Pre-Historic Background

Caution: I drone on a long time...

Way back before all this stuff happened (2001-2002 ish) I was in high school and had seen this show BattleBots on Comedy Central. I was totally hooked, even though there were no more than 9 minutes of robot fighting in each hour-long show. A buddy of mine at school said he had been watching Robot Wars and was thinking about building one. That sounded cool to me, but neither of us could drive, we didn't have jobs, and we had no idea what "building one" meant. Sheesh, at that point there wasn't even a Robot Wars competition in the US. We were so dumb...

Well once he pulled me in I started doing some research. Like many people we had these grand ideas of flamethrowers and giant gasoline-powered spinning cages. We had solutions to all kinds of problems that would never happen to us because we hadn't even considered the fact that the competition was 4000 miles away. I spent lots of time on the internet and finally found that there was a competition pretty much in our back yard outside of Pittsburgh, PA. They were even holding registration for their next event, a couple of weeks away. We figured we'd go down and see what it was all about in person, so we schedule a day trip down for the March 2003 event.

My whole family and my friend went down for the event and we really enjoyed ourselves. The sound and smell of the competition was like nothing I'd ever experienced. We saw builders doing a little smack-talking and always lending tools and parts. One thing that is pretty cool is that part hasn't changed. We spent some time talking to a few of the builders and were totally hooked on trying to build our own bot, but had no idea where to start.

My friend and I went to the next two events at the RC&G alone, the first just to watch and learn, and the second to actually help out with running video cameras, VHS tapes (!) and messages back and forth. Unfortunately, the May Mayhem event was the last one held and the restaurant had to close its doors. I was really sad to see it go but certainly understood that it was going to be a tough business to get going. The sport doesn't lend itself well to repeated competitions at short intervals.

In that last event we watched Hworf beat The Jouster at least twice, maybe three times. We were amazed that The Jouster kept coming back for more, including eventually taping plastic crate pieces from a store next door to hopefully fend off the weapon of Hworf. It was both comical and entertaining. Hworf was the only big middleweight spinner there, and it seemed to be solidly built. We immediately liked the design (but naturally didn't see what really made it good). I'm now friends with the builder of The Jouster and he and I work at a competition every April run by the builder of PITB who was also at this competition. The seed was planted - we were going to design a heavyweight version of Hworf.

My friend ended up moving away, but I was so hooked on the bot thing I kept trying to figure it out without him. I ended up getting a job at McDonald's at 15 to try to finance the project, but it still hadn't occurred to me that a 220 pound bot was way more than my resources could support. I had never even done any metal or electronics work, and we owned only a hand drill and a broken jigsaw. I wasn't even old enough to drive yet. Despite these facts, I was very determined and had lots of time on my hands...

...So I started doing research. A lot of research. I eventually stumbled upon two websites that were helpful. Alas, Christian Carlberg of Overkill fame doesn't appear to have the site online anymore, but the other site was from Carlo Bertochinni, the builder of Biohazard. From this site I learned a lot about motor basics, some material statistics, and some places to get more info. My research net spread to include Jim Smentowski's site. He had a wealth of information and more links. Eventually I started to come up with a graph paper concept of what I wanted to build.

Because I was young and foolish as well as anxious, as soon as I had the money I ordered some metal from onlinemetals. This included the .125" thick 6061 aluminum baseplate and four .25" thick Lexan sheets for top armor, as well as a bunch of 1" square aluminum bar stock and .375 and .5" thick 6061 frame pieces. All were part of a sophisticated design for a bot that wasn't sure how the metal would be joined together.

Well, that build never got much further than that. I tried to cut one of the .5" thick frame rails down in length with a hacksaw and got about 2/3 of the crooked way through before I said "Maybe I didn't think this through". I messed around with the parts a little longer and eventually decided there was no way I was going to be able to build a bot like that on my budget and without any idea what I was doing. I lowered my dad's blood pressure 20 or so points by saying "I think a 30 pounder might be better for me", and so the build of Bipolar started...