S3E7: How Just 'Cuz Robotics Continues to Shape Combat Robotics ft. Seth Schaffer

Summary

Podcast Summary

The Havoc Rundown – S3E7: How Just ‘Cuz Robotics Continues to Shape Combat Robotics ft. Seth Schaffer
Date: April 23, 2026 | Host: Hunter Bro Studios
Guest: Seth Schaefer (Just ‘Cuz Robotics)

Overview

This episode of The Havoc Rundown dives deep into the persistent influence of Seth Schaefer and Just 'Cuz Robotics on the world of combat robotics. Whether through pioneering products like the SSP kit and hub motors, or keeping the builder community thriving with robust support and educational content, Seth's work is woven through the fabric of modern robot combat. The hosts explore how Just 'Cuz Robotics has reshaped building, innovating, and even the business of making bots, while also challenging Seth with fun games, community questions, and insider reflections on the future of the sport.

---

Icebreaker: “Who’s The Imposter?” – Bot Name Game

[02:22–18:21]

• Ryan's classic game returns: Given themed lists of robot names (e.g., “Foodbots,” “People’s Names,” “Water Friends,” etc.), one is fake; the panel must guess.
• Memorable Round – Foodbots:
  • Choices: Piece of Cake, Oolong, Rice Krispie, Hydrox, Lasagna
  • Seth and others debate the authenticity of each—showcases their vast niche knowledge.
  • Reveal: “Rice Krispie” is fake.
  • Quote:
    • Seth: “Piece of cake seems like—I’m pretty sure it’s an actual bot. And also, it’s just way too obvious of a name not to be taken...”
    • Thomas: “Oolong has to be real because only a builder would double-capitalize the O’s for some aesthetic reason or ChatGPT.”
• Game Recap: Seth dominates most rounds, flexing his encyclopedic bot registry knowledge.

Memorable moment:

• Seth nails nearly every round, prompting jokes about his uncanny memory:
  • “Seth can just... look at a list of robots and be like, ‘That’s not real. That’s not real.’” – Justin [21:58]

---

Just ‘Cuz Robotics: From Startup to Industry Staple

[23:05–41:45]

Origin and Early Growth

• Seth’s Background:
  • Started as a way to help new builders with wiring issues—first products: PCB-based power distribution boards.
  • Transitioned from hobby to full-time as product line (and demand) grew.
  • Early on: “I was making, you know, like whole tens of dollars a month... It was not exactly life-changing money.” – Seth [26:10]

Product Expansion

• Filling Gaps in the Market: Identified the need for robust, reliable drive kits (e.g., replacing “cheese shaft” Nerf motors).

• Scaling Up:

  • Launched the SSP (Servo Spinner Pusher) kit via pre-orders due to high upfront costs.
  • Shifted storefront from Squarespace to Shopify preemptively for scalability.
  • Reveals learning curve and risks in making Combat Robotics his main gig.

• Operations Today:

  • Seth (solo full-time employee) + part-time help from Josh on order fulfillment.
  • Stays in-house to deliver better customer service, preferring personal engagement to outsourcing fulfillment.

Notable Quote:

• “I feel like I could talk about this for three hours... When I started, I had never really anticipated [this business] being anywhere close to paying my bills.” – Seth [24:27; 31:43]

---

The SCP Kit’s Impact

[30:45–35:29]

• Seeing Design in Action:
  • “Every time I go to a competition, I see... a third or half of the robots... have at least one of my parts in it... which is like, unbelievable.” – Seth [31:43]
  • Motivation: Fulfillment in watching others win using his kit.
  • Initial design came from dissatisfaction with aging, uncompetitive kits (e.g., D2) and a desire to innovate.
• Key Takeaway:
  • Seth planned for scalability, learning from Kickstarter-like scenarios—“Set yourself up for success, even if you don’t know you’ll succeed.” [31:43–34:09]

---

Game-Changer: The Hub Motor

[38:07–41:45]

• Design Philosophy:
  • Saw belt-drive spinners as dominant; sought to “standardize” the process with a tougher, off-the-shelf hub motor.
  • Risk: Unsure if builders would invest in a more expensive but more robust solution.
• Community Validation:
  • Noted major event wins and high adoption in both 1lb and 3lb classes.
  • “Hub motors are a viable strategy. The reason they aren’t popular is because they’re so high effort that so few people are willing to try—not that they’re inherently worse than a belt drive.” – Seth [38:07]
• Collaboration:
  • Worked with (now absent) co-host Corey on isolation strategies and shock-proofing designs.
  • Dedication to field-testing and rapid product iteration.

