittled down until it had the profile of thehammer,” comments Bevan. “Then we took itinto some manual operations where our guysbored out the center of the hammers, machinedthe endcaps, and welded them on. Next, theydrilled and inserted the carbide-tipped insertson the ends of the hammer.”

When Cincinnati finished the parts, it flewthem out to Hutson at the BattleBots competi-tion. “The day I was supposed to fight, I cut offthe old ones and bolted on the new ones,” re-marks Hutson.

According to Bevan, sponsoring Hutson’steam has been more than just a way to get theCincinnati name in front of a technically basedaudience. “It’s been good from a morale stand-point. Our employees work hard on a daily ba-sis, but they don’t see the machines other thanwhen they leave the facility. Here, they can seethe parts they’ve made on Comedy Centralalong with about 2 million other people. Andwith our capability, we can help Donald im-prove his performance in the combat arena.”

Cincinnati and Hutson are already discussingother parts the builder can machine, includingrims and hubs for Tazbot and the wheels andjaws for Diesector.

September 2001 American Machinist 65September 2001 American Machinist 65

FrenzyA veteran in the heavyweight category,

Frenzy is a round robot made out of CNC ma-chined 6061-T6 aircraft aluminum. It has a tita-nium battle ax that not only delivers a deadlyblow but also rights the robot if a competitor

flips it over.Frenzy’s designer is Patrick

Campbell, a mechanical design en-gineer who works for Pace Tech-nologies of Sun Valley, Calif. Thecompany makes underwater cam-era and lighting equipment for Hol-lywood. His day job has him doingeverything from design to manu-facture, which has come in handyfor building his BattleBot.

Campbell built a prototype ofFrenzy in 1996, and the follow-ing year, he redesigned therobot using SurfcamCAD/CAM software fromSurfware, Westlake Village,Calif. “I learned Surfcam bybuilding Frenzy,” he re-members. “I wasn’t usingit at work, but I waswatching over the shoul-der of the guy who wasdoing it.”

Today, Campbell de-signs a 3D solid model

using Mechanical Desktop and processes the filewith Surfcam. “Frenzy is completely modeledright now,” he says. “The whole thing aboutbuilding a BattleBot is that you’re always chang-ing it, always making something better or doingsomething different. So the neat thing is that I cango into the computer model and make changes.”

Once Campbell has a design he’s happy with,he takes it into Surfcam and starts programmingtoolpaths. Occasionally, he makes designchanges in the program, things like reducingpart weight by adding cutouts and removing ma-terial. He then takes the Surfcam drawing backinto Mechanical Desktop and updates his files.

Besides improving his robot, Surfcam alsohelped him in another way. Surfware is nowsponsoring Campbell’s robots and has givenhim the latest 3-axis version of its software.“They’ve also offered to get me up to speed oncertain things, and I definitely plan on takingadvantage of some programming lessons,”Campbell says.

In addition to designing Frenzy, Campbelldoes almost all the machining on the Bot him-self. And just as he learned Surfcam, he had tolearn how to use a vertical milling machine. “Iwasn’t a machinist before,” he says, “but I amone now.”

Frenzy is comprised of components straighton one edge and contoured to follow the outsideof the robot on the other. These complicatedparts make it difficult to chuck and reference

when adding new features.

Tripulta RaptorTripulta Raptor is one of the

robots in Team Raptor’s stableof BattleBots. The robot, de-signed by Robert Pitzer, is awheeled robot with an aluminumchassis and a hydraulic “squish-ing” aluminum/steel jaw andraptor-like claw.

All component machining isdone by Team Raptor’s sponsor,KLK Inc., a Phoenix-based job-shop serving the computer andelectronics industries. The com-pany has a reputation for com-pleting difficult jobs in tighttimeframes and is skil led inworking with a range of materi-als, including stainless steel, alu-minum, and high-tech plastics.

KLK has about 13 differentCNC machining centers and an-other half dozen turning centers.

Frenzy, a round robot with a titaniumbattle ax, is sponsored by Surfware.The software company has supplied

the robot’s builder with the latest3-axis version of Surfcam.


The company also has a plastic-fabrication de-partment, a sheetmetal area, and a welding de-partment. And because it serves the electronicsindustry, it also has a Class 100 cleanroom forfull turnkey assemblies and packaging.

The shop got involvedwith BattleBots through a re-lationship between Pitzerand KLK’s father-and-sonteam of Kim and JamesWilkinson. Kim is KLK’s vicepresident and general man-ager, and James is the shopforeman.

When Pitzer approachedKLK about building hisrobots, the Wilkinsons sawthe opportunity as both anengineering challenge andjust a fun way of using theirmachining expertise.

