Wow… I can’t believe I’ve made 10+ versions of this robot and it’s almost a decade old! V10 is my biggest redesign yet. The chassis is all TPU again, except for the baseplate AND the arm supports, which are carbon fiber to keep things rigid. Laser cutting is great and all, but quite pricey. That’s…

Time for another Highlander! Starting things off with a fresh nylon print. Nylon loves to curl, so these “lily pads” are added to keep the part from curling during the printing process, then are snipped off after. I also decided to make the baseplate its own part since carbon fiber is much more rigid than…

Version 8 involved learning how to print Taulman’s Bridge Nylon myself. It’s a huge pain to print, mainly because the diameter of the filament isn’t constant. But after a ton of trial and error I got some decent results. Certainly not as good as Isaak’s prints, but it’ll hopefully get the job done. The other…

As cool as the TiLander was, it wasn’t the best at taking hits and, more importantly, replacing parts is expensive. My friend Isaak Malers has been working tirelessly the last few years trying to make 3d printed chassis’s viable in antweights. After showing me how flexible printed nylon is, I decided to design the next…

And now for something completely different! Highlander V6’s chassis and arm are made entirely out of laser-cut titanium! Introducing… The TiLander! The entire robot is bolted together with #4 bolts and nutstrip. It’s shaping up to be the best looking version of the robot to date! The top plates are bent to match the curve…

In my Motorama Event Report, I mentioned how the dual valves in The Highlander usually don’t fire at the same time. After taking the valves apart, I was able to have them share a single RC Switch. Now they fire at the same time every time! The view of the valve with the manifold removed.…

Highlander’s biggest enemy (aside from horizontal spinners) has always been weight. For this version, I ordered a fresh set of chassis pieces and had them pocketed as well. The entire robot is a little bit smaller too, so that’ll save a nice amount of weight as well. To save space, moved the EndBots DESC underneath…