A

From Cincinnati, Ohio and Bowie, Maryland, this is behind the Bots. I'm Jake.

B

And I'm Brandon.

A

Good to see everyone today. How are you, Brandon?

B

I'm doing pretty good, you know, looking at life and all things related to it.

A

Today we have a very special guest, Joshua Reinhardt. You know him from Kaza and the many, many tournament wins that he has pulled off. You like our show? Please rate us and review us on Apple Podcast, Go Google Play, Spotify, Tunein, Castbox, Player FM and Podbean. And follow us on Instagram and Facebook @BeyondtheBots. Go subscribe. Come check out the YouTube channel. We're gonna start moving the VODs over there. Doing more of that in the future. Tell friend. Really appreciate your support. Brandon. What does the calendar look like?

C

What's going on?

B

All right, so just like the World cup, that's happening right now in the United States, Mexico and Canada, there are events happening all across the world as well, namely in the US the uk, Canada, Australia, Latvia, France, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, sorry, Germany and Czechia. Biggest event this month that has now passed is coming up, actually, it's Battle in the Burg, which is in Lburg, Pennsylvania. 57 robots competing in the ant weights, plastic ant weights, and beetle weight classes. Please check out robocombatevents.com Shout to RCE, which hosted the Robot Combat League World Championships, which also happened this past month. Congratulations to the winners of that too. Check out Builders database And check out bristlebotbuilders.com for all of these events and events all across the world. And now we head into our interview with Josh. Josh, how's it going?

C

I'm excited to be here and talking about bots.

B

You know, that is. That is what we do on behind the Bots. So that kind of flows pretty well then, because you being the person behind the bot, tell us your story. How did you get behind the bot?

C

Well, I had started back at NHREL back in the. The. The good old olden days down at the other warehouse. Back in 2019 was my first competition. I brought a bot called Good Times, which was a fire robot because I've basically only brought fire robots to nhrl. So it. It didn't do the best. We got some free what we thought was Lexan for the top cover, and it turned out to be polycarbonate. And we, we learned the difference very quickly between the two and. But it was. It was a great time. It got us hooked and we. We've loved it ever since. We took a break for a while due to kind of COVID and all that fun stuff and, and truthfully, just like, you know, back then it was a lot more lack. So there was a few more tournaments that I signed up for that didn't. I didn't actually make it to than I really should have. So eventually I was like, no, I just. I'm. I'm gonna take a break. But then back in January 2023, we were like, hey, we haven't done this for a while. Let's get back into it. It. And we. We've been, I think at basically every event since. I. I was trying to. I was trying to do the math

A

when it sure seems like that.

C

Yeah, well, you know, we're. We're slightly a D gen now and we live close enough that there's. There's no reason not to go. So. But we, we basically we. We came back with another firebot that did not do very well. It was, it was feel. What was it? It was good times, I think. No, good times with the first bot. Wow, I forget my second robot's name. Anyways, it was a little blip in history. You know, it was made as so many robots are early on where you're like, this seems like a good size. Then you, you end up like half a pound overweight in a three pound class and all of a sudden you're drilling crazy holes in your robot just to make weight. So. And then we were like, wait, if we could make it, we don't need all this room. I think we could wrap the whole thing in titanium. And that was the first version of like Kazawa that actually did well. And since then we kind of. That. We joined during the time of nhrel where they're expanding rapidly. So our first year we hit the wall where they're like, hey, we went from always going to accept everyone to now we have a cap. So we tried out 12 pound class and still have not done well in 12 pound class.

A

We're dirty. We're dirty.

C

That is the hard class.

A

Yeah, hard class. Okay, I appreciate that.

C

You gotta come up to the 30s. I feel like it's not as like everyone is like a college person who's dedicating their whole life to like making their robot better.

A

That's it. So. So you've been on fire, as it were, since the beginning. What attracted you to wanting to make a fire robot? And why did you. Why was that the archetype that you wanted to go with?

C

Well, I think I want to do something different, truthfully. When we was first starting out, you know, much as everyone does, you're kind of sitting there being like, well, I got to build something. What, what am I building? And I wanted to be unique. And I was kind of looking through the rule sets at the time, which was very lax at the time. And it allowed fire. Austin even competed with fire back then. And I was like, that sounds very doable. And we went that direction. Our fire was nowhere near as intense as it is now. It was basically like one of those butane torch lighters, like the gun style ones that, you know, gives you a nice three inch flame or something, but it was much more reasonable. So I started there and had a lot of fun and, and just kind of, you know, as with everyone, once you're on an archetype, it's no one really leaves fully ever. I feel like, you know, you might dabble, but you always come back to your home base. And for me, that's fire.

B

It's pretty lit. Too easy.

C

Yeah.

B

You know, but I'm a little curious though, because as far as like the origin. So would you say any Terrell is like your first big step into the combat world? Did you see BattleBots or grow up with BattleBots or did you see any Terrell heard about them not too far away and thought, you know what, I can do this thing too.

C

Well, as with most people in my age range that are in combat robotics, I, I definitely grew up with BattleBots and I remember doing First Robotics and it didn't really fully scratch that itch. It was like, especially as like, you know, we were a giant team. So the amount of input you really have as one student on a 20 person team or whatnot is very, very trivial. So I wanted more. I remember kind of like I bought an RC like speed controller thinking like, oh, I'll be able to make an RC robot out of this. And we got basically nowhere. We had like random RC parts, but we never made any robots. We, you know, we got as far as taking apart our drills and taking apart all the fun things and putting like 5% of them back together, you know, but we, we just wanted to get some of that experience we saw on, on TV and you know, see, see people having fun with giant toys. That's, that's the, the best part of it.

B

That is the name of the game.

A

Yeah.

C

And just to be able to come out and you know, like, it's kind of crazy because it was just as much fun when I wasn't doing well. It's, in some regards it's like more stressful now that you Know, once you have a repertoire reputation and are doing well, it's like the expectation is you keep doing that. So there's. There's. There's definitely a higher threshold than the early days when, you know, I come down and go like 2 and 1 and be like, hey, I won an event. That's. That was my firework. You know, the early days, that. That's all it took, like, just getting the fire to work. Especially now, we're kind of privileged with how the fire set up. You know, we have our own fire area downstairs. We can test basically anytime. But three years ago, that was not the case. We were using. We could only test in, like, the main cages. So you're having to, like, test in between people fighting. So it'd be like, hey, can I. Can I get in for a test? Then? You know, it wouldn't work, and you're like, oh. And then like, oh, we kind of need the cage back. So I'm glad things have evolved with that.

A

Is this one of your first. Your first fire robots here?

B

There's JT on the top there.

C

Yeah, the one with all the weight holes.

B

Yeah, the weight holes and torch on it.

C

Yeah, the. The. The truly first one is Good Times, which has the Austin picture. It has a clear lid. That is my original robot. And.

B

Yeah, then there's some. It's probably in there somewhere.

A

It's in here somewhere. I. I didn't put these in it. Yeah, I smart.

C

I mean, I sent them to you and I didn't put them in an order, so it's really on me. I was like, it would probably make chronological order of, like, you know, beginning to end instead of just how I found them in my phone. So.

A

Okay, so this is a three pounder, though. So. So tell us about these first three pounders that you were building.

C

So good times. Was it. Was I kind of like the system because it was very reliable. Basically what I did was I took the. The whole system that was being used on the. The torch with, like, the internal tank, which was kind of nice because it basically had a valve that if you pulled on, it would open up. So I could just take a servo, and I, like, made my own little servo arm, and I just, like, pulled on that. That valve and it would open up, and then I just had. I had it connected to two of the.

A

The.

C

The torch heads, and then I had, like, a gas grill igniter to ignite the whole thing, which was. It was kind of overkill. The igniter weighed like. Like several ounces, but we had so much room that it was fine but it would light up right away. It had four wheel drive which was really nice. I, I, you know now I've gotten back to the four wheel drive but for a while we were on the two wheel drive and you just don't go straight like you do with four wheels. So, so. Oh wow.

B

Humble beginning here.

A

Yeah.

B

So good times. Sort of like a wide, these really really wide hoops that go outside or of like the drum kits of the way to kits or the finger tech kits of old. They kind of protect the wheels.

A

This is such a classic shape.

C

I had seen somebody do that basically and I was like yeah, why not? I think as you were saying at the time the big kid at the time time had the, it was uhmw and that was just like cutting board material I found at like Home Depot or Walmart or whatnot. But it kind of did the job. The truth, the thing that did more work than I expected was right in the center of those two igniters, the two torches. It's actually like a random piece of scrap aluminum I got from work. No one thought it was aluminum so like it did more work than just out of surprise. They're like oh wow that's, that's a real thing I can hit. And it didn't just die.

B

Nice.

C

Yeah but it definitely, it definitely was fun. I, I met a lot of cool people. Like it was kind of funny because that, that first day there I actually ended up meeting Seth from you know just cuz we ended up like having dinner together and stuff. Like I think it was one of his first events as well. So it's kind of, it's kind of funny how you know, stories evolve.