---

Five in Focus: Lightning Round Builder Questions

[48:36–74:24]

1. Future of Combat Robotics Products (Ryan, [48:36])

• Next Big Revolution?
  • The Scarab modular hub motor – “...fully modular with replaceable magnet rings... designed to be field serviceable.” [49:09]
  • Focus on modularity, durability, field repairability, and uncompromising materials (e.g., S7 tool steel teeth, 2024 aluminum).
  • Vision: Evolve beyond “kits” to customizable, serviceable subsystems.

2. Avoiding Burnout (Corey’s question, [52:32])

• Juggling Business + Hobby:
  • Compartmentalizes business, YouTube/content creation, and competition headspaces.
  • “When I’m fighting my bot...that is still very divorced in my mind from the running-a-business aspect...” [52:55]
  • Struggles with YouTube motivation due to rising standards, time investment.
  • Considering less-polished, more frequent content or a second channel.

3. Arms Race in Design (Thomas, [61:52])

• Will parts get too good?
  • “You can get away with a lot of BS in your robot design in the 1 and 3 pound class...like robots just don’t break like they used to.”
  • Acknowledges arms race aspect of advanced materials/technology.
  • Praises how 3D printing, especially modern low-cost, high-quality filament printers, democratized top-tier bot construction.

4. Vegas Side Quests (Ashley, listener, [68:09])

• Favorite Vegas Activity:
  • “Piff the Magic Dragon comedy magic show. I can strongly recommend that to anybody up there...”
  • Also a fan of the Penn & Teller show.

5. Does Business Change Your Building Style? (Justin, Host, [69:17])

• Blending Product Testing & Competition:
  • “I feel almost obligated to be using [my bots] as test beds for parts that I am currently or planning on selling.”
  • Direct hands-on feedback ensures product development and iteration actually address the pain points of active builders.

---

Listener Mailbag: Rapid-fire Q&A

[74:24–95:40]

• Secret supplier fight club?
  • “Unfortunately, no.” [75:29]
• Dream Product (no limits):
  • “A hub motor that is just a wheel—with an integrated ESC so you just bolt it on. That’s your whole drive side.” [76:32]
• Most surprising high-volume seller:
  • “The basic PCB switch—orders of 20/30/40 at a time, often for schools. Costs almost nothing.” [83:54]
• Lessons in product design:
  • Customers often value size even over weight. “When you ask people what they want, they don’t tell you...” [79:17]
• Favorite tool for a home shop:
  • “The A1 Mini [3D printer]... cheapest other nozzle... even if you have another printer, you can just send jobs off to it.” [86:43]
• Has your cat helped in the shop?
  • “My kitty is not allowed in the workshop—aluminum chips everywhere!” [89:37]
  • Milo, a previous cat featured in videos, now lives with Seth’s ex. Current cat, Cirilla, makes cameo appearances.

Notable Quotes:

• On community impact:
  • “You are the person that, like, I know if I DM you and go, ‘Hey, this is the problem I’m having. What do I do?’ Like, you have the answer—and that is something... you can’t go into another space and just DM the person who designs things and they actually have an answer for you...” – Ryan [92:20]
• On design philosophy:
  • “Combat Robotics is still a brand new sport and the technology... is always changing. That’s what really makes combat robotics different from a lot of other... engineering sports.” – Seth [62:27]

---

Key Takeaways & Forward-Looking Insights

• Just ‘Cuz Robotics has set standards for parts reliability, accessibility, and educational outreach—its products are the backbone of countless champion bots and entry-level teams alike.
• Seth’s iterative approach: Designs evolve by using his own parts in competition, listening to user feedback, continually raising quality and serviceability.
• Tech democratization theme: 3D printing has made high-level bot design accessible to all; future advances in on-demand manufacturing (e.g., more affordable CNC, fiber lasers) will further level the playing field.
• Community engagement and humility: Seth remains highly approachable—a mentor, solver, and fellow competitor, not just a supplier.

