This weekend is ComBots Cup VI at the San Mateo Expo center. This event is eloquently described over at Suicide Bots: “Dozens of robots makers from all over the globe have cast common sense to the wind and scattered the contents of their bank accounts in sacrifice to The Robot Gods in order to bring you one amazing weekend of total mechanical ridiculousness in the form of ear-searing, heart-stopping, insurance-adjuster-apoplexy-causing Robot Combat!”
The event runs Saturday and Sunday from 2 pm to 7 pm and advance tickets are available here.
We’ll be running a few robots of our own (vs. eggs and pumpkins–not an entirely fair fight) and will be bringing robots and robot accessories for your last minute Halloween decorating needs. Hope to see you there!
“AND THE WINNER IS…really?…the pumpkin won? How?”
According to the heavyweight listings, the Great Pumpkin has actually won matches.
This has probably been asked a thousand times but have you tried making circuits using an eggbot and a conductive ink pen?
I wonder because on a pumpkin you could probably make the connections by simply jamming the wires into the pads you had just drawn…. Gives a whole new meaning to "surface mounting"!
We’ve worked with conductive ink pens. They don’t really work like normal pens. You have to work very carefully to apply just the right amount of down-force, and watch carefully to make sure that the ink keeps flowing, and flowing at a reasonable rate. So unfortunately, they wouldn’t really work in the Eggbot. We do have some conductive ink– not in pens –that we might someday be able to try if we can figure out the right kind of dispenser. :)
Windell H. Oskay
drwho(at)evilmadscientist.com
http://www.evilmadscientist.com/
You can probably guess that I haven’t tried them but I imagine from your description that they are like "metalic" decorating pens in terms of action. No surprise there, I guess and if so then I agree it would be hard to make a ‘bot use them.
Would a roller-ball perfume bottle take your metalic ink? They wouldn’t give a very fine line but then you’re probably not looking to mount too many BGA components on your pumpkin! A few ml capacity bottle might fit the hole.
I reckon PCBs (pumpkin circuit boards) are the way forward!