ROBOTMAK3RS Blog

The NXT 2.0 kit comes with parts to make a ball shooter ("Zamor Sphere Launcher"), but it is not exactly obvious how to build a simple one that is controlled by the NXT, and the shooter on the built-in ShooterBot robot is somewhat strange and hard to transfer to another robot. So I have posted a design for a compact and sturdy Ball Shooter that is easy to attach to another robot: Then I used this shooter as part of this new Baseball Game for NXT 2.0:

Most of the times my creations are poorly color-coordinated; I just use whatever parts I need functionally and don't worry about how it looks. But with the black NXT (in other words, with an option), I started thinking more about how to utilize the color. While I like the white/gray color scheme, the darker pallet had me thinking more along the lines of a zamor shooter... and I already had the mechanism, and enough dark studless parts... Thus was born Ogre: The four zamor launchers can fire a little over 9 balls each second, with a large "tray" on the top that feeds about 50 of them and allows for easy reloading. The tank treads have the upper point of the triangle "sprung"... the tension on the tread is maintained by a LEGO shock, so that the treads do not have any slack in them (and when going over a bump, the treads can "stretch" slightly to compensate). It doesn't use any NXT motors (after all, they didn't go with the color scheme), instead...

Remember my Zamor -based NXT shooter called Nashorn that I have published some while ago ? Due to public demand, I've created building instructions for it over the last days that are available (with a lot of other robots) on my personal NXT site now. Next to the shooting mechanism, the interesting thing on that particular robot is its robust base that can rotate in two dimensions in a very stable and precise way, using two turn tables.

During LEGOWORLD, I've built a NXT-driven gun that is based on the Zamor shooter from LEGO(R)'s BIONICLE series. The shooter, named Nashorn (German for Rhin o), is stationary and can be accurately moved in two directions, either autonomously or using a remote control (as I did in the following video). For more pictures, see the robots section of my website.