B

Wow.

C

Yeah.

B

Little, little origin stories there. That's pretty cool.

C

Yeah, that was like oh go ahead.

B

Oh go ahead, go ahead.

C

No it was back when it was like I think we had like 20 or 25 people total competing at the whole event. Like we were, we were out by like actual dinner time.

A

Oh what a world.

C

Yeah.

B

Simpler times. That was still less than 10 years ago.

A

Like 6, 5.

C

Yeah, yeah yeah yeah. Back with Austin announcing it was, it was, it was definitely cool. I, I will say I kind of miss all the cool stickers they used to have of like the anti sponsor stickers. Like you know.

B

Yeah, that's pretty clever.

C

But I can see how in this day and you know you don't want anti sponsor stickers and try to get sponsors.

B

It'd be kind of ironic of like the anti low sticker got More likes than lows. You probably think, oh, I wonder what's going on here. Then Lowe's just like, ah, so we're just gonna leave now and they're gonna take their sponsored breaths and golden dumpsters with them.

C

Yep, yep.

A

So, so what was it like? Were you trying to be competitive at the time? Did you see flashes of this design, Design, like, evolving into what it is now? Or what was your, what was your motivation at the time? Where did you see the robot going?

C

Well, I've always kind of been a try hard. I've always liked competitive hobbies and, you know, I've always enjoyed the thrill of winning, but I truthfully, I didn't think we. I would be where I am now. I, I kind of thought like most people kind of thought that fire would be more of a novelty be, you know, that I would win some events, but it would be nothing, nothing spectacular. You know, I, I kind of expected my performances in the three pound class to be kind of like the pinnacle of the fire performance, you know, and we, we just kept trying bigger classes because NHL highly encouraged it with their, their limiting of. They're like, well, there's no line, no waiting for 12. No line, no waiting for 30s.

B

Yeah, that's the utopia and the black hole. I guess both, both are true.

C

Well, fire is kind of a nice thing for scaling because unlike Connecticut kinetic weapons, you're not having like, I'm dealing with the same fire kind of as my three pounder. So it's not like, oh, how do I scale this massively? It's kind of like, well, we're still limited on fuel. We can, we can only put, you know, now it's 8 ounces of fuel total. So that's not too much more where you know, when you're going from a three pound weapon to a 30 pound weapon, it's like what, 15, 20 times scaling. So you got all that fun where this is kind of like, well, fire still fire in any weight class. We, we are working on a hotter fire that will be, should be coming out later this year, next year. But that's kind of the, the big differences in fire. There's kind of just the, the, the few flavors. It's like you can have a nice, big, big billowing, not as hot orange flame or you can, you know, force some air in there and, and just kind of have a hotter flame.

B

Yeah. Yeah.

A

Brandon, very scared.

B

I am, I'm more worried than before, so hard on.

C

Yeah, well, I sent you that video a couple days ago and I, I have expected A response when you saw it?

A

Well, I don't think we watched it yet. We can watch it now if you'd like. So would you like to plug your YouTube? Is your YouTube public? Is this public?

C

It is. Most of pretty much everything I sent you is public. So.

A

Okay.

C

I think there was. Yeah, the fire. The fire is well enough, you know, but the truth is. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's. It's nice fire.

B

I dislike that.

A

I have a strong negative reaction to this. Yeah. So you can hear that whatever you've got in the back, like, spooling up.

C

Yeah.

A

And the flame just becomes much bluer, which is scary. It's scarier when it gets bluer and darker instead of, like, brighter and hot and, like yellow one to show off

B

and one's actually locking in.

A

Yeah, right.

B

The lock in fire, it's like locking. Fire gets small and angry, like it's repressing. And the gaudy bright fires, like, I just want to show. I want to show the world. I want the camera flicks and so. So going alongside that, actually. So other robots that are also developing fire in lower weight class, like Dutch oven slide very famously, or other machines, even a dragon princess, you know, a little years ago in a 30 pound weight class. So as you've been sort of scaling from the little burner shapes to what's now sort of the more butane shaped robots, what was sort of that evolution like?

C

Well, I think a lot of it was sadly, especially with the smaller blue flames on camera, when you have the bright white lights, there's times when you can, like, barely see your flame. And if, If I can't barely see my flame, I know the judges can barely see my flame. So it's like, you know, even if the big billowing yellow flames aren't doing as much work, you always know when they're on and they're always scoring points. Whereas, like those, those blue flames, sometimes they only score points, like when the damage becomes visible, like afterwards. Like, I know Titanium White kind of uses a flame like that. And he's. He's thinking about switching to more of a big, billowy flame for that reason, where it's like the flames on, but you can't always see it when it's. When it's just hot and blue. So. Which is also truthfully part of the fear of if we go to the. The new flint, that new flame. But I, I think it'll be big enough that it should be visible. So.

B

So, so, so I guess since you're Already sort of brought up and lean into it more. So what is some of the difference in strategy you have to consider for a flame robot versus a kinetic robot? You think of more of the vertical horizontal spinners. You know, how do you have to view a fight versus someone who's more net. More that nominal shape? Like, what do you look for to make sure that you're doing well?

C

Well, at the end of the day, we are a control robot. So part of the sad truth is if the match looks a little more boring, statistically we're doing well. Which, which I've been trying to be a little more aggressive with my driving to try to make things a little more exciting. But, you know, at the end of the day, my goal is to stop people from having devastating hits on me and to make them look ineffectual and burn them while that's happening. So it's, it's a lot of just like, luckily we're, we have the giant forks in the front. So my whole strategy really is just to keep, keep the forks pointed at them and capitalize on any, any anytime I can get in there, just push them to the wall and, and hold them there and burn them for, you know, the, the not full 10 seconds, you know, release at 8, but as much burn time as we can get, you know, and it's a lot of just keep doing that over and over again and, and hope things stay your way. Our biggest enemies are kind of the overhead attack bots are always scary, scary. Like, you know, we're so well armored on the sides, but our top is never as armored as our, our sides. And like all the, you know, Colossal avian, they, they honestly did so much work damage to me at the last event. I was really surprised they, they had taken our frame that we had fought with for like, I think well over 10 fights. It was probably close to 20. And they actually like bowed out the side of the frame, which I would not have thought would have been really possible.

B

This is why you join the streams, everybody. Because he can grab the frame and you poor audio listeners can't see with your ears.

A

We've got a UI viewers.

C

You can see with your eyes. This is a cassava factory. As long as I find it like

A

a dungeon in the woods kind of what you.

C

Of course I couldn't find it.

A

So some people, some people, you kind of know what their work base looks like from, you know, you kind of know.

C

Oh, you just, you, you've seen me kind of all over the place at events and like.

A

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Jameson, go. Works in like a spaceship, like Pete works in a void. Yeah, he's always sending videos of him in a void.

C

Yeah, I mean.

B

I mean, that translates. Well, I mean, his name is Team Cosmos. You know, it's got a lock in somehow on there, right? Yeah, go ahead.

C

No, I was gonna say, I don't. I don't think Pete's seen the workshop, so.

A

Comments?

B

Well, I was saying, speaking of teams, your team's 90s kid. 90s kids, I'm not mistaken. So what was he. What was the inspiration? Was it. Was it a millennial statement that we can let the. The gen alphas and the gen zers know?

C

I think it was. You know, I'm. I'm getting old enough now. I'm starting to feel old. So, you know, the older you get, the more you're like, our. Our generation was the good generation. It just happens. I don't know. I never thought I'd feel that way. But, you know, you now, you listen to the kids talk about, like, skipping you toilets and stuff, and you're like, I. I. Did we sound like that? Is that how I used to sound? And so I was like, the embrace of the pure 90s, plus it helped that most of our teammates were from that generation. So I was like, yeah, it fits. Or we have some teammates that, you know, that had kids in the 90s, so that counts as well.

B

Okay. So checks out. It's got, like a generational connection.

C

Yeah. Yeah.

B

Speaking of 90s kids. Evil Julian asks from the NHL Discord, as a fellow 90s kid, what was the worst thing that you did to your family's computer?

C

Oh, it was definitely. I think the worst thing I did was sadly, not to my computer, but to the library computer. They had, like, left the, like, lock off and I downloaded like, Bonsai Buddy. Then the librarian, like, a week later was like, you know how long it took me to get all that stuff off of it? I was like, it looked like a cool monkey. He would talk to me.

A

Spyware. Interesting.

C

Yeah, yeah, it was just like so much spyware monkey.

B

This is what we do behind the bots for. Because now we started at Fire Robot and we're ending with. And it's a sprite line and AD

A

where discontinued after Bonsai. So you know what that means. You have to do a robot called Bonsai Buddy now.

C

Oh, yeah. I didn't even think about that.

B

And I'm just saying there is a whole weight class down 12 pounds, which I'm sure would love more.

A

Fire up.

B

Wouldn't you agree, Jake?

C

I keep getting my butt kicked there, though. That's the problem. I keep trying it. I dazzle.

