2020 was heavily defined by the COVID-19 pandemic so most of the year was without competition. That being said, MACRO (Maryland Area Combat Robot Organization) began to host socially-distanced outdoor events for 1lb plastic ants. Since Kerfuffle had proven so effective at the SCR@M competition competition and the competition was <1hr away I decided to enter Kerfuffle in it as well.
For this competition, not much changed on the machine except its lifting arm. Though it started with a silver arm, I later learned of PLA+ and improved the lifter geometry. Otherwise, very little was changed and in it went!
MACRO July 2020
Despite the wheels needing some hot glue reinforcement, the robot was very unkillable. Ultimately it lost in the finals to Black Ice as the vertical spinner gradually wore away all the leading edges of the machine. As a trophy, Black Ice gave a copy of their weapon and for 2nd place I received a roll of PLA. The refining process continues!
After the event the damage was looked at a bit mor intensely. The PLA chassis did a good job ablating but as it absorbed energy that way it became even more susceptible to being chewed up by the spinner leading to increased damage. In one particular shot to the back, Black Ice punched a hole through the very thin PLA section leading to a very clear view inside the robot! Fortunately it didn’t propagate but clearly better print settings and material were necessary to avoid this issue in the future.
MACRO September 2020
For the next competition, the chassis shape was updated to include more angled geometry and wedglets to play a closer ground game. This worked very well against the primarily control bot heavy field of the competition. However, the unprotected arm still left itself as a particularly vulnerable especially after fighting against Mini Malice. After winning a very close match against Isaak’s Robot, Kerfuffle won 1st Place and Best Design!
I’ll also add a note here that this is where my generous friends at Team Malice connected me to the Big Dill team as my first big break to join Battlebots! More on that will have to come on a different page…
This is also the beginning of Sawfuffle as an entity on the scene. You can tell how this was directly connected to the design of this iteration of Kerfuffle but with the replacement of the arm with a plastic wheel to be used as a saw. The development and success of that design will be covered over there.
Bone Dead Robotics 