---

Important Timestamps

| Segment | Timestamp | Details | |---------|-----------|---------| | Icebreaker Game | 02:22–18:21 | “Who’s The Imposter?” bot name game | | History/Origin of JCR | 23:05–35:29 | Seth’s backstory, company growth, product pivots | | SSP Kit/Hub Motor Impact | 30:45–41:45 | How products changed the sport, user stories | | Five in Focus | 48:36–74:24 | Five builder questions—future products, burnout, arms race, business style | | Listener Mailbag | 74:24–95:40 | Rapid Q&A: dream products, lessons, cats, favorite fights, etc.|

---

Notable Quotes

• On business growth:
  • “Every time I go to a competition, I see... a third or half of the robots... have at least one of my parts in it…” — Seth (31:43)
• On the arms race in bot design:
  • “You can get away with a lot of BS in your robot design...robots just don’t break like they used to.” — Seth (62:27)
• On end-user focus:
  • “My approach was to make a combat robot kit that was not for people who had already built combat robots.” — Seth (77:27)
• On community dynamics:
  • “Part of the superpower of every small business owner is the ability to actually talk to our customers. It’s pretty cool.” — Seth (93:19)

---

Final Thoughts

This episode is a masterclass in both the technical and human sides of competitive robot combat. Seth Schaefer’s transparent, iterative approach emphasizes listening, quick adaptation, and community service over pure profit or glory. Just ‘Cuz Robotics stands as both a technical powerhouse and a resource hub for all levels, proving that innovation and accessibility can co-exist at the heart of the sport.

[End.]

Transcript

[A]

Sam. Foreign.

[B]

Hey, everyone, I'm Justin, your editor in chief. And welcome back to another episode of the HAVOC Rundown. Tonight we've got a fantastic episode lined up as we welcome back a familiar face to the show. You hear his voice every commercial break. And if you are a builder, it's a good bet you are using some of his Just Cause Robotics parts. It's Seth Schaefer.

[A]

Hello.

[B]

Hey, Seth. Welcome back to the show.

[A]

Seth, it's great to be back. Thanks for inviting me again.

[B]

Since the last time we had him on, Seth has continued to make a massive impact on the combat robotics world. Not just inside the arena, but behind the scenes as well. Through Just Cause Robotics, he's been designing, supplying parts that builders everywhere rely on, constantly pushing the limits of performance and innovation. Tonight, we're diving into everything he's been working on. New products, new ideas, and his take on where the sport is heading next. But as always, I'm not doing this alone. Joining me tonight, the man behind Ryan's Game Corner, it's Ryan Hunter.

[C]

Wait.

[B]

Hello? Oh, the wild card who always keeps us guessing, it's Thomas Carroll. Huh?

[D]

What?

[C]

Me?

[D]

When?

[B]

And stepping in as our special guest host for this episode, introducing more people to cheap flights than Expedia, it's Corey Nason. Hey, Corey. Oh. Oh, I don't think we can hear you. That's fine. So let's get into the episode itself.

[D]

We can put a Corey soundboard in.

[B]

Yeah, I have enough recorded audio. It's fine. As usual, we are going to first head over to that icebreaker corner of the studio that we like to call Ryan's game corner. Tell us what we're doing, Ryan.

[C]

All right. I am bringing back a very classic game. In fact, I believe it is the first game that I ever created. For the podcast, we're going to play who's the imposter in this game?

[B]

Oh, I remember this. Okay. Yes, I remember this.

