Ok so don’t ask how I inherited almost 4,000 2 liter (or 20 ounce) soda bottle caps…

Anyway my plan is to make a robot that walks around and randomly shoots caps at things. I think I can fashion something to hold the caps out of coat hanger wire and use a servo to feed them one at a time. I have some high powered motors that should be able to launch these things too. Work will start in a few days since I will have to dismantle my first robot to harvest the board and servo. :(

Any ideas for other robots that could use these things? I was wanting to build one out of caps and hot glue, but that could take a while and probably wouldn’t be stable.

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I ordered some gears that should be here mid next week then I can start building the cap feeding mechanism. I think I will use a servo to make a lever move back and forth that moves a cap out of a gravity feeder and into the path of a propellar that is mounted on a small yet fast motor. The cap will shoot up a ramp that gives it a nice arc until it crashes into something. I was thinking it would be fun to make two of them on radio controls that adjusted speed and arc so you would have to try to hit a target on the other person’s robot. Either that or make it so you drive around and try to shoot them on the run.

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Added some pictures of minor progress. I put the belt tracks together (if it is going to be a mobile weapon what better than tank tracks!). I also began working on a mechanichism for moving a cap away from a gravity feeder to where it will shoot. A servo will move the right part in a semi circle which makes the other part move up and down thus pushing a cap from the feeder to a spot where a motor will shoot it. I’m not 100% sure how well it works I need to harvest the servo off of my other bot I only bought 1 servo :( More to come!

I wonder why I couldn’t find any yellow tracks…? Hmmmmm

A simple cardboard base. The metal is a cut up coathanger.

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It still needs a little work but here is how it should load caps one at a time. As you can see it still needs some work. The wire rubs against the holder and needs a larger end on it so it will push caps all of the way out.

Made some more minor progress. The tracks aren’t mounted all that well, but it should be able to move. I need to get some better stability since it curves a bit. It will get there eventually! I made a small fan and mounted it on a motor (not in the picture) the cap flew about 3 feet but since it is light it wasn’t that spectacular. I’ll work on it more when I can…