yeah
so the whole Tomas story is pretty funny because I was very young and I was
really used to this manual mill that we had and I was actually a sort of
upset that we were getting the CNC version to be brought in I'm like
what is that I i really like doing the hand cranks and but I've gotten so used
to it now i love it and i love the conversational mode and everything
yeah i mean this is number 118 series one of the original tormach so it's it's
quite old is still functional but we just got the upgrade for series three
and the power draw bar system which is my favorite
just press a button and and it's just super simple
so I've been building robots for battle bots and robot wars since 1996
the third year in and did it for
I don't up until 2001 or something when it went off the air and then it came
back on ABC
last year my first robot in 1996 was basically a square robot
it was one foot across 30 pounds with a lawn mower blade on top and it's called
Doughboy
and then the year after i made Tentoumoushi which was be like four feet by
four feet ladybug sandbox that lifts up captures the opponent then grind them up
inside
so this year i reinvented it bigger
250 pounds
and made just the mega tento vision the original Tentoumoushui she was 60 pounds
about four feet across
it's still a pretty big for a lightweight robot and it was it was
built in the basement in Wisconsin like basically with like a dremel and a
scrowl saw
so this version you know it's 250 pounds, five feet across, and I think basically everything
was done on the tormach that's aluminum all of the motor mounts just a lot more
precise the one part that has not made on the mill is the ladybug portion and
it's a sandbox
so I basically took the top and bottom bolted them together
cut out the the floor of it so that it's was upside-down bowl so it can capture
the opponent
so this is just its massive
aluminum but so big that like takes up all the weight
yeah and then this is our weapon yes this is the vertical spinner
it's basically a drums spinner but it's not that wide and it's it's super dense
so this is just solid 860 steel
six inches wide 30 pounds 100 miles an hour and basically this whole
thing
is steel the channel sits inside of it and we have to two top plates so that basically
grips onto the back literally like a nice customizable interchangeable
weapon system ok but this is such a way concepts like normally you would want to
be as tiny and compact robot as possible but this is so big and and like the
plastic is really it's huge but it's open and it i mean it's actually got
about 40 pounds or something
ruler so it's not come up that way but you know you just have to spread the
weight out so much with this design because it needs to be big enough to
capture every size a robot mhm
so this time was LA 10 days of hundred degree temperature
no humidity you're like just in the pits 24 7
in crud like metal dust everywhere people are grinding you're smelling it
you're like just laying on the ground underneath the robot fixing stuff
so in 10 like some people think
ok you fought and then you get to wait a week before your next fight because that
pilot is on TV but like now this is a straight
yeah this is ahead a lot of people asking like why do you do this and I
think myself and a lot of builders are not quite sure because it's a lot of
pain for like three months building every single night after a full day of
work but then you get to the competition and it's all of your friends like we
know each other it's like a family and we help each other out
just helping each other robots and everything even though we're fighting
them for a week and then it's all like for me a lot of it
controlling the robot three minutes of pure like aggression and just full-on
focus for one goal
so not only do is design important but strategy
so I just have a wall of all the competitors and so it's really great we
have all the pictures from season one that were on the internet I printout of
all out in a pyramid of like who's the most deadly and yeah it's just good to
see like all of the different types of weapons and see how my personal idea can
do against that
so my office and defense and how it compares everyone else i've used the
tormach for pretty much every robot that I've built in the past 15 years and so
some entertainment robots that have treads called moonbot
and then last year's plan X robot and make atento seasons he was a lot more
fun because it was really like my idea in my toy and you know it's like the
ladybug this idea I've had for a long time and it's just so fun to bring it
back and everyone is so excited to see it again
- because it's been in hibernation for like 20 years
i'm making a happy meals today only a robot awesome and it was really
interesting so I was like 13 years old and they sent my parents some computer
files and they're like so does this look like your robot and it's a
thirteen-year-old I'm like okay I approve that
uh-huh but yeah so the concept is that the ladybug comes up to the opponent
lifts the shell up and the real version
this is not there and they capture the opponent and then I have a grinder
inside or like many different weapons I'm always putting different weapons in
there so it's basically a blender
like I'm capturing the robot grinding them up and they also can't see like
what direction they're headed or what they're doing so there's totally blind
as to like attacking me