Whirligig 2001 came together with the help of Jeremy Franklin. I knew Jeremy from the FIRST robot competition that I coached for back in 1999. Jeremy was only 12 at the time, and was one of the team robot drivers. I remembered how well he drove the robot, and when I decided to recreate Whirligig from his 30 pound version for BotBash, into a 58 pound version for BattleBots, I asked Jeremy if he would like to jump on board and get Whirligig battle-ready. Jeremy immediately leaped at the chance, so he and his dad, John, quickly started gaterhing parts and spending countless hours in my workshop, creating an all-new Whirligig.

We started from the ground up, after measuring out our components, we cut the baseplate, using a thick .25" 6061 aluminum plate. Then welded vertical posts that would attach the top armor plate. The whole robot would be sandwiched between the two plates.

This photo shows an early concept of the geardown system and a motor from the 2000 version of Whirligig. (We quickly found out that these motors were a bit too wimpy to drive a nearly twice as heavy Whirligig!)

Jeremy's hard at work in the shop!


After weeks of anguish, we finally decided on some Jensen motors. They were not as powerful as I would have liked, and we had MAJOR problems with them overheating, and had to integrate a complex cooling system into the bot. We ended up changing the geardown system from chains and sprockets to a combination of gears, sprockets and chains. We were able to get a much better gear ratio in a smaller space this way.

During the competition, we burned up several of these motors. Needless to say, next time we're switching to something else!

In this photo, you can see how tightly packed things were inside Whirligig.

Whirligig added a weapon this time, a 2 foot, heavy arm with spikes for impaling either with a spin or an overhead attack.

Several months after starting (way longer than I thought it would take), Whirligig was finished and ready to battle in the San Francisco 2001 BattleBots.

Jeremy entered Whirligig as his own, and was in charge of driving and repairing the bot. (Because I have another lightweight, Backlash, and BB rules allow only 1 robot per weightclass per team).

We had a blast, and can't wait to bring the next version of Whirligig into battle!