B

And that's what I mean, though. You know, you have to think of it like. Like Alexander, he went for. There was no more kingdoms to conquer. You have some. You still have kingdoms to conquer. You could always step down and you can ruin Jake's life instead. That would be fantastic.

C

So we haven't even gotten to fight. We. We have not fought.

B

Yeah, we have.

A

You. You. We fought.

B

No, but it's. But it's coming.

C

No.

B

Phenomenal.

A

Yeah. Yeah.

B

I was like, no, but it's coming. Okay, it's coming.

C

I remember that fight, Jake. That was. I was very scared. And you. You did a lot of damage to that frame. My frame as well. And I. I, like, kind of forcefully. I got like, super tilted after that and was like, oh, it's not working. I'm just. I'm just like, just going, whatever. Because I think that was the same day, like, my. My 30 pound. It was the first time I actually brought, like, moldy bots for my. For kaza light. And I was like, oh, sweet. And in the test box, it, like, lit on fire. Yeah, I was like. Because basically back then, I didn't have all, like, the internal separation stuff to keep my electronics separate. So without the fuel tanks in there, it was just a giant box that the electronics would, like, spin around in. And when I was doing my drive fail safe, I think it just, like, pulled everything to one side and allowed it to short out, so.

A

Oh, so is this a newer model here?

B

Most likely, yeah. So actually, you can kind of. You kind of speak to that a little bit, actually. So some people might think, oh, a firebot is just shoving a butane tank in a robot with, like, a lighter in front of it and call it a day. But even now, you just sort of hit on something, which is that there's still some level of thought you have to give to a fire robot, not become the fire itself.

C

Yeah, it's like, how do you.

B

How do you design with that?

C

It's funny because every weapon type has its own caveats that, like, unless you're, like, you know, really deep in that weapon type, you don't think about, like, the biggest pain point for fire robots, I would say, is friction, because you have tanks that you're pushing on and you're. You're. They're. You know, your top plate is if it just closes down a little too tight or you don't make your gaps right all of a Sudden, there's too much friction for your, like, relatively not too powerful servo to, like, push the cans. So I've had more issues with just, like, like, oh, everything works at home, or everything works when my top plate is like, you know, put on normally, and then you, like, crank it down before your fight, and you're like, my fire is not working. Like, I think that was partially what happened with in our fight, Jake, where I. I basically had no fire. It was a combination of that, and the tanks were basically too w.

A

They

C

were basically pressing on themselves and not allowing it to push forward either. So there's like, weird caveats, because to get the fire to work, it's actually really relatively simple. You just need some type of ignition, and then you're just, like, you know, pushing a tank and pushing it towards it. The other big caveat that I at first didn't realize, but, like, from talking to other fire people, it's like everyone kind of came to the same realization is that at least when you're doing the style where you're just using, you know, disposable tanks, you. You can't just immediately push on that. That tank as hard as fast possible, as fast as the servo will go, because it'll actually push it too quickly, and you'll get too much butane and the fuel. The air ratio will actually be too rich, and it will never ignite. So what you have to do is actually use the, like, slow mechanism to have it move at like. Like a second or so to take that. Move that distance, and then you'll hit the sweet spot and get ignition.

A

So this is. This is a little controversial. Something that has like, been kind of up in the air recent is flame bots working back in the test box in the back, and then getting to the cage one and. Or cage three and then not working. How do you. What does the workflow look like for you guys? Or what did it look for you look like for you at the most recent event, both in terms of weapon functionality and testing. You know, Twitch testing over there in the fire. Fire area. Because for me, it's kind of a black box. I. I've never been over there, so.

C

Yeah, Well, I. I highly encourage you to build a fire robot and come. Come join

B

more in the dungeon. Okay.

C

Okay. O. But it's not too hot. So for the last. I think since the pro tour, I'm pretty sure what they're now having us do is actually test the two separate components. So they want to see our igniter and that the Fuel flow is happening. We don't have to prove that fire happens partially because like, as I was saying, like that slow process, sometimes it can be a little finicky and we're limited highly with fuel. So you're basically wanting to show waste as much a little fuel as possible. Especially because at the beginning of the fight your cans full so like each burst is giving more fuel than like wasting more fuel than like, you know, it would be at the end of the match. It's just like your flow so high then. So they, they make us test both of those independently or they make sure that works and that your, you know, your drive works in the arena, are back in the test cage in the fire section. And then they, once you do that, you basically leave the bot alone. They don't let you touch it or anything. It stays that way until it gets brought over to the cage. And now they're actually having us tested again in the cage, which kind of seems, it seems kind of, it's like if we test back there, do we need to test again? But I get that, you know, the reference, able to see it back, back there, you know, in the black box type area. So it makes sense that they want to see it. And you know, I, I, I, I get why it's happening. You know, I, I, I, you know, no one wants to not have their weapon working. And you know, I, I know it seemed to happen after that, that fight with Mat where my, my weapon died like as the countdown was happening. So that was, that was fun. Seemed like something internally shorted, so it was like, so everything was working when we did the test. And then a short happened and that puff of smoke happened and then the fire wasn't working. But so, and it's like, I don't know, I guess it's a weird thing that we're, we're tough enough that we can still do well even without our fire. Like, truthfully, when I was first designing this bot that was kind of, we, we didn't know how effective fire would really be in the 30 pound glass. Like we're like, is it gonna just be like, you know, a fly on a horse? It's like, it's kind of annoying, but we can take that all day and, or what. So we were like, you know what, we have all this extra weight, let's just put it into armor and at least we won't die, you know, I don't know if they're gonna die, but we'll go the three minutes hopefully.

B

Do you think that's a big part of, about the design for Kaza having that very tanky ability because I think generally in a 30 pound weight class and it's something that most people have to sort of struggle with is they have giant kinetic energy weapons, is you have to pull so much weight out of your structure to give that back to the weapon system. But because that scaling factor of fire versus beetle to 30, you think that's a huge benefit for the machine because you can have like that ultra tanky chassis.

C

I. I definitely do. I mean, we, we've taken a lot of hits that a lot of other bots would not be surviving after that. And we're, you know, relatively fine. You know, we, we still lose drive motors and all that fun stuff like, like everyone else, but it's normally not a complete knockout. And that's, you know, that is highly by design. Like, like Eins has four separate receipt and four separate batteries. So in order to make everything stop working, you have to kill four circuits.

B

Oh, gee, he gave it four health bars.

C

Oh no.

B

See, what is three viewers. You get this, you get this. That's right. We're in a real 3D space.

A

Wow.

C

They're separate now. So the actual lifter mechanism is a whole separate like module that's basically just mounted on and that. It's like, it's the same like lifter Julian is using and a bunch of other people. It's like this Amazon, like 300kg. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty sweet. It's. I just wish it was rust. It's got like the. It's like a old school drill motor in it or whatnot. So yeah, it's not. Not the most efficient, but it gets the job done. And then Pete redesigned Eins or Light for us. So this is the new version that because we. They lowered the fuel, the fuel capacity, we. We were basically having to run an empty can before, which was empty weight. So he got rid of it. But the cool thing you see is so we got the left side, right side module. And then this is our fire control system in the back. So. So that's why it's hard. You know, we oftentimes will lose a drive or, you know, more often than I'd like side. But I don't think we've ever lost both sides. So. And the part of the fun is with cleats is that I've learned that even if you lose one motor, like the cleat grabs so well that the other motor on its side is like, no, you're still crab walking We're. We're still unhappy. But I definitely love cleats,

B

so. Yes, so. So actually, like a little. Little sort of staging question. Were you familiar a lot with the Robo Games era, with Original Sin, Sewer Snake and all of them?

C

I watched a little of that. I definitely was more a battlebots person. I. I think at the time, I never liked how they had, like, I thought it was unfair that there was just these giant robots, like, kind of like in there with the other robots, you know, I was like, that's. That's not fair. But, you know, I. I gotta go back and watch. Watch them. I haven't. I truthfully haven't seen them all. And at this point, it's like, any robot content, I'm like, oh, give it to me.

B

Yeah, the addiction kicks. But I. I bring it up a lot because Original Sin is pretty much the Kaza before Kaza, if you could imagine it. I think the difference is that its wheels are exposed and your wheels aren't. But it's essentially unkillable wedge that has. Later on, it will get, like, flame added to it. And same with Sewer Snake. Super Snake got, like, lifter on it, things like that, because it was so tanky that it could do so much just by sheer control and dominance. And so I was curious, with the tail that you added with the big Amazon Special servo, you're curious if that's sort of a way to add more of the articulating bits like other lifters get and the fire. So, like, sort of diversifying. Because you mentioned earlier about the fights having to sort of be more slow grindy by nature of Control Bot, I was curious if you were trying to add that as like, both a way to maybe, you know, escape the wall, but also try to add some flavor. His flame wasn't that bright.

