• Setbacks and moving forward

    AdityaPrakash23 • 08/31/2025 at 09:49 • 0 comments

    I was putting in my best effort to finish the robot and prepare for the Sunday's event. I also went to the uni's Makerspace to attempt finishing the prints and preparing the electronics. All my electronics preparation was looking good. However my new ant-switch was not working at all. I ended up swapping in multiple micro-switches. I finally got it to work, but my older solders for motor connectors kept getting loose. In my attempt to fix them, I ended up frying my right side controller of the Malinki. 

    I was extremely heartbroken, because with my last Malinki getting damaged, that meant I couldn't bring a working robot to the event.

    After a much needed long sleep and a refreshed mind, I am planning to continue working and improving skeliwedge and prepare it well and way before the next tournament. There is still some work left to do on this front

    1. Electronics revamp and improvements
    2. Weight reduction and print testing main chassis to get it as light as possible
    3. Shock-absorption mechanism exploration
    4. Wedge and side-armor printing and strengthening options.

    I will try to start with electronics and share plans for that in next update.

  • Challenges and Modifications

    AdityaPrakash23 • 08/31/2025 at 09:35 • 0 comments


    Going into the last few weeks before the competition, after finishing my CAD design for my current version of Skeliwedge, I started by printing multiple samples of the chassis and testing their weight and strength. These tests showed that due to my electronics and more so the lack of preparation on that side, the weight allowance for physical parts was very limited. My current chassis and wedge parts were way overweight the 150g limit.


    Furthermore my idea for adding metal springs, although being a unique feature, was illegal according to the rules of the Robot Royal Plant class. The rules being a bit ambiguous came out of left field, causing me to look for other ways to implement spring shock absorption. This led to exploration of following options
    1. Cat toy springs(they were a bit too big)

    2. 3D printed compression springs(difficult and not too great to print with limited materials allowed)

    3. Anealling plastic wedges to make them more durable and inherently shock absorbing

    4. Clay/Bluetack (difficult to implement and tricky to service)

    5. 2 axis compression springs (quick to design and print)

    Due to the time crunch and ease of print, I went with my last option.

    Also due to the weight issue, I ended up redoing my CAD design for the chassis and its accompanying 

    parts in a single late-night sitting, except for the wheels. 

    I did got these printed and the new chassis is promising with its smaller size and easier implementation of the side armor. With the competition approaching, I will need to quickly assemble and test things out.

  • Key Features

    AdityaPrakash23 • 08/12/2025 at 15:27 • 0 comments

    Following the redesign work and also making changes to the wheel design, I moved forward to designing the key fighting features of the robot, i.e, the wedge and protection parts.

    I wanted to utilize the slot-in style mechanism I used for my previous version of Skeliwedge. Therefore I made a big hole in center section both on the front and backside of the robot. This involves adding a bit more of wall for the wedge attachment's guide and adding the top part of the guide to the top plate.

    Next I thought of adding more free moving forklets just to test their viability. Thus I added small nubs on the front bottom and back top sides of the chassis where I will attach small forklets for ground game.

    I utilized the side holes and the motor-wheel placement to create simple side armor that will protect my wheels from spinners. I need to further polish and design and build final versions of them in PETG.

    As for the wedges themselves, I have just created a template design for them. I need to spend a few hours to finish building and printing the final version in PETG.

    And experimental feature I have added to my current design is shock absorption by the robot using springs mounted between the chassis and the wedge attachments. This is something I thought when trying to come-up with ideas on how to survive impacts from spinner. I feel that this gamble has a good chance to pay against most spinners(overhead saws are still a pain). I have added cylindrical cavities to set the springs.


  • Redesign work

    AdityaPrakash23 • 08/12/2025 at 15:03 • 0 comments

    I decided to first ideate the overall shape of the new version of the chassis. This also involved speaking with one of the more experienced builder. I was advised to increase the width of the robot and reduce the length a bit to improve the turning ability of the robot. I started the CAD process by first taking the base sketch of the chassis from the previous version. I copied and edited the base sketch to get an idea of the chassis dimensions. I also used my paper sketch of the chassis I made previously to get a rough idea of the size of the chassis. From there, I added reference CAD for the main electronics components for the robot and placed and allocated their placements. I went on to also add my reference for the N20 Motor brackets and went on to create the chassis design. I also made the top plate using projections of the chassis' top face. Following that I made side holes for the switch and LED that need to be easy to access and see respectively.

  • Intentions and plans

    AdityaPrakash23 • 08/12/2025 at 14:48 • 0 comments

    This version of Skeliwedge is meant to be the best possible version yet, hoping to seriously compete and hopefully win some competitions. This will require quite some rework and improvements to the design. I however intend to stick to the theme of "Modular Wedge". This redesign will need to prepare for most likely matches against plastic spinner weapons which are allowed in Robot Royale's plastic ANT category.

    I tried to identify tasks that I will need to work on for this version of Skeliwedge.