[C]

In this game, I have made lists of bot names. They all are within a same category. However, one of the bots does not exist. I have checked all of these through robot combat events and of course, are even bigger. The biggest combat robotics database, the HAVOC Rundown registry. But I'm going to run through the list of robots and I'm going to have everybody get to decide who they think is the robot that does not exist. We are going to go down the list. So this is not a ding in. This is a c. If everybody could get the right answer kind of game. And as always, if a majority of you get it, Wrong. The house gets a point. All right, does everybody understand the game?

[D]

Yes. Don't let the house get points.

[C]

Okay. Corey, do we have you? Can we hear Corey now?

[B]

No.

[D]

Corey, where are you?

[A]

Where are you? Is this going back, like, an infinite length of time, or are these gonna be.

[D]

It starts 14:12.

[A]

I feel like I do not know enough about the, like, old Comedy Central era.

[C]

Oh, these are. These are Avery weight class. Okay, we're gonna start the first one with Foodbots. The food bots I have selected are piece of cake, Oolong, Rice crispy, hydrox, lasagna.

[B]

Oh, I know. Sorry.

[D]

Oh, I know two of those that are real.

[A]

Yeah, I'm, like, pretty confident about three, and the other two, I'm not sure.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

All right, let's go down the list. Justin. Which doesn't exist.

[B]

Okay. I'm not trying to sway my fellow players at all.

[D]

Oh, I am.

[B]

I am. I am pretty confident with a piece of cake. I am 100% confident with hydroxyl lasagna, Oolong, or Grace Krispie. I'm not entirely sure. Out of those two, I think Rice Krispie is the one that he would have come up with, because I feel like oolong sounds like a bot. Like, a weapon would be designed after. So I'm going to say Rice Krispie.

[D]

I've got my answer, but I can't say the reasoning till the end.

[A]

All right.

[B]

Okay.

[C]

Well, Thomas, what is your answering?

[D]

What?

[C]

What is your answer?

[D]

Well, everyone will know the answer because my justification. Okay, you know, I'll say I'm going to pick Oolong. I'll give my justification after.

[A]

Okay, Seth, now they're all thrown off. Yeah, I also. Oh, wait, sorry.

[D]

No, Rice Crispy. Rice Crispy was my answer.

[C]

Rice Krispies your answer?

[D]

Yes. Rice Krispie is my answer.

[C]

Okay. Rice Krispies is your answer. All right.

[A]

I also am very. I'm like, 100% sure Hydrox and Lasagna are actual bots. Piece of cake. Seems like. I'm pretty sure it's an actual bot. And also, it's just way too obvious of a name not be taken for that same reasoning. I'm. I feel like Rice Crispy most likely is a bot and Oolong is the fake. But also because it's spelled weird, it seems like. I don't know, it just doesn't seem like the. Like, the. The double capitalization of the O is, like, weird. I feel like my reasoning a little bit unusual for somebody to do that. And also, T is like, the last thing I Feel like people think of when they're trying to name a threatening robot.

[D]

I was gonna say Oolong has to be real because only a builder would double capitalize the O's for some aesthetic reasoning or chatgpt.

[B]

Well, that's what I was thinking. Like a weapon it's based off of like some kind of weapon. I. I don't know.

[A]

Yeah, I'm not sure. I. I'm gonna go with Oolong for. Instead of Rice Krispie as the fake bot.

[C]

Okay, Corey, which one of these robots does not exist?

[B]

We still can't hear them.

[D]

Corey, check your mic. Make sure the correct device is selected. It is on the way. Send it in discord. And we will read it aloud at least until the microphone is working. But you might have the wrong device selected.

[A]

The. The Riverside app's telling me that I cannot change my device while the recordings are.

[C]

Corey says Oolong. So that is half and half. I am. I am going to allow because we have. We have been. We are even here. I'm going to allow somebody to change.

[D]

What? Wait, why would you want to change?

[C]

Because we don't have any. We. We don't have. I'll tell you what. I said a majority, so that's fine. Uh, so the correct answer. The correct answer.

