Battle of the Techbots (PREVIEW Pt. 3 of 4): Man Bear Pig vs. Problem Child

Techbots sign

A battle for Techbot supremacy is coming soon to the classrooms of Moraine Park. Here’s a preview of one of the first-round match-ups.  Check out the bios and watch the videos below, and let us know who you think will win in the comments section! 

PROJECT DETAILS: 

Moraine Park’s Integrated Manufacturing Classes are required of students in the Mechanical Design, Process Engineering Technology, and Mechatronics programs.  Students in these programs take the course together and work in cross-functional teams to complete a project.  This year’s project was a Techbot competition.  Four teams in the evening class and four teams in the day class are building remote-controlled robots that will compete against each other by battling in an 8ft x 12ft cage.  Each team designed and built their Techbot from scratch.  Limitations included a $250 budget and a 15-pound weight limit.

Preliminary rounds will take place on Wednesday, May 4 for the evening class, and Friday, May 6 for the morning class. The finals will take place on Wednesday, May 11.

If you want to get in on the fun and see what career opportunities await you, visit morainepark.edu/programs for all the details!


ROBOT NAME: MAN BEAR PIG

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TEAM MEMBERS: Andy Rieder, Jenni Morse,  Aaron

TEAM NAME: Team Man Bear Pig

CLASS: Morning

ROBOT FEATURES: 

  • Horizontal spinning lawnmower blade

DESIGN THOUGHTS: 

  • Taking a rather small amount of money and having to create a high torque, high powered bot we felt somewhat obligated to choose used motors and drive systems that are designed for such high torque situations (specifically power windows and an electric scooter). This decision resulted in us making a few design changes to accommodate the additional weight of these components, eventually leading us to the formed .125” Aluminum skeleton that provides us with both weight savings and the necessary rigidity for securely mounting our weapon system.

WHAT WAS LEARNED: 

  • The most challenging part was working as a team and taking different ideas and backgrounds and bringing them together as a collaborative team effort.


versus

ROBOT NAME: PROBLEM CHILD

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TEAM MEMBERS: Ben Hinz, Adam Colson, Adam Seefeldt, Kurt Hohnl, Cody Muckerhiede

TEAM NAME: Team 1

CLASS: Morning

ROBOT FEATURES: 

  • Our bot features a spinning weapon block made of steel welded to a horizontal axis.
  • The rest of the bot is made of aluminum enclosed in a teardrop shaped box format.
  • It is symmetrically designed to still function the same upside-down (albeit with reverse directions for the wheels and spinner).

ROBOT DESIGN: 

  • We wanted the body to be aluminum for the lightest weight possible, and we made the weapon steel for the greatest offensive effect.

WHAT WAS LEARNED: 

  • After assembly, we discovered an issue with the pulleys being not sized correctly for belt tension. In problem-solving we also discovered that we needed the wheel pulley to be larger than the motor pulley. We increased the size of the wheel pulleys and shrunk the size of the drive pulleys and now we have a snug fit with assembly.

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