C

Well, I won't lie. It was 100. Designed to escape the wall. Everything else was like, a nice bonus. Like when I realized it could lift up the back and like, oh, make more fire come out, I was like, that's. That's nice. Or when we suplex Red Storm, I was like, I. I did not see that coming that day. But I was like, hey, he's on my tail. He can't move. Let me hit the switch. Hey. Flipped over. But yeah, before I. Eins has basically only lost by getting stuck on the wall. Every. Every time it is lost. That's how it's happened. So we were like, hey, that's how we're losing. We need to correct that, because normally it's not as big of a deal. You know, me and Pete there. It's hard for both of us to get stuck. Stuck on the wall. Or it's, you know, it's. It's hard to need more than one unstick with the two of us. But with just one robot, and especially being square, having long forks, not a crazy amount of ground clearance, it's really easy to get stuck on the wall. So it's kind of ironic because at June's event, I didn't actually use it all to unstick me from the wall. But I guess it's better to have not needed it and have it than, you know, needed it and not had it. So I was happy. Like, I kind of messed up. And when we fought Little Lash, like, my. I hadn't realized that my, My. The. The pairings on my phone were still from, like, the morning. And we had fought Colossal Avian earlier, and he. I thought. So I thought we were fighting Colossal Avian. So we set up to fight him, and we didn't have the lifting arm, and I was really scared we were going to get on that one wall. But truly, we listened to Pete and he was like, just don't go near the wall. Stay in the center and don't be. Don't be silly and go near the wall. And that's what we just.

B

Just win so easy.

C

Yeah, it's. I don't know. I still am kind of amazed that it. It goes out and wins as much as it does. It surprises me. As much as I feel like it surprises everyone else. Every. Every event I go, I go into my first fight with, like, so many butterflies in my stomach, like, it's gonna all fail. It's not like I've fought, you know, 30 plus fights at this point with it, and it's fine. It's like, nope, Everything that can go wrong is about to go wrong. It's not going to turn on. Three of my four receivers won't turn on.

B

I know that. Well, that's. It always gets you, no matter how many times you do it, because robots have stage fright. You never know why.

C

Yes. Yes. That is the worst is when they have it and then you, like, you never. You never figure it out. It was like, didn't work down there. I went upstairs and it worked. I. Who knows?

B

Yeah.

A

So thinking back on the June competition, you fought. You fought whiplash into Red Storm into Colossal Avian. Who do you think? I thought out of those three, you know. Yeah. One of them maybe would have. Would have beaten you, but who do you think your toughest matchups are, you know, you're, you're talking about, you know, nervous before every fight, which I totally get. But who are, who are your toughest matchups and 30s right now?

C

Well, I, I really think the overhead attack bots are, they just hit in ways that, you know, we're not used to. So our armor only gets tested for them occasionally. So every time it's like, oh, please be enough. And even like the last time, like the first, you know, that first match we fought Claus Levy in, I was using my quarter inch hardax frame, which is like our standard frame, which is like, oh, that's overkill for overhead attack bot. And then, you know, then they then went and bent it. So you never know. So triggered. I'm like, statistically within a couple feet of me.

A

Oh, I had, I had another question. This is kind of working backward, but I had a question. So. So you were talking about how weapon weight with the flamethrower you have less weight when it dedicated to weapon. About how much weight are you dedicating out of your 30 pounds on ions and on like

C

it's, it's, it is more weight is dedicated to storage space. So like having to store it does take up space. But the cans themselves are like empty. They're like an ounce or so. So it's like 2 ounces. And then the, the rest of it is like really tiny basically.

A

Yeah. Because you've got the service like it's,

C

it's, it's a servo. There's a 452S. 450 battery back here.

A

Yeah.

C

And that's basically over here. And the receiver and that one servo you're seeing. And, and then the fire side, we use hot surface igniters, which those have been kind of problematic because we had, we had broken so many of them because basically it's, it's like a little piece of a, of like igniter, like a stove igniter. So it's really fragile and combat robotics has a lot of G forces. So I was actually pushing them in to. Oh, here's one. Oh, that's a sheared off one. They're basically. Show you one real quick. No, they're just little sheared off things so that like this is like a full glow plug, like a car glow plug. They're like nowhere near that big. They're basically able to fit right into. Brian gave me some. So they're, they're really tiny. They're basically, they're like this big. So they're like, they're just like little, little guys that basically you apply. These ones are 12 volts, but the ones I use are 6 volts. So you just apply 6 volts across. Actually doesn't like 6 volts I I2s it's very happy off of but 6 volts, it's like I won't really ignite.

B

So like maybe length of a pinky. Like it's pretty small little guy.

C

Yeah.

A

Yeah.

C

And these are actually bigger as the 12 volt ones. What is kind of interesting is because there's not a second. The second ground is actually the copper part. So a lot of times my like parts of my robot end up having to be grounded. So that's kind of caused. It's never really caused issues with the. The only issue it ever causes if you have the metal cover and you short to it. So we. We learned that quickly on and now. Now we make sure our access holes are very large and our screwdrivers are covered in the Kaplon tape or whatnot and haven't had any problems. So.

B

Interesting.

C

But I like that over spark or whatnot. Mostly because the spark generates a lot of noise and also can kind of like arc back through stuff. Especially because a lot of the RC switches will control the ground and the. You know, when you have like high voltage, it's like, oh, you turned off my ground. Oh, no.

A

I.

C

What if I just arc through this circuit?

A

Yeah.

C

Like, I did have luck with using a dedicated relay to kind of control it, but it ends up just kind of being. But each iteration we. At first we had, we were pushing these directly through our. The sides of our ignition chamber, which is basically just that it's that box in the front. It's just basically there to allow the fuel and air to mix kind of a little bit. And then you see the inside. You actually see the compression fitting in there. That's actually where the igniters are inside of there now in order to try to protect them a little more. And it's not so much. It's a lot of protecting them from the shock because before we were actually getting hit hard enough in the front that it was like shearing off the tips, those igniters. So we've had less issues with that after the protection, putting them inside of compression fittings. So yeah, there's always so many little, little things that make such big differences. It's always amazing.

B

So would you say as far as like the. Excuse me, like for kaza scaling? Because you have one listener question which is about if you were to scale to heavy AYZM on nhrl, that's not like Kaza heavy. Like how would you see that breaking down? Because it sounds like the flame part wouldn't be very hard for you as you can pretty much get an enormous amount of fire for the weight. But it sounds like a lot of other stuff is what's like your main focus there.

C

Yeah, well, part of the truth is I know that like in all reality the only venue currently really is BattleBots and BattleBots doesn't allow just fire. So if we were actually going to scale up, it would require require adding some other like full weapon. Either probably a lifter or something,

A

but

C

I would probably do as many multi bots as they allow you to compete with. Like so if they like NHL allow you to have four bots, that probably would be my plan to have four, you know, larger than this versions because, but just kind of keep that multi bot aspect and play with it even more. Like I've honestly kind of thought about making a 4bot multi bot, but it's just the logistical nightmare of it keeps me from wanting to attempt it. So it's like yay, I'm all done. I made one bot. I only have three more to go.

B

Oh yeah, that's gonna compound pretty fast then.

C

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I, I, I, I would love to see a larger version. It's part of the fun is nhrel is pretty much the only venue that is really dedicated to fire as your weapon. So it's like we kind of have to stay within NHL. Maybe one day they'll, they'll make a bigger class. You know, I think people were talking about like, I know when you had ray on you talking about like 120 pound class robots. Like I think that'd be kind of cool or whatnot, like somewhere in between. So not, not as crazy as those 250 pound bots, which I'd love to be on a team one day. But it is so crazy just seeing, you know, seeing those and just the, the how things scale is crazy. Like you know, the damage you take on that. But it's also crazy that I guess a lot of battlebots use less armor than I use in Kaza.

B

So yeah, no battle monster. That lots are pretty crazy. Well, we're going to take a quick break and then we come back, we're going to talk about maybe the June event and other sort of tournaments you've gone through with Kazan.

C

Sounds good. What's crazy to me, like they hit us and managed to pull Bow out our side. Like, I, I, we, we were honestly gonna run like thinner sidewalls against like Jamo and everyone. And now I'm like, I don't know if that's a thing.

B

Yeah, like, like now sort of looking at ironically, I think it's the finals of June here between you and Colossal Avian. So we kind of see the first bit about the butane. Like we see like this big puff of cloud and then it ignites that. Is that what you mean by being little rich in oxygen first?

C

Yeah, yeah. So basically when we added the protection, I think it's, it's transferring some heat away from the actual igniters and making them not ignite as well. We also put that, I put a little like in front of the actual igniter now is a piece of metal and I'm thinking it might be causing it to like, like eddie around it or whatnot and not actually hit the igniter. So I think on one side I'm going to actually remove that protection and just have it be like, hey, this is our better igniting side. And this side is like our backup igniting side. But it, it basically always ignites. Part of the, the good thing is like once we get our kind of pinning a bot, there's like enough ambient fuel in the air that it will kind of oftentimes just ignite from that and.

B

Interesting. Yeah, because like right now you kind of was.

C

Yeah, we also made it since like a year. A year or so.

A

Hey, Josh, we're losing you, bud.

