Tavares Labs

Considering the fact that I had never made a 15 pound battlebot before, I decided to experiment with my first one. I tried a lot of ideas that others had said would never work, but no one had ever actually tested. Some of the ideas like cutting slots into the side of my titanium shell where wonderful successes. Others however, like printing my chassis on a 3D printer where not so good. In the end, I was pleasently surprised that I ended up with more successes than failures and even more pleasently surprised when I won second place in my division. So now I have the knowledge I need to create a really kick ass robot this year.

Just like any other design, the blender had to be refined. The first year was full of drive train issues and we constantly had to hammer the aluminum shell back into shape. So the next year we came back with a titanium shell and different drive train, only to find out that our batteries and teeth where not durable enough. So the next year we came back with custom made battery packs and a new tooth design only to find out that our titanium shell was too thin. Without learning these lessons, we would never have been able to develop blender into the machine it is today.

When you can coaxe the titanium gods into behaving themselves and hold your tongue just right you end up with a true masterpeice. This 24 Volt, 14 Horsepower monstrosity was just this. It not only won first place but it took home the coveted Best Engineered award as well. To this day, we are the only team that has won the Best Engineered Award Twice. We are one of only two teams who can claim they have won the Best Engineered robot award twice. (thanks to Paul Ventimiglia for the correction) Suffice it to say, 2007 was a good year.

As promised, Here is the new website I am currently designing.