Hailey robot on BattleBot
Part da Vinci, part Ozzie Osbourne, part Billy Jack
By PETER BOLTZ
Express Staff Writer
At 325 pounds and capable of punching a hole through a concrete wall, One
Tin Soldier — a local contender — fought earlier this month for the title of
Super Heavyweight BattleBot.
Dane Scarborough’s creation, One Tin Soldier, battles The War
Machine in the Battlebox on Friday, Nov. 17. Courtesy photo
One Tin Soldier is the creation of Hailey inventor Dane Scarborough.
BattleBots is a television show on the cable station Comedy Central on Wednesday nights
featuring homemade robots that fight to the death.
Comedy Central calls its arena the Battlebox. The robots do battle there
and try to avoid hazards such as carbide-tipped ramrods, titanium saw blades and spikes
that shoot up from the arena floor.
Those hazards were One Tin Soldier’s undoing at the BattleBot
competition in Las Vegas from Nov. 16 to 19.
Scarborough’s creation entered the Battlebox on Friday, Nov. 17.
Its opponent, The War Machine, resembles a six-inch-thick table top
running on 10 wheels, five to a side. It used a wedge on its front to get under and shove
One Tin Soldier into the hazards.
When a hazard took out one of One Tin Soldier’s wheels, the robot was
doomed, unable to maneuver in anything but a circle.
Scarborough said he came up with One Tin Soldier’s design after
working on it in his head for about three weeks. Then after three weeks of working
evenings and weekends and $500 in materials, Scarborough had his battle machine ready for
combat.
What he came up with is something similar in appearance to a scaled-down
drag racer—heavy and high in the butt, light and low in the front.
Its weapons and drive systems are powered by a car battery, but some
Battlebots are powered by combustion motors. The possibility of explosion is one reason
why a wall of clear Lexan plastic surrounds the Battlebox.
Fitted to One Tin’s front are weapons that Scarborough describes as
two "reciprocating ramrods." The ramrods act like two jackhammers with pointed
bits, and each bit strikes 800 to 1,000 times per minute.
Asked what inspired his robot, Scarborough said it was part da Vinci, part
Ozzie Osbourne and part Billy Jack.
"One Tin Soldier has the elegant design of daVinci, the sheer power
of Ozzie Osbourne, and the severe wounding of Billy Jack."
Asked why he built the robot, Scarborough said it was because he is an
inventor. It’s what he’s been doing since he was in the 7th grade.
He said he had saved his money for a dirt bike so he could ride with his
friends, but his parents would not permit him to buy one. So he designed and built his own
over a three-year period.
A parent himself, now, he said the "coolest thing" about the
BattleBot competition was the time he got to spend with his 10-year-old son, Hunter.
At his company in Hailey, called Levelution, a manufacturer of
carpenter’s levels, Scarborough has boxes of machine pieces by his desk—pieces
that didn’t make it into One Tin Soldier.
He said he came up with the idea of "reciprocating ramrods"
after reviewing other BattleBots. Other robots had saws and sledge hammers, but none had
the punching and disintegrating power of his ramrods.
Even though it lost, One Tin Soldier will not be tossed away. Having
learned from his robot’s performance against The War Machine, Scarborough thinks he
can turn his robot into a winner by giving it a lighter drive system, making the weapon
system more responsive.
Perhaps one day, One Tin Soldier will get to face Chin-Killa, Jay
Leno’s BattleBot, which bears his likeness on its front.
If so, Scarborough said he knows what his strategy will be—make
Leno’s face "look like Kirk Douglas."