C

So the nice thing is that the fire, other things happen. Oh, are you losing my picture or

A

my audio or your audio? A little bit. I think we're okay now. Are we okay?

B

I can hear you

C

going back. It went green. I realized there's like a green. It's like it's happier when it's green. It was red for a second.

A

Okay, so would you like to introduce. So, so I'm familiar with you, but who are your teammates that are always cage side with you? I'm not familiar with them. I don't think we've ever been.

C

So we have kind of a eclectic team. We have a bunch of people that come sporadically. Like, Pete is always there. If Kazar Light is fighting. Pete will always be the driver for the other half of his All Light. My girlfriend Steph, who was there in June, was also, is also a frequent, a frequent person. She is normally my fire operator. Before the start of this year or the end of last year, I, I still controlled my own fire. I was like, ah, you got to fully control your bot to be, you know, it's like, don't have anyone else doing stuff. But then at finals, my fire got stuck on at one point, and I got fully, fully entranced with trying to get it to turn off instead of doing the smart thing of just driving like, hey, my fire's on. That's not actually a bad thing. So since then, we've always had somebody controlling the fire so they can fully worry about the fire and whatever it's doing or not doing.

A

Cool. So you guys are. So you guys are a team. You're working together. She's. She's operating the fire. And you like that?

C

Yeah, yeah. It's nice because you're just kind of like, I'm. I am a little more less picky with when my fire happens. So I kind of give her full. I'm like, hey, whenever you see. Wherever we're close, and then you can do fire. Do fire. Pete is a little more particular. He wants fire right when he wants fire. Like, he. He wants to be able to go up, not have any fire, be able to see their forks and everything perfectly. Where I'm kind of like, well, I know the fire is coming out of the front of my robot. That's. That's where everything is.

B

The robot is there, fire is there. I'm good.

C

Yeah. Yeah. My opponent is clearly more confused than I am. Like, they. They don't have any reference for where their robot is oriented based on the fire. I do. So.

B

Yeah. Like, right now, we're seeing this match with a Little lash, and first of all, insane ground game. We'll get to that in a second here. But in that first interaction you have with Little Ash, we're sort of pinned against the wall. It's consumed by light. Like, there was no orientational direction of where Little Ash is, besides in the fire.

C

Yeah.

B

So it's like, oh, I really hope it escapes. And that's kind of what he has to do. After the pin, it is as much figuring out where the robot is as much. It is a figuring out where you are and trying to escape with it.

A

But.

B

And I think the observation lucked out

C

with Little Lash because it. Whenever he would pick us up, luckily our forks were long enough that we would get under him as well. So instead of really picking us up, he would end up just, like, pushing his back end out, and it would work out quite in our favor. Like, that was the first time we pushed into the wall, and we kind of just were able to utilize that.

A

I Felt like by like an. A half an inch.

B

That's all it takes.

C

Yeah, yeah, it's. It's so. It's so close. But it was scary because, you know, they. They, like us, are very good at stopping the housebot. So if we messed up one time and got up on that wall, there was a good chance the match was just over. So we were trying to be a little more slow and controlling. We were. We were staying more in the center and just kind of like, if it felt a little, not like, you know, I love being super aggressive. So it kind of felt weird to be more of a. Like, okay, let. I'll let you dictate the fight and. And just kind of try to capitalize on mistakes and not make any myself.

B

Yeah, it's like, got.

A

Jake, what do you think makes your ground game so good? What do you think about.

C

Well, truthfully, the ground game is one of Pete's domains, so the saying we kind of have is if it touches the ground, Pete's probably working on it. If it doesn't, after I designed it. So he. He was the first one to bring forks to the.

A

The.

C

The equation. We were originally using, like, side protectors, kind of like I was using on my. My first spot. Good times. And thinking those counted as forks, like, hey, we can corral the person. That's. That's ground game. And he was like, no, that's. That is not ground game. And then we used his forks for the first time at pro at the Pro tour in 2024. And it was. It was very different. I was like, wow, this is. This is a. This is a very different experience. It was. It was definitely an interesting day because we. That was the first time we ever drove with Pete. And for the first match, we were actually fighting against Warhard xxl and they're a fellow Texas team. So Pete was like. He's like, hey, these are my people. So I'm not. For the first fight, you're kind of on your own.

B

So he's going very, yeehaw. And you're like, oh, man.

C

Yeah. Yeah. And it kind of worked out weird where we. We ended up unintentionally, like, burning them. So we got a forfeit, we got a loss. But it probably was what we wanted it anyways because then we got. The next round was a buy. So I was like, yeah, we'll take the loss and not have to face like, I think it was. We would have had to face a multifier or somebody unfun if we won.

B

So, yeah, it was a multifier. I remember this event. This is when they nearly destroyed the arena like twice.

C

Yeah. So I'm, I'm pretty glad I wasn't in there.

A

Is this arena smaller or is Warhard XXL just huge?

B

No, Warhard's like half a third half of a heavyweight inside. It's very big. 30 pounder. Yeah, yeah. It's. If you ever seen Spartan 30, it's kind of like that. That's the robot. It's a big boy.

A

Part of why exactly.

B

It scales very well to that beetle perspective before the big box. Which is very funny thing I have to say. Yeah. Like

C

in a while.

A

Yeah.

B

We have not 30s. Did not we, we did not forget him.

C

No, no, no. I, I, I still still want a rematch but you know, I'm still, I'm still afraid so.

B

You kind of mentioned before about the ground game. So I think some observations I remember hearing from people is very unique about fire. And I think that fire probably has the longest reach of any machine because depending on how you want to structure your flame, in this case like the big, the big bright flames, you're kind of just, there's a very long reach you have with it with and without forks. That's kind of implicit already. It's like it like you're able to corral somebody already with the forks but in theory you can kind of be off of them. Like not even the full, you know, depth. You could say. Yeah, the flame can simply just like hit you because like a, you know, maybe a two foot flame at peak. Something like that. Yeah. Does that like play a big factor do you think, in how you, how you're able to aggress. We're able to sort of say okay, I need to have them like fully on me. I just need to be like near them and then blasting or

C

it's, it's kind of funny because truthfully with our, from our first iteration of forks, I kind of like highly copied Colossal Avian's keep away forks. I was like, oh, those seem to work pretty well. Like we, we're in the same boat. We don't want our opponent to actually be touching us. Like we're happy with you being, you know, six inches away. So I was like, let's add those. And we've kind of just kept iterating on them. We now have like the really the super long forks that we used in June that like are ridiculously long and keep the opponent like a foot away. And the keep away part is actually part of the fork now instead of being tpu so it's harder to get ripped off. And we. We haven't really had too much issue with them getting ripped off. Thanks to. We got a. Last year we got a. Pete was able to get us Tri City Lasers as a sponsor and they. There's. Their steel is amazing.

B

I don't.

C

I don't know what it is, but it's. It's. It's all. Well, I, I think I know what

B

it is, but it's 600.

C

It's not. Yeah. It's not send, cut, send quality. It's like real quality. So we, we can take hits on our forks now and not have them rip off.

B

Yeah. Like here watching the fight with you against Red Storm, I can see you using that tail sort of tilting up a little bit and you're sort of blasting down in a red storm. And it's funny because you're not even fully on it. Like it's maybe on like the edge of the fork tips, but because the flame reaches and he was stuck on a wall, it was, you know, it looked incredibly painful. If you're Kevin because you're kind of like, I cannot escape the range of this flame. And he can be like a little off of me and still doing it. So I definitely see it.

C

But as far as.

B

Go ahead, go ahead.

C

I think what honestly did the most damage to Kevin was he decided to not put on his. His wraparound armor. And without that, his wheels were nowhere near the normal level of protection. So a lot of it was for one slamming into people into walls really did some work. And his wheels did not like that.

B

Yeah. So no, it's. It's strange.

C

Yeah. And lifting. Lifting I. Lifting up the back. Definitely. Because we eventually might want to. Are probably going to go with butane cans. Some of them have like what's called an anti siphon where it'll be designed to. Basically it'll be a tube that comes out in the bottom of the can and like goes down and up. So when the cans laying horizontally it will just be pointed up to only get actual gas. Conveniently if you. You turn that can over now that siphon is only drawing up liquid with. And then you're. You're pretty much guaranteed to always be sucking nice, nice liquid for as long as you can. Where on our cans, since there is no siphon or anything, once the fluid gets low enough below like once it's no longer half full or so it's no longer dispensing straight liquid. So our flame drops off dramatically and you'll actually Kind of ironically see it, it like split splashes in the tank. So like when we're backing up away from people, a lot of times the flame will become bigger because the, you know, the momentum brought all that butane towards the actual nozzle. And for a second we're getting actual liquid butane to be spraying again versus the gas.

A

Interesting.

B

Yeah, it's like you have a limit, you have a level of chemical play that is different than most. I think any other archetype probably outside of pneumatic flippers or even hydraulic crushers, you know. You ever see any of those? You know.

