Friday, October 11, 2019

Machines Behaving Badly - The Final Shirt

I always reward my robotics helpers with T shirts.  It is but small recompense for their time, energy and travel.  Having run out of the last Machines Behaving Badly shirts (the ones with the motto "Oh, my.  That could have gone better", I needed a new batch.

It's really only been 19 years but I'm ordering ahead for next year too.  Here's the pattern for what I presume will be the last in the series of shirts given out to Minion Helpers and on rare occasions to student participants who show gleeful, dogged and entirely unrealistic determination...fighting on after major parts of their robot have been scattered to various corners of the arena.



This many years on you'd think there would be nothing new under the sun.  You'd be wrong.  On a whim I had one of my helpers working with students to try out various clips for attaching servos.  In the past I've 3D printed them, tried velcro, but mostly glopped on hot glue and cable ties.  I think this is nicer...


Sheet metal cut on the shears and bent over a jig.  A bit of double sided tape under the servo, a couple of self tapping screws and that's that.  Much easier to pull a unit under combat repair conditions.

I also had a kid ask me today if a liquid nitrogen shooter would be legal.  Thinking about swirling mist in the arena and the entirely unpredictable nature of this bizarre weapon I said: "Show me a workable design first".

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