Welcome to the mini KNOME page! I built mini KNOME after I competed in a local sumo contest and won 3rd place, any way after this sumo contest I had some parts left over, motors batteries, ETC. So I went to work building a raming robot for the 10 pound weight class because I thought I would only have enough weight for a ramminig robot so I built a frame out of PVC and mounted the motors. Here is a picture of the frame, motors, and tires mounted.
I then wrapped some alluminium sheet around his frame for the auromor and thought I was done! but then I weght it and found it only was 7 pounds! so I thiought up a way to best use this left over weight. So the saw whepon was born, with 2 weeks to go before bot bash I was mounting the saw, I finally got the saw mounted but I was then faced with the problem of how to turn the saw on and off since I was using a 2 channel radio and both channels where being taken up by the drive motors, so I just added another relay to one of the channels so when my robot went forward, my saw turned on. DON'T EVER DO THIS!! This is what ended up killing me! but more about that later! and way here is a pic of it finished.
Ok my matches at Bot Bash 99 where short and sweet. The first thing I had to do was an obsticle course, my robot was kinda slow so I thought peice-o-cake, but it wasnt that easy, when I started the obsticle course I noticed I wasn't moving as well as I should have been, Then I heard someone in the audiance yelling "Oh Oh it looks like he has got a flat tire!" I looked and sure enough, one of my front tires was flat, it must have poped in the car on the 12 hour trip to arizona! well any way I finished the obsicle course. I was then up to fight a fast little remote control car in robot sumo, I wen't into this match feeling VERY confident because I had seen what my saw could do to R/C cars while testing him back home. so I charged straight for him, my saw blade hitting him and flippind him over! I then proceded to push him out of the ring to win! YAAA! I was verry pleased with mini KNOME's preformance and the repaired poped tire was doing good to! I had to win 2 out of three to beat the R/C car though so we put our robots into the starting position again and then started, I went straight and him again, this time when I smached him he did not flip over but my saw blade started to slice into him! he then backed off and I chased him around again! When I cought up with him I smacked one of his tires with my saw and the impact threw him over! I then smacked him with my saw again hoping to just throw him out of the ring! but all I did was flip him back onto his wheels again and he got away from me! So I chased him around some more and then smacked his tire again with my saw blade, throwing him over again this time I just pushed him while throwing him out of the ring and he went out! YAA! I won another round!
since there where only 3 robots in this weight class I had to fight right after these matches! so I looked at my oponent who was a chunk of alluminun on wheels! I knew my saw would not throw him over so I didn't know what I was going to do to win this match! So I just went over to him and started cutting him with my saw blade, well lets just say I cut about, well, lotsa gashee and holes into him but it did nothing, anf on one cut I got my saw blade stuck in his aurmor, and remomber how before I said that I wired up his saw so that as I went, the saw blade went. so I couldn't turn off the saw and try to get free at the same time, well I tried to get free, my saw blade wires melted, and since I had zip tied the saw motor wires and the drive motor wires, when the saw ones melted they all melted! so I had tons of smoke pouring out of my robot, then the insulation on my robot started to flame which melted my drive motor, and saw motor relays, into a pile of gooo, finally after a few minutes of letting it burn, Bob Pitzer, the event organizer went in and put out the fire!
Well that fire ruined everything in mini KNOME, I was able to sorta repair him and he fought two more matches but neither matches where verry eventfull so I will not talk about either.
I had a blast with mini KNOME and I will build mini KNOME2 for Bot Bash 2000!