C

Yeah, I want to build one kinda, I don't think. Has there ever been a crusher at

B

NHL, not nhrl, there's been a sportsman crusher at Motorama and there have been a handful of them over the years that use linear actuators to try to simulate it too. But hydraulics are just, I think as you said, fire scales, authorities very well. Hydraulic skill, the heavyweights very well. You get a quantum. Quantum is perfect. But you get to 30 pounders, it's like, okay, well now the cylinder you need to create one ton of force is the same because you still have like an eighth inch of steel and that requires several tons of pressure in a very small point. And it just, you know, makes more sense when you have like a 20 ton reservoir or 20 ton ram with big reservoir in heavyweight. So it gets a little funky. But I would love to as well. I have a couple ideas, you know, looking down here and there. You know, eventually we'll get there, but it's still really, really cool to see Kaza, especially with the steel frame, like a welded steel frame. Because I want to bring this up too, because most robots have generally speaking plastic in the small weight class, especially plastic like H and W, carbon fiber TPU and then that kind of overlaps in the 12 pound, 30 pound division along with aluminum and some generally bits of bolted steel and aluminum together. But because I think is the, if not only at least primary robot in the weight class that has a welded steel chassis versus the more bolt on parts of other ones. So how's the service for that? Like, how is it like maintaining those of chassis design?

C

Well, luckily that was truthfully a big reason why we got this shop. We have a, we have the ability to weld downstairs. I, I can weld, but you know, much like any skill set, it's. I haven't put in the hours or whatnot at this point to, to have my welds be the quality I want Them to be. So we have on our team. Luckily we have a welder now. Kenny, who's been welding his like whole life and can weld anything together. And he makes so many other things possible. He. He frantically welded our frame. When we before Red Storm, we, you know, as I oftentimes do, I'm like, yeah, the bots, we didn't take much damage. The bot's working, everything's fine. We'll, you know, we'll charge the batteries and put it together later. Then, you know, you charge it, put it together, throw it in test box and you're like, oh, it's not driving well. Well, why is it not driving well? That's because that, that frame, that gloss Lavian bent, they didn't just bow out the side, they actually warped the whole frame. So we had to like frantically convert our like horizontal configuration over to a. A fork configuration. And that would have only been possible with the welder, the. With Kenny especially, because I don't know why, but every time we go to nhr went welding, configuration is different. Like at Pro tour, they only had a. They only had Tig. This, this last event, they only had stick welding. And he was like, I gotta do stick. I haven't done stick forever, but we'll make it work. He's like, hold it still. I gotta strike the ark, man. And it was like 10 minutes before we go down. It was kind of funny because we were really worried. Our frame was really hot. And then luckily we're like, we were trying to put water like wet rags on it and stuff to cool it down. And then everyone was so hot, they made us all take a break and we were like, oh, perfect. Gets to cool down

A

avian in the beginning of the day.

C

Yeah, we did okay. And that, that's why I was like, wait. That's why we were pretty scared of them. Yeah, you know, they're not jamo. And then we like walked away. I've been like, oh, yep. Every, every overhead attack bot is just as scary. They all put that crazy effort into it.

B

No, I mean, now you bring it up. Since you did mention jmo, if I remember correctly, we go back to something that happened last year. A little, little thing called the world championship where you're currently the reigning 30 pound world champion. You unseated the Emulsifier Megatron dynasty that's been going on since the inception of the class at nhrl.

A

How was that?

B

Like, how was, how was that both the feeling having achieved it and the progress to get there too.

C

Well, the first time it was kind of crazy because I guess I keep saying that, but everything's crazy. But the first time we fought them, like, a little over a year ago now, we, you know, we were so nervous. Like, I remember on the way, walking down the cage, Pete was basically, like, talking about the emergency plan. He was like, okay, like, when are we tapping? What are the things? Like, you know, we can't get too destroyed here. And I was kind of like, well, you know, as long as our top's not ripped off, like, and stuff's not all over the cage, let's just keep it. You know, let's keep it rolling. And that's kind of what we did. You know, I. I lost half a drive pretty. Pretty early on thanks to getting all kinds of thrown around, but Pete kept on him. You know, I. I limped around and got some good pins. That was my favorite pin was like, when he, like, over. Over shot trying to get Pete when he, like, went flying. And I was like, oh. I had mentally already calculated, like, oh, if that happens, I might be able to grab him. And it just so happened I, like, was able to pin him. And I was like, yeah, that's the highlight. And after that fight, I. I really didn't know if we had it. Like, you know, so many of Kazaw's fights are so close that it really is like a coin toss. And that's. I really felt that way on that fight and it went our way, and things have been going well ever since. You know, every time I fight Jamo, it's again, just as scary. Like, you know, fought him at the pro Tour. Yeah, the pro Tour. And that was. That was definitely scary. Like, I could have seen that either, you know, either way, it's like. But facing with irons was even scarier because, you know, at least one of the. Because I, like, I got Pete in my corner, so it's like, you know, anything bad that's happening is happening to both of us

B

now. It's. We take damage. Not just he take damage.

C

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was. I was a little proud, though, that, you know, Jamo was on a podcast like, a week before being like, no, I don't really pin the housebot. Then as soon as I got on the wall, that was the first thing he did.

B

Yeah, you put fear. Funny how it worked, but that's the heart of a champion. You know, a champion doing things you

A

otherwise wouldn't do is. Yeah. Stooping to means that you wouldn't reasonably do. Doing the unreasonable. Yeah.

B

Like, here you are in the World Championship Final, 2025, fighting Little Lash. And I just know like having seen him earlier in the day, Matt's out here, he's like, I gotta stop that house spot. I cannot let him get free. You know, like he, he knew very well that if he doesn't stop them that you're gonna have a very rough time because you are two in one and you don't get one down, he can't knock you out. You know, he doesn't have that kind of KO ability given the more control based nature of it.

C

Yeah. And so far, luckily, knock on wood, I don't think in any Kazar White fight we've ever fully lost. In the modern day, the early days, we did, we did lose one, but it since, since Pete, we, we have not fully lost the bot. So since that's kind of one of our goals.

B

The Peter Garnache era.

C

Yeah, well, it was like the pre Pete error. It was a lot jankier back then. You know that, that's when things lit on fire. That was before we had the, the nice separation things like those little TPU things do so much more than I initially thought they would. It's like, oh, everything's in its own little home and like doesn't want to just roll around or fly out or. And it's funny how a lot of, a lot of like the improvements are little things like that. It's like not a giant step forward. It's like, you know, a couple inches, you're like, oh, let me try this. And that works out and then it becomes a staple.

A

You know, as long as you're doing something and, and that's a big thing that I hit on with my students is like, just do something. Like it doesn't even matter if it's good or not. Just something will do. Because the alternative to something is, is nothing. You can't have that.

C

You know what I mean?

A

Like, that's not going to make your robot better. But something, even if it's small, will make your robot better.

C

And even if it's in the wrong direction, like you, you know, where you are now is like because what kind of kills me is there's so many people that will take. Have a bot will fail in some way that it keeps failing. And they're just like, well, I just repair it and go back out. And it's like, but shouldn't you do something to address that, that clear issue. It's like, ah, I got spares. Where you know, every event we basically like have are changing something. Whether it's just like igniter position, you know, where the tanks are, our servos, you know, where are. Where the batteries go. Like I used to jam the. All the electronics like into the sides for the igniters and stuff. And then I was like, wait, we've got space behind. Why are we like wasting all that room? Same with like, we used to have speed controllers in the front and. But we realized we could fit them all into that middle section. So we were, we were thinking that might reduce a little bit of the heat. But it. We're, you know, the fun is just everyone's bot gets hot when there's a fire bot. So my bot gets hot, my opponent's bot gets hot.

A

We're.

C

We're all hot. So. So you have more things like heat sinks separating and stuff like that. So.

B

But you know, you know, a funny thought. I had this Kazakh run any better in December versus June because now you have like a colder ambient versus a warmer ambient.

C

It's funny because before I would complain, almost like complain that my fuel was colder, I was like, oh, the fuel has less energy. But I think there's a real logic to that because like this last in June, we lost six batteries. Basically we came with six drive batteries. We lost all of them. And that hadn't happened before. We had lost a few. But I was like, what's the big difference? You know, like I eins is heavier than Kazar. So like that, that's a factor that we. I didn't really put factor into it. But as you were saying, like the big difference was June was like, you know, 80 degrees in there versus, you know, January. That's. That's all your speed controllers and everything are way less happy. So. And with most circuits, you know, the resistance goes up when the heat goes up. So you're drawing more power.

B

Yeah, it's a vicious cycle.

C

Yeah, that runaway. So we, we are going to make give irons bigger batteries. I. I ordered right now is using 750s.

B

We.

C

We use a 4S. 750 for each of each of our drive sides.

A

Yeah.

C

For the two motors.

B

Crazy. That's so funny because like most heavy, heavy weight, they're heavy feather weights. I guess because of the kinetic bias, most people are going much heftier because the weapons just draw out of it or at least like separating the batteries more. But 754s, that's like, that's like two beetle weights. That's probably as much actually. Jake, do you have more power in maximizer the 6s and whatever.