[D]

This is a trick.

[C]

Is Rice Krispie is the made up. It does not exist. There is no bot named Rice Krispie, which to me I thought was a very good food name, but there is no Rice Krispie. All right, the next. The next is my favorite category. People's names.

[B]

What?

[C]

We have Bob.

[A]

What?

[C]

Ned, Joe, Eileen and Walter.

[B]

Are these builders, like registered builders names?

[C]

No, these are. Oh, these are robot names.

[B]

Oh. That are based off of people's names. Okay, I see.

[A]

I'm like 80, confident that Ned is fake.

[C]

Okay. Seth goes with Ned 100.

[A]

Eileen is a bought by the guy behind. I remember Eileen was because it was so weird. It was like a single shuffler one from China with a horizontal spinner or multi bot to multi bot with like shufflers and horizontals. But there was only one shuffle pot on each one.

[B]

And I remember Walter and I know Bob is. So again, this is one where it comes down to two. That could be net. So yeah. So Bob, Ned, Joe, Eileen, or Walter. For me, it's either Ned or Joe. So Seth, you're going with Ned. Yeah, you know what, Thomas, you go next and then I'll go me.

[D]

Oh, man, you gotta pick Bob.

[C]

Okay, Thomas takes Bob.

[D]

It's a good name.

[B]

I'll go with Seth. I'll go with Ned. Only because Joe seems like a very obvious, like, just name for. You're trying to think, like a name for a bot, and it's like, oh, it's Joe. Or it could be, like, coffee. Well, I don't know. I'll go with Ned. I'll go with Ned, too.

[C]

Okay. Okay. Corey also is going with Ned. So the only one not going with Ned is Thomas. And the answer is Ned. Ned is the robot. That is incorrect. All right.

[A]

I feel like I saw Joe show up at a natural, like, within the last few months.

[D]

Should have went with Ned.

[C]

I. I really love Eileen. Like, Eileen is that super cool. That's exactly what Eileen is. It's a beetle weight. That's like two. Two separate beetle weights with just one shuffler in it. It's crazy.

[B]

Okay, Joe, Just so you know. So Joe was at the April 4th NHL.

[A]

Okay. That's what I was. Right.

[B]

Yeah. Round three qualifiers.

[C]

Okay, the next category is Water Friends. Starfish, Orcas, Piranha, Leech, and Nautilus.

[B]

Oh, this is hard. One of these I know for certain is an actual bot.

[A]

Yeah. Orcas is 100. Actual bot.

[B]

Yes.

[D]

Easy.

[A]

The one that's really throwing me is Nautilus, because I know for a fact there's, like, Nautiloid and, like, four other variations on Nautiloid that are, like, actual bought by Noah. But I don't know. What if Nautilus specifically is one of them?

[C]

All right, Seth, which one are you going with?

[A]

It's really tough, but I'm, like, kind of torn between starfish and leech. But I don't know, like, what robot would be. What kind of robot would Starfish really be? That seems like a weird one. I'll go with Starfish, but I'm not that.

[C]

Okay, okay. Seth goes with Starfish. Thomas.

[D]

I think Nautilus is thrown in there as I'm going to throw us off, so I'm going to go with that.

[C]

Okay, Justin.

[B]

Yeah, that's kind of where I was at, too. Nautilus. But then I'm going to go with. Yeah, I'm going to go with Nautilus. Yeah, why not? I feel like this is one that Ryan's going to get just because it's hard. And it could be either. For me, it's either Nautilus or Leech. I feel like Starfish could be something. And Piranha seems, like, aggressive enough that it could be a robot, too.

[A]

This one is. This one is definitely the hardest one.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Only two of these are bots. That I'm. That I know for sure are bots.

[C]

I. I made sure that each one. Well, most of these has at least a couple bots you guys would be 100% familiar with. Thomas, did you. What did you say?

[D]

Nautilus.

[C]

Okay. Thomas said nautilus. Justin said.

[B]

I said nautilus as well.

[A]

Nautilus.

