Battlebots is a job you don't get paid for

I have a regular job, I work 8:30 to 5 Monday to Friday, then I get home, I eat, I start my real job.

Build season for some is only in the run up to the event perhaps some planning before hand but for me, 2020 season of Battlebots started the day I shipped the robot to 2019 filming. That was when my tentative plans for 2020 started. I knew I wanted a grab lift set up, I thought at the time about how I could incorporate that in to Foxtrot but as the season played out, I opted to design something new. At filming the robot had the name Rampage and was very much the same outline that became SlamMow.
I spent a good deal of time in the pits when the robot wasn’t being worked on designing the new robot, asking advice from fellow builders whose own bots had an element I wanted to replicate in the new idea. The Vasquez family showed me how their lifter worked, Paul Ventimiglia showed me his drive set up and Jim Yeh talked me through his flame system.

By the time filming had ended I had a full model of the robot and the fine details were all I needed to do before puling the trigger and starting. Within a week of being home from filming I was sending out for quotes for the new robots laser cutting. Finally settling on one and getting the money together to order what would become chassis 1. At this point I’m putting in a couple of ours an evening and a couple of hours on the weekend.
The first chassis slowly comes together over the course of a month or two, parts coming in dribs and drabs and slowly but surely a robot emerges from the pile of parts. Then the serious build starts as an impending live event in Florida, a chance to prove its capable and find flaws in the design. The first rush build begins, couple of hours here and there become solid build days 8 hours of work 4-6 hours a night, 12-14 hours Saturday, 10-12 hours on Sunday same again until the robot is ready to run in Orlando.

A fun weekend later and a long drive back its back to a couple of hours here and there to strip the robot and then a solid weekend of checking welds, checking soldered joints finding where I cut the corners and to fix those issues. A long weekend later and the robot is back together and working for display.

Next build schedule is chassis 2, and the challenge to replicate build 1 without the mistakes and without cutting corners. Test and retest, repeat, then test and retest and so on and so on, each time learning more and more about the machine and what its failings are. By now the couple of hours here and there in the evening have become a regular 4-5 hours after a day at work.
Time to strip the robot, design some more parts and get the robot battle hardened for a show we don’t know were in yet. Build it anyway buy more parts design more parts hope you get in and you can justify the expenditure, 5 hours Monday to Friday after work is now more common than not, 8 hours a day Saturday and Sunday is the norm. Get the call, we’re in! time to ramp up the builds.

By now we’re building chassis 3 and more weapons, redoing the wiring, battle hardening the battle hardened parts. Monday to Thursday 5-6 hours, Friday is more like 8-10 hours with an early finish. Saturday and Sunday are 12-14 hours each. We’re now a month out from shipping and at this point I’m doing 40 hours of my regular job and (conservatively) doing 44 hours on the robot a week.

That was 2 weeks ago, and I have one robot ready with one more basically ready, More parts are on their way with 12 days until ship day, and, for me at least, the end of the season. Time on the robot is now more than the time I sleep and more than I spend at work. My only break will come when the crate leaves and my longest period of the year from when I first conceived the robot to fighting that robot at Battlebots of 11 days begins. That is both the end of the season and the start of 2021 build.

This is not a complaint, I love what I do, I love the challenge of what we do. This is a reality check on what I’ve actually gone through for building robots, what I have done this year to try and make a robot that wins. I do this because out of my own garage, with the tools I have at hand, a welder, a grinder, drill and a decent design package. I’ve done as much as I can and I’ve worked harder than ever. Time will tell if it was worth it, god I hope it is.