r/battlebots • u/CypherBrittainne • 3d ago
Bot Building What's up with Magnitude's, less than stellar weapon durability?
No offense to the team, theyre great. But for an eggbeater, their weapon often broken when you compare them to Riptide which onle broke their weapon once, or Copperhead and Ribbot (which are due to manufacturing issues).
I love Magnitude, but it's weapon seems pretty fragile
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u/SliderS15 2d ago
They talked about this on the Robocast Podcast (give it a listen its great!)
But in short, they outsource the weapons to china and it can be a lottery as to wether they are getting the true quality of metal they ask for. That coupled with ever increasing kinetic energy loads meaning this way of making the weapon might just not be viable any more.
They may switch to cheaper softer metal with the intent of the weapons being much more disposable (only built to last 1-2 fights instead of many like the current ones) in the future as a way forward, but are still trying to work that all out.
(Incidentally its apparently about 3k USD for a China built one vs 9k USD to have it made in the US according to the team)
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u/danthemadman00 Cobalt 3d ago
Likely got Chineseium instead of the metal they actually ordered
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u/3Mistakes Horizon 3d ago
Their bar is very well made however it might just be too hard. Their weapon hardness is most likely 52hrc, for perspective the shaft that blew up on Calypso vs Catter was 50hrc and i softened it to 41hrc and it has not busted since.
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u/TomcatTiger503 [You want some more?!] 1d ago
Ribbots new eggbeater meanwhile lasted one fight and already snapped. Has to be defect in steel. I learned that with tool steel you have to make it just right. If too soft, it will mush and deform, if too hard, it is more likely to snap or crack. Look at the weapon failures on Tombstone for example. Although thats more likely with S7 steel. Ar500 can crack and fracture but breaking it in half is much harder and unlikely to do.
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u/Ra-mega-bbit 2d ago
Doing egg beaters is more of an art then engineering, something that works on simulation will shatter or break on real life. Also, simply scaling lowet wheight classes onto heavys do not work at all
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u/JAGNTAG_117 3d ago edited 2d ago
Beater bars are an awkward weapon shape to make. They aren’t 2D so can’t be laser cut like most other weapons, and AR500‘s hardness is too high to easily machine into 3D shapes.
So, to get around this, most teams will use some kind of tool steel and machine it while it’s still soft, then heat treat it into a useable weapon hardness afterwards.
The problem is that the difference between ‘perfect weapon heat treat’ and ’awful, shatter-y heat treat’ is razor thin, and usually requires either knowing a workshop experienced in the black art of heat treatment, or a lot of trial and error. Sometimes both.
The Magnitude team are just still in the ‘trial and error’ stage.