[C]

Okay. And Corey also says starfish, and that is the correct answer. Starfish has never been made. To me, starfish would be like a. A, like sh. Not a shuffler. Like a 5 access. What the hell is it called when you have the wheels that go both ways?

[A]

You can't believe you didn't much on here.

[C]

I love cuttlefish.

[B]

Yes.

[C]

Okay. Two more mythical creatures. Oh, hookah, Pegasus, Mothman, Sasquatch, Werewolf.

[A]

How strict are we on the spelling here?

[D]

Yeah, these.

[C]

I am pretty sure that these are the correct spelling.

[A]

I know David's puka has one C and like an accent over the U.

[C]

That's That. Yeah, that's.

[A]

That's a different one.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

No, no, no, no. It's the same one.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

Yeah, I just spelled it wrong.

[D]

Wait, do we have video evidence of Sasquatch?

[A]

Do we have video evidence of Mothman? I don't know.

[D]

Okay, okay, how about. How about this? I'm going to pick Sasquatch. However, if there is no non grainy photo or video of this robot, like if it only exists in a database but there's no evidence, then I get a point.

[A]

Are we supposed to be conferring with each other to make this as like a group decision? Oh, yeah.

[B]

No.

[C]

100%

[A]

watch has 100 a four wheel drive vert that was at the same NHL that attraction appeared at.

[B]

And obviously video. I see where the joke is. I feel like I've seen Pegasus before. Mothman seems like it would be something from like the Pennsylvania area or something like that.

[A]

Yeah. Pegasus and Werewolf, I feel like, are both like such obvious names that like somebody has to have used them. But I couldn't point to a specific robot. But yeah, Mothman definitely stands out to me as being like a little weird. But it certainly could be like a PA or like New Jersey callback thing or somebody who's like a big fan of the X Files or whatever.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

I'm gonna say for my. My personal choice, I think Werewolf is a red herring. I think it's too obvious. I'm going to go with Werewolf.

[C]

Okay. Thomas.

[D]

I'll go with Mothman. It's funny.

[C]

Okay. And Cory.

[A]

Oh, sorry, sorry.

[C]

No, no, no.

[B]

Seth, what do you.

[C]

What do you go with.

[A]

I'm going to go with Mothman as well.

[C]

Okay, Corey, what do you go with? Corey goes with Werewolf. We are once again split in half. And the answer is Mothman. Seth is really good at picking this out. Let's see if he could do the last round.

[D]

Yes, that's just get this last round on his own.

[C]

The last round is.

[A]

God damn.

[B]

Oh God, this is so bad.

[C]

The last round is thwack. The 1 pounder. Thwack. The 3 pounder. Thwack. The 12 pounder. Thwack.The 30 pounder or thwack. The 250 pounder.

[D]

No, no, you gotta work that.

[A]

Only three of them have exclamation points.

[D]

Yeah, there's thwack.

[C]

This is thwack. This is, this is completely the spelling.

[A]

Oh man,

[B]

this, this is gonna be a shot in the dark. But for me, I, I, I'm only going off of. I don't think I've ever heard of a 2, 200. Well no, maybe it's an old battle boss. 250.

[A]

There's a lot of like weird game slots too.

[D]

Okay. You know what? £1 flat doesn't live up to the name Robo games.

[A]

No, Robo Games never had an active weapon requirement. So they did allow, they would have allowed a thwack, but they also allowed like. Whoops.

[B]

Yeah, exactly.

[A]

So that one's. Yeah, that one's tricky for me. The 250 is definitely one I'm suspicious of. I feel like there's just like, there's like been so many one pound or three pound bots that those names are probably taken there. But yeah.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

12:30 and 250 are tough. Yeah. I don't, I'm not, not so sure.

[B]

Okay, so, so my thinking here is that when Ryan had to make one of these up, he had either had to throw one with exclamation mark or one without an exclamation mark because I don't. That, that just. It would have had to be one of those. He would have had to choose. And I think that just because I've known my brother for so long, I think that there was one bot that didn't have the exclamation mark and he thought it would be too suspicious for only one of them to not have it. So I think one of the ones without the exclamation mark is one of the ones that is not.

[C]

Or, or did I pick, did I make sure the one that I added had an exclamation point so they fit in with the rest?

[B]

Okay. I'm going to go first. I'm going to choose. Oh, I should.

[C]

For the listening audience, I should be more specific about what these robots name are. This is thwack without an exclamation point for 1 pounder. A thwack with a exclamation point for a beetle weight, a thwack with an exclamation point for 12, a thwack without the estimation point for the 30 and a thwack with the exclamation point for the heavyweight.

[A]

I think I'm going to go with the 30 pound. I'm not confident enough that there wasn't a heavyweight either in America or the UK by the name of Thwack. Although if it's 250, that's the tricky part too. If it's £250 then technically most heavyweights and Robot wars competitors aren't valid because they're heavyweight class was 220 pounds or 100 kilograms. So if you're getting really pedantic, I feel like there's a Pretty good chance 250 is wrong.

[B]

Okay, Seth is. So which one are you choosing?

[A]

I'm going to choose 30.

[B]

Okay. I'm going to choose 30 as well because Seth has been on point with this and I'm just, I'm just going to go with his brain on this. I'm going to choose the 30 pound as well.

[C]

Okay. Corey has picked the 250. Thomas.

[D]

I'm going to pick one because there's not enough weight in a one pound robot for it to really get a good thwack.

[B]

That was one of my thoughts as well.

[D]

Yeah, like if You've got a £1 robot named Thwack like bruh, that's more weight.

[C]

Okay, so the answer Here is the 30 pounder. Seth was able to sniff out pretty much every single round of this except for the first round.

[A]

I swear I had no advanced knowledge of this.

[C]

All right, so that's it. That's the game corner. Seth wins this round. Thank you all for being in my game corner. Now you can get out next week. I have a fun one. Next time I have a really fun one.

[A]

All right.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

I was looking up the bots on the registry after the answer was revealed. And I just want to say for everyone listening, there are 16 robots currently in our register registry in mixed weight classes that have the word thwack in them. From lumber thwack to thwack attack to thwack a puss to sir thwack a mole. It is a very popular thing to put into your Robot's name for obvious purposes. But yeah, 16 robots in our registry that have the word thwack in them.

[C]

So I very purposely was trying to build that round and I was like, what is a thing that would be in every single weight class except for one maybe? And it was like thwack. And it worked. So it's like hell yeah.

[B]

So. So the, the 1 pound thwack. Just so you know, Thomas competed at Kilobots in August of 2025. We had five total matches and won three out of those five matches. So not a bad record for a robot that only. Yeah, that only only fought in one event. Very cool. I don't have a gleam of it,

[C]

but it's a horizontal.

[B]

See that's the thing. We were thinking thwack and we were thinking like, like it has to be like a thwack. Yeah, but I mean thwack that, you know weapons you make when they hit things as well. So it doesn't always have to be like a thwack bot. So yeah, very cool. Okay, nice. Nice throwback, Ryan. I remember as soon as you said that I was like, I remember the, the couple times that we played this game. The first time we ever played it, it was just random. There was no categories. And then you realize, I think it was the food one that you realized there was so many food bots that you turn it into like a food cat. The food category. Yeah, that was the first category they used.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. I was trying to find like what heavyweight went by Thwack. But of course if I Google thwack Heavyweight robot I just get like the entry is. And then a random video for a 150 gram robot called Thwackintosh, which is, yeah, pretty good.

[C]

It's. It's like a random heavyweight that I couldn't really find a lot of information on. It appears it like didn't even really necessarily have a recorded fight even. But it's a Thwack bot is a box with a, with a blade on the top of it is weird.

[B]

It doesn't, it doesn't appear in our registry. I'm not entirely sure why. Probably because it has no recorded fights. There is a 220 pounder called Thwacker that is in our registry that also had no recorded fights. Interestingly enough, it had zero matches. 010 losses. But it is recorded in our registry.