A

I got a success 1800. So I'm right at the same. Because you're what, 2s?

C

We're 4. So we're 4s 750. Then we're 2s 450 for our igniter and our fire system. And then our, our lifter circuit was. Is 6s. It's kind of funny now that we have three different voltages in the robot.

A

Kind of like worked out that way. Yeah. I could do the head math, but I, but yeah, yeah, yeah. It sounds like you've got about three quarters of what I've got.

C

That's kind of. Yeah. We were on success before and we were having issues with batteries running out. Like that's, that's pretty much why we lost that JMO fight was our batteries like the 2024 one. Our, our batteries were just a little too small and on 6s they just, they just died. I think we had 6s. They were like 600 or something. They were, they were. We didn't go up a crazy amount but especially dropping down from six to four, you know, we just, we. We're not using as much power now and truthfully we really didn't notice the difference especially once we added cleats. It, it, it honestly is drive. So, so nice.

B

So the two big questions probably to add to have you before we perhaps reach our end here. So one. So for the difference between ions and light. So what's your opinion with the, the weight bonus factor of light having two multi pots, even if they're maybe a little bit lighter, versus ions having the single but perhaps a little bulkier build. He knows much about the difference between the two of them.

C

Well, two is always better. I would take two any day. I mean truthfully the only reason irons really exists is because Pete lives in Texas. So if he lived in Connecticut or whatnot, I think the light would be continuing to go. So and, and maybe we did ourselves a disservice with irons because it looks like we're probably gonna have the. I did the math and it looks like irons should be the second ranked ranked like open bot, which I don't know if they kind of want to like two basically the same bots being like you know, first and second. It's like one bot that's an anomaly. But two is that. Do we have to do something?

B

Yeah, that actually kind of leads in the second one. So with all the dominance you've had namely between ainz and light, how has that success been both good and bad for you? So on one Hand. I can think of maybe, like, lots of trophies, maybe in a good chunk of change going with it.

A

It's always pretty cool

B

that you see from it. Oh, he's even showing us the shop just to make us a point. Ladies and gentlemen, that's. You see on a stream, like, you have the. Do you have the pros and the cons with the dominance that you've seen with eins and light? What's with some things you notice as they've now gotten to this extremely good level?

C

Well, I, you know, I. I definitely miss kind of being a, like a nobody where, you know, you can just kind of go to NHL and you don't get any extra attention. You know, if you show up late, no one's, like, freaking out or, you know, if, like. I feel like we've had a lot of rules and stuff, like, written to. To help us be better people. So, like, you know, I feel like the get there.

A

The.

C

You get a penalty if you're not there by nine was directly to help us make sure we're there by nine. So which it. Which it has. We haven't missed one. So little things like that. But it, you know, it's definitely. It's also nice to be at a point where I know so much about fire that I can help teams and really be able to help. Like, you know, I helped MIT get their fire working at the June event. It was like they had some issues and it was like, nope, we're. We're changing this up. We're. We're moving this around, you know, and if I wasn't a world champion or whatnot, I'm sure I would not be like, yeah, let me go. Let me go. Completely mess with MIT spot and feel comfortable doing that. Like, yeah, I know more than you. It's okay. I'm. I'm the fire. The fun is, like, most people kind of come into fire with the mindset, like, oh, fire's not that crazy. We just. We push the igniter and it works. So I think they have kind of put more energy into, like, the novelty things. Like, like, their drive system is crazy. You know, they're. They got the. The. I forget what it's called, but they can drive horizontally. But I was kind of like, yeah, mechan wheels. But it's just, like, so much to think about while you're driving. I'm like, I couldn't really imagine actually trying to fully drive a mechanism wheel, like, to its full potential, you know? Like, I always feel like I left something on the table with it so but.

A

And even one of their wheels has like 10 individual wheels. And so one robot, they need like 440 wheels and then they have two robots plus spares. Like I was just doing the math, the mental math in my head of like what it would take and like to get two like two copies of two robots. It's like a like 160 wheels that you gotta make. Like I'm not, I'm not.

C

I can't really. Yeah.

A

Past two anyways. So.

B

106.

C

I won't lie. I kind of missed the days of just buying the pre made wheels. It's. It's so nice to cast your own wheels and have them. But it's also so nice to just be like I need 20 wheels. What do you know? They showed up.

A

Yeah. Right. What are you doing for cleats right now? Are you doing. Are you doing ar? Are you doing titanium?

C

Yeah, we're. We're still on ar. We're on air from Senca. It's not send cut from Tri City. Yeah, the sencut SEN ones. I don't know if it's how their lasers are or what but like the Tri City ones, the points are actually sharp. Like they will cut you where the. The. The send ones. Like if you look at it like it. The tip was at like a slight angle like and I. Yeah, yeah. And I know like when I had a local place do it they were kind of like oh, it depends on the, the thickness of the metal and all that. Like you know. But like the. I don't know if there's multiple options. I know you're more in the machining side there, Jake. But yeah, it, it's just like they're so much better. They actually work where this, the send cuts and ones are like we, we tried them out and it felt honestly like driving on like ice.

A

Yeah.

C

I mean I'm kind of grabbing.

A

Yeah, yeah.

C

Yeah, yeah.

A

Well, well what I'll. What I'll notice is that. Is that because I, I prefer to swing one direction. It'll get laggy swinging one direction because it'll. It'll. It'll dull out the cl. Cleats and I actually I minor titanium and I water jet them at my, at my maker space and if I had not if I didn't have that access to that tool, they would, they just. They flat out would not work if they were laser cut just because the water jet can hold such a tight edge. So that's why I asked. That's interesting. That's three mil ar.

C

Okay.

A

Because the water jet doesn't melt at all. Right. Because it's. It's water.

C

Yeah.

A

Yeah.

C

I wonder if they're. I'll have to ask Pete because he's more. And he's more in touch with the Tri City people to see if that. Maybe that is why they're not a

A

sponsor, by the way.

C

No, they're just, they're just good people.

A

Absolutely.

C

But yeah, since we've gone to Cleats, it's. It'd be hard to go back. I was going through all my wheels and I have like a box of wheels. I'm like, I guess I just need to sell these old, you know, the Bane Bot wheels. I'm like, I'm probably never using them, but, you know, as every robot person is, it's like hard to. You're like, ah, but what if I need them one day?

B

Yeah, you want to. You want to burn all the stock. You don't want to have it be unused and buy it again.

C

Yeah. Plus, you know, no one ever really like, you buy the each wheel for like five, ten bucks or whatever. Then you try to sell them. People are like, ah, it's not exactly the wheel. I'll take them all for like a buck a piece or something, you know. And you're like, like, I was thinking about doing that. Just be like, you want a box of wheels? Here's the whole box. Just give me like, you know, give me something.

B

Yeah. Shout out to Zoe. She loves dumping the old stuff from honeycracked in like the share bins. Whatever. Nhrl people love taking scraps off of it.

C

Maybe that's what I should do. Just bring a ton of Pain Bot wheels up. Hey, I've definitely taken stuff from there. I'm like, oh, that's cool. I don't know what I'm gonna do with that, but it looks cool.

A

Yeah.

B

So I guess one big sort of reflection before we closing out here. What do you think is the direction of fire? Of fire robots, namely, or what is your direction perhaps? Do you continue with fire? You think fire is going to grow a lot, nhrl? Do you think fires are going to be nerfed, nhrl? Or do you think you're switch off to something, something else? What do you think is in the future for you in flames?

C

I plan to stay with flames. We. We are building. We've been playing around a lot more with the £1, especially now that it's like the summer break and you know, we, we have now actually built a kinetic robot which is kind of crazy. So we, we've built a, a, we're. We're pro building a better big wheel. We built a, a dual hub big wheel, but it was really more like a medium wheel. It was like it had two of the repeat ant weight hubs on it, like in the center in like traditional big wheel fashion, but only with like 3 inch wheels. So we're, we, we have like the kinetic stuff, so we might try to do more kinetic stuff because I do like the idea of not just being a one, a one horse pony or whatnot, having, Having, you know, you know, I've always looked up to Jamo, and Jamo's a man who can beat you down with any robot. So I don't want to be just like, up. Yep, here's Josh. It's if it ain't flame, it ain't winning, you know, but also it's kind of like flames heyday right now. So if it, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, you know, and that's even partially why I think I haven't really worked highly on the bigger, bluer flame, because, you know, just kind of like, based on your opinion, your, your how you reacted like, I, I want to win, but I'm not trying to send people home in puddles or cause thousands of dollars of damage. Like, that's not my, my goal. I, you know, I, I'm happy when a lot of times people are like, yeah, it just like, you know, it overheated and then it turned back on. You know, I'm like, oh, sweet. Good, good. You didn't. It didn't cost you much money, you know, because, you know, I, we're here to destroy people's stuff, but it still, you know, we all have to pay for it.

B

So, so we're very reasonable the stuff destroyers around here. You know, I want you to destroy your stuff in the minimum way that I have to to make sure that I can win.