Pitzer brings KLK aPro/Engineering CAD file,which the shop changes intoa .dxf file for transfer into itscomputer system. It then cre-ates toolpaths for its millingand turning centers with En-gineering Geometry Systems’

FeatureCAM software. Whenthis is done, KLK goes towork on the robotic compo-nents, which are made out

of a number of differentmaterials, including

stainless steels, cold-rolled steel, tita-

nium, aluminum,and plastics.

Just as with the

other roboticteams, Team

Raptor hasmade a number of last-

minute design changes, whichKLK has had to deal with.One crunch time in particu-lar, recalls Kim, had themworking around the clock toreduce the weight on a robot.

KLK typically computesthe weight of each roboticcomponent with Pro/E soft-ware. “But, with this robot,what we didn’t have was theweight of the batteries and

the hydraulic lines,” says Kim. About 4 a.m.,they finished assembling the robot, weighedit, and found it was 16 lb too heavy to makethe weight class.

continued on page 68

KLKInc., a

Phoenix-based

jobshop,machined Team

Raptor’s Tripulta Raptor.The robot’s aluminum/steel jaw

was the most difficult machiningchallenge, according to KLK Vice President

and General Manager Kim Wilkinson.

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Patrick Campbell not only uses Surfcam CAD/CAM software in the design phase, but he also uses it to program toolpaths onindividual components.

“So we’re tearing it down, thin-ning out walls, webbing things, anddrilling holes through it just to knockthe weight out of it,” laughs Kim. “Ithad to be on the road about 9 a.m.,and, amazingly, it was.”

One of the more challengingparts KLK has tackled was thethree front claws on the TripultaRaptor. These aluminum claws areapproximately 4-in. thick and havehardened steel tips.

According to James, each clawwas done in two setups on a 3-axismachining center. “We did onehalf, and then flipped it over anddid the backside,” he explains.And because of weight limitations,KLK had to pocket out an enor-mous amount of material. “Westarted with a 125-lb block and fin-ished with a 10-lb part,” says Kim.“That’s a lot of chips.”

SnipeRookie robot Snipe was built by Charles

Habermann, CAD/CAM/CAE specialist at PaRSystems Inc., Shoreview, Minn., a company thatmanufactures 5-axis robotic gantry systems forthe aerospace, marine, and nuclear industries.The BattleBot, Habermann’s first, competes inthe 59-lb lightweight category.

“There are four different weight classifica-tions in BattleBots, and as a designer, you haveto choose which weight category you want tocompete in,” he comments. “Assuming youhave read the regulations, the rules are prettysimple: build what you want, make weight, andbludgeon your opponent to death — as safely aspossible.”

His first step in building Snipe was selecting amotor and battery. “I used a 12-V motor thatweighed 13 lb and a nickel-metal-hydride bat-tery that was 19 lb.” That, however, didn’tleave him much weight for the chassis, weapon,drive system, and controller.

To overcome this difficulty, he constructed therobot out of mostly composite material, morespecifically Hexcel aircraft flooring. He usedsome aluminum in critical areas, such as the drivetrain and motor mounts, and to make the robot’sweapon, an 8-lb arm that rotates at 1,500 rpm.

Although Snipe didn’t do too well in its firstfight — it flipped itself over after only 2 min inthe ring — Habermann hasn’t given up on thecompetition or the methods he used to designand build the BattleBot. “I had an inherent flawin my design, which was a high center of grav-

ity and a narrow track width for the significantrotational inertia,” he says. “And I’m certainI’ll have another flaw in my new design, Tem-pest. That’s just the trials and tribulations ofbuilding a BattleBot. But that doesn’t changethe fact that we used some pretty remarkabletools to manufacture Snipe.”

Habermann designed Snipe with Surfcam’s 5-axis toolpath generator and surface modeler.Once he had a design he liked, he built a modelout of 1/2-in. OSB. “This let me check fit and fin-ish rather than use exstensive aircraft flooring,which can be expensive,” he says.

After he was satisfied with the design, he cutindividual components out of the aircraft floor-ing with one of his company’s 55,000-psi water-jet systems — a PaR-built 5-axis waterjet withan Ingersoll-Rand intensifier. Cutting the partsinvolved some tricky work for Habermann. “Inthe waterjet process, there are issues in regard tothe kerf, taper, and taildrag,” he explains. Theseissues were magnified because the composite hewas using had fiberglass skin on the top and bot-tom that sandwiched a 0.400-in. Nomex core.“The jet wants to fanout in between thetwo outside layers.This presents a designchallenge because theentry is clean, but theexit is not. In fact, it’ssort of serrated. Youhave to take that intoconsideration whenyou’re designing yourcomponents.” AM

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Snipe is a lightweight robot made out of mostly compositematerial. Creator Charles Habermann cut many of Snipe’s parts on a 5-axis, 55,000-psi waterjet cutting system.

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