[A]

So very cool. The random Google result that came up with thwack exclamation point. A 1996165 pound heavyweight. Literally the entry on the website itself, robotcombatarchive.com says there's no reference to this machine anywhere on the Internet other than it's a heavyweight melee in 96. It is related to the BattleBots machine called Thwack or. Sorry, is it related to the battle monster thing called Quack? Which I guess so there's a different one. I don't know. That's quite a deep cut.

[C]

I'm gonna have to find video of it or something and make a bot of the day about it.

[B]

Well, that was very cool. Stroll down memory lane. And also look, you know, we gotta bring that back. That's. I like that game. It's very interesting and it's a very challenging game that we like, we saw. Except if you're Seth, because Seth can just. Yeah, you just look at a robot, a list of robots and be like, that's not real. That's not real. That's not real. Uh, okay, so before we get to the five in focus, I wanted to take a stop and just have a check in. So the first time we ever had you on Seth, we were talking about the, the store. You had, I believe, kind of just started it. You had a couple products there. You told us about like some of the manufacturing process. You gave us a lot of information about how it works. We are now, I believe, two years removed from that first episode and you've got a, a good thriving business, like a good model. You have new products. The beater that just came out, which looks absolutely gorgeous, I have to say. I don't think I told you that personally, but I know when I, when you posted that on Facebook, I sent it over to Ryan and I was like, this thing is sick.

[C]

So the first time we had Seth on was like, I think a week or two before you released the first hub motor.

[B]

Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that would make sense.

[A]

That would have been new bots event, like 2023, I want to say.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, something like that.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Yep.

[A]

So yeah, technically, just because robotics started as an LLC in 2021, but that was probably right around the time that I started doing it full time, when I left my, my engineering job to do it full time. So that was when things started to really ramp up. It was like shortly after, or maybe it was a year after the SSP kit had come out. But yeah, okay.

[B]

So I wanted to dig into the store, just, you know, do, do a. What it is now. You've been doing it full time for about two years now.

[A]

Correct.

[B]

It's been like your, your full time thing yes.

[A]

So, well, I guess now it's closer to three years. Cause it's 2026 now, but yeah.

[B]

Okay, so what has changed since we last talked to you? Like, what, what is the. What does the store look like now? Like, what have you changed? What, what is it like having a full time Combat Robotics position, A full time Combat Robotics job? Like, take us through, like, some of the stuff that you've changed, some of the things that you improved on. Cause you, you have a lot of experience under your belt and getting this to work now.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. I could easily talk about this for like 3 hours. I won't pour you on the death.

[C]

It's a podcast.

[B]

It's all good.

[A]

When I first started Jeska's Robotics as like a way to attempt to make any money at all, it was like like late 2020. I had just made the YouTube channel in 2019, Team Jeska's Robotics. And I basically was just trying to help people out with getting started in Combat Robotics at the time. And the problem that people kept coming up to and asking me about was always like, wiring their robots. So the first products I ever developed were the power distribution boards. And they're literally like. The first one was literally I called the BASIC board. It essentially is just like a PCB with no components on it at all. It just has labels for where to put connectors and wire your switch. And then I designed the first one, the all in one board that actually had components on it and had a BEC and LED and a power switch integrated into the board.

[B]

Yeah, I was gonna say, I think the first one that we ever bought was from. You had the BECK in it was for. Yeah.

[A]

And the only one bought it was the first time.

[C]

Sorry, that was the first time that we also got help from you because we ended up soldering it too much. So we were like, seth, no, not enough. Show us.

[B]

No, no, no. It was the first time I had ever soldered a robot and a robot component. And I was coming from computer circuit board soldering. And I had been very light on the solder and I was like, this. This circuit board's not working. Help. Seth, why is this not working? You're like, you have like a quarter of the solder you should have on here. And you grabbed it. You're like, add the solder. Add the solder. You're like, put a pound of solder on it. You're like, there you go. You should be good now.

[A]

Yeah, the all in one board was nice. It was. It was the thing about if