C

Yeah, yeah, you can just. I'll scare you enough to tap out. That's ideal. So that we've kind of pushed, waited on that. And, and part of it is like, you know, if we did make Kazar a lot better and it was fully melting people, I'm sure the haters would be even more like, this shouldn't be allowed at all. Look, you know, who can beat that, you know where? At least now that's like a lot of the, the hate or the aggression is towards the fact that we are an impenetrable wedge that can burn you, but isn't necessarily Gonna, you know, it's not gonna cause you to. It's not like fighting Clyde where you're like, yeah, two. Two pins and we're. We're dead. You know, so. So I think Kazan will probably like price day as it is for the foreseeable future. You know, keep, you know, say as it is, as in always keep iterating slightly but not anything crazy. We. I do want to. I had a lot of fun with the Hot Honey and I really enjoyed doing the collab. So I'd love to do more of those because it's. I think multibots have so many advantages, but one of the biggest disadvantages is having to build multiple robots. Yeah, you can outsource that to other people. It's like, hey, we got all the pros with none of the cons. And it's even kind of just cool fighting with like different people and like getting their fight style and you know, like, it's funny because I'm so used to having two Kazars, so it's like, oh, they're gonna go after one of us. But there's not a clear target where like, you know, with Hot Honey, it was like, one's a lot tougher than the other. We're going. We're going after to the other one. I gotta protect them, you know, so I, I really enjoyed that. Would love to do some more collaborations or, or, you know, have I. I still honestly love to do a four part multi firebot where I got like four different people to all like build their idea of what a fire, you know, a quarter of the fire multibot should be and just kind of see how everyone does it differently, you know, but still have them all fighting, fighting together as one, one team. But you know, the overhead attack, like mixing in the different flavors is definitely fun too. Like, you know, forcing people to be like, yeah, you gotta adapt to fire and also kinetic. Like, you know, one, one person can pin you and then you can get hit and it's. It's pretty. It's pretty real. So I, I definitely want to explore that more. We're liking the big wheels for the. The one pounder, so maybe we'll. Maybe we'll build a big wheel three pounder opposite direction.

B

Interesting. So you sort of go high and go low and you can sort of figure out the pros and cons in between. Nothing like learning from your greatest rivals.

C

Yeah. What about a big wheel with a fireball? That sounds. That sounds interesting.

A

Yeah.

B

You know what then? Better yet, if you make it very good at controlling, you can have some like other thing to go with it. I don't know. It's Big Wheels. You can do whatever robots up here. Yeah, the robots down there. You can put stuff in there.

C

Yeah, it sounds fun. Maybe I gotta reach out to some of the Big Wheel people and see if there's. There can be a future collaboration.

B

Ah, man.

A

The. The huge.

B

The hot huges. The Big Wheel theory. I don't know. You'll figure it out. And he gets that band name.

C

Yeah, that's. That's a future problem. You know, we got. The current problem is figuring out the. We're bringing an ant weight a Big Wheel for July to the next uh. The next event for they have up in my mass. Uh. I forget by Glenn's event we're always Boxelmania. No, no. Uh, his little event he runs at that RC store up in Fitzroy there was like a monthly. It's like CMC Madness. I think I'm bad with names, but yeah, it's any. Any combat robot event is always a good time. It's like, you know, no matter who. Who's there, like, you know, it could probably be my worst enemy in the world and if you had a combat robot, I'd be like, oh, I guess you can't be that bad. Yeah, it's like, I guess I might have been wrong. So. But we're hoping to maybe host a. You know, host a few little tiny like Friday night things. I actually yesterday bought a ant weight cage from. So. I'm excited. Yeah. I was like, wait a minute, I got. I got some space. What we could. We could possibly like, you know, at least get like some friends together and throw it. Throw down, you know, I'm building my girlfriend a bot. So I was like, you know, she's going to need some place to drive and it'd be fun to just fight her or whatnot. You know. Definitely A little more expensive to fight yourself, but still fun, you know, at least ants aren't as crazy. You know, like the. The hits are, you know, are. Are nothing. They're like, okay, that's. I would not want that to happen to me. But it wouldn't be world ending where, you know, you get hit by a phenomenon or whatnot and you're like, where. Where'd my leg go?

A

You.

B

You're kind.

A

You're.

B

You're very kind. I've been washed for too long.

C

Hey, you're gonna.

B

Maybe I'll be good again.

C

You. You got that dumpster. You got a dumpster?

B

Yeah, ages ago. Ages ago.

C

All right.

A

I want to get another.

C

That's. Who doesn't want another dumpster. You know they're addictive.

B

Once you get one, can't stop.

C

Yeah, you got, you gotta get the new flavor. They're now powder coated. They're nice.

B

Yeah. Now I need to collect them all. I need to get some Brett's too.

C

Pop down, show the difference.

B

Ah, yes, for the streamers. He's getting the new shiny dumpsters. Yeah.

C

Oh, wow.

B

It's so vibrant. Very vibrant. Yeah.

C

And it also, you know how when you open the dumpster, it smells like paint? It doesn't have that feature anymore.

B

So. See, everybody just win some dumpsters. You two can have a dumpster. You can smell.

C

And I, I sadly killed my, the screen on my, my golden bread. So I gotta, I gotta fix that guy. I accidentally over voltaged it so it doesn't light up anymore. Well, it's kind of funny because they never actually show off them lighting up. I kind of feel like when they give it out, they should come out with like a power pack and like have it lit up.

B

Having like, like blinking or flashing or something to show it's like it.

C

Because it by default it actually, once you apply power to it, the lights light up just like the regular bread. Yeah. Which it won't do anymore because I put. It came. It came with a power supply that was a little like flaky and like I had it hooked up by my computer and when my computer was like, it was probably my computer's fault but certain like you do stuff and then all of a sudden the lights would blink and I was like. And then I, I found a variable power supply and it worked fine except for when the time I accidentally turned it up to lying, then it stopped working.

B

Well, you don't just want to spare. Simple as that.

C

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I figured if I can make combat robots, I should be able to fix a, a electronic circuit. So it's.

B

But yeah, that is fair. That's fair. That's reasonable. It's honest.

C

But as all the things are, you know, there's that list of priorities. It's always like, yeah, you know, I want that working, but we got an event this weekend that's clearly the, the top priority, you know?

B

Yeah, yeah. You're like, come on. Like, I need, I want to fight my robot. Like, it's cool to have it, but I want to be able to fight Jake Maximizer in £12, you know, like, that's the kind of thing that comes to mind. I want to beat Maximizer another Dumpster. Simple as that. You know, simple goals.

C

So it's so hard. I, like, I tried like two events ago, and, like, there's just not the way the weight for, like, all direct drives, so I had to use chain drive. And that was like, so much.

A

The cage is so much larger too, so you're going to have a hard time smothering people. They can get away. They can get. There's room to get away in the £12 cage. And, like, £12 don't have flamethrowers and we don't have walkers. And I think that those are both for the same reason, which is the cages. So, yeah, it makes sense.

C

I know you're saying it's like a challenge, so I.

A

Do it, man. Let's do it again. He snapped my blade last time.

B

It was a pain.

C

You bent up my frame pretty good. So, yeah, that frame got reused as a. Into the new 12 pound frame. So I don't think it. It fully exists as it is. But yeah, it. It definitely. The biggest thing I realized was my whole problem, that fight actually was I was using the Repeat. The his 12 pound drives, they have shaft size.

A

Yeah.

C

The ultras I couldn't get, like, because I was using the Banebot wheels, and there was not a bainbot, like, hex shaft that fit on it. So I was using, like, a round shaft, and I was like, oh, that'll be fine. And of course, the set screws backed out and, like, all my wheels were, like, rolling except for the ones you like. The two that were still connected were the wheels you, like, annihilated. So, you know, it's like, well, that half that wheel's gone. Oh, that's the one that's still well connected to the hub. Oh, these ones are fine. Nope. Free spinning.

B

No.

C

But every time we learn a little bit more about 12s, it's just. It's just painful. It's like I, you know, I. I feel how everyone else feels in all the other classes where it's like, oh, I went one and two. Yay.

B

One and two, baby. It's a hard class, sweaty class, but we'll eventually get back there. Eventually we'll have the full, full weight class spread going on. Freeze 30s.

C

Yeah. I feel like hopefully for, you know, the next pro tour, they'll have some more 30s.

A

That'd be.

C

That'd be nice. But I guess we'll see when that's gonna be.

B

Should be good.

A

Well, Josh, thank you so much. It's been so interesting learning about Kazaa, the most dominant 30 pound flamethrower ever. It's been great to hear about your story, about your process. That little bird in the background, whatever. As you explore the wilderness of Connecticut.

C

You want to. You want a tour? Is here's all this it actually it is pretty big. So I. I have a downstairs as well that's even bigger.

B

Stream access. We're going down below.

C

Yeah. Here's my ghetto heater. In the winter, there's like.

B

It's like negative in here.

C

So I have to have cancer rocket.

A

I know that one. We had a cancer rocket at my job.