Robot Buggy Part 5 The Self Righting Flag – Kitronik Ltd

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The last part of our physical design challenge was to design a flag for a capture the flag style game. As with most of the design challenges that this project presented, we had some ideas and discarded the difficult and impractical until we were left with a simple but effective solution.

We opted for a magnet as our capture method and that just left us with a flag to design that stayed upright, would self right itself when knocked and that could be grabbed with a magnet. After initially trying to source a ready made solution, we opted for designing one ourselves. We have also included download links to our files, which you can find at the foot of the article.

Designing The Self Righting Flag:

As everyone knows, "Weebles wobble but they don't fall down." This became the theme for our design. We decided to 3D print our flag base to resemble a large weeble, with a flat spot on the bottom so that it would be inclined to sit still when upright. The flag pole and flag were also 3D printed and that just left adding something weighty and metallic to the interior of the base.

Again, we had some ideas before opting for pouring in a handful of metal nuts, some small weights and some resin to hold everything in place. To finish off, we 3D printed a top and our flag was complete.

Downloads:

You can download our self-righting flag files here.

designing-the-self-righting-flag-intro-870

Build A Robot Wars Buggy Learning Resources.
Part 1 - Intro.	What we did, why we did it and what we used.
Part 2 - The Buggy.	It's all about the line following buggy, We used the buggy as is and attached custom parts.
Part 3 - The Perspex Top Plate.	How we designed and cut the top plate, with alternative methods for those without laser cutters.
Part 4 - The 3D printed Add-ons.	How we designed and 3D printed the add-ons, with alternative methods for those without 3D printers.
Part 5 - Making The Flag.	Our design process for making the self righting flag.
Part 6 - Coding with the Microsoft Editor.	Beyond line following. Martin Woolley gives a very thorough breakdown of how he wrote the code for the Robot Buggies. Learn how!
Part 7 - Bluetooth Buggy Control.	How to turn your Android device into a remote control for the buggy, including pairing instructions, Again, over to Martin Wooley.