Name: Minion - a servile favorite
Class: 325 lb
Power: Electric/gas
Weapon: 14 inch saw blades
Sponsors: C2 Robotics
Status: Locked and loaded for BattleBots in Vegas
Minion is solid. Minion will not break or be broken.
The only way to defeat Minion is to overpower it.
This used to be imposible but has been known to happen.
BattleBots '99 Super-Heavyweight Winner Minion
The Story of Minion
Minion’s story started September 20th, 1999, the day BattleBots announced a new Super-Heavyweight class. I had already begun work on a new version of Little Slice and I still had Slugger to finish, but the idea of building a 325 lb robot really appealed to me. Especially considering it was a brand new weight class and there wouldn’t be a lot of competition.
I thought it over for about a week. Could I get Slugger and a new super-heavyweight robot finished in time for Vegas in November? Yes, but the quality wouldn’t be great. Should I just throw away the work I did on Slugger and the new Little Slice and concentrate on a brand new robot? Tough call.
I asked my pal Jason Bardis if he would like to finish construction of Slugger and take it to Vegas, leaving me free to build Minion. He said yes. Problem solved! I was free to build Minion.
The first two weeks were a spending frenzy. I bought new motors and gear-heads, along with several Hawker batteries, a new Vantech speed controller and a gas engine. I also bought several tires, too. There’s an old saying that goes something like “Good, fast, or cheap. Pick any two.”
Once I got everything I had about four weeks to build. It’s generally a good idea to think everything out, but in my case I didn’t have the time. I cut several lengths of steel tube, punched holes, bolted on the components (electric DC motors and gas engine), stacked them all up like Lincoln Logs, welded everything in place, and then cut off all the excess. This took two weeks, with under three weeks left.
I spent the next week preparing all the drive axles and flanges for the wheels. I found a cheap flange I could buy and modify to fit the wheels. It was much easier to modify the flanges to fit my tires rather than make new flanges, but in the long run it proved to be a bad idea because the material was crappy. Fast, good, or cheap. Pick two.
With two weeks left, my friend Brian Roe came on board. With what started as a generous offer to use his garage shop turned into his full-time support. Brian tricked out the gas engine that powered Minion’s blades so I could control the throttle via radio and he helped with all the million last minute details (finishing up drive axles, painting, assembly).
Luke Khanlian also came by and put together a great chain tensioner for the weapon. (At Vegas SLAM came around and eventually did a little number on it).
The last very last night was an all-nighter for Brian and myself. Patrick Campbell generously offered use of his truck to ship Minion to Vegas, but we wound up working on it until the last minute.
We (barely) got Minion into Brian’s girlfriend’s Fore-Runner (thank you Anita!), and my girlfriend Jessica drove to Vegas while Bri and I tried to catch some z’s. Big-big thank-you to Jessica!
We got to the event, weighed in and discovered we had a few pounds to play with! So we added some last minute lexan armor that really completed the look. Minion was ready.
Fight One: SLAM
Lowell and Steve are a trip. You have to meet them to understand. The whole time before the fight Lowell is trying to psyche me out. He’s offering Thanksgiving turkey bribes and all sorts of things, asking me to go easy on him at the beginning. But I had a feeling he was all talk –if I went easy on him for just a second I would regret it.
The strategy was to hit him with the back-end bumper of Minion. So when the match began I shot over towards him in reverse and completely missed hitting him. I soon turned around and was able to stay on him, forcing him into the arena saw blades. Match over. Minion wins his first fight!
Fight Two: World Peace
I didn’t know the guys from World Peace, but I did know they had a very clean looking machine under that blue armor. And a very big claw they claimed could cut my drive motors in two.
My strategy this time was to out-maneuver him. I quickly got behind him and stayed out of reach of the claw. Using my blades (spinning up) I almost got him flipped over but no dice. At one point the claw got hold of me, but I was able to swing World Piece around with my better traction. I was trying like heck to drag him over to the arena saw blades, but no luck. This fight went the distance, and with 20 seconds to spare it looked like World Peace had shut off.
Fight two was over and Minion advanced to the finals.
Fight Three: Ricon
All I knew about John was he was a really cool guy. The armor on Ricon was very thick and he had a pair of retractable circular saws for weapons..
My strategy for Ricon was similar to World Peace –out-maneuver him. Well, I quickly threw this strategy out the window because on our first exchange we both lost some of our drive ability. Considering it was the final fight, I just went for it with everything, not caring what got broke. Fortunately, I was just a little bit more maneuverable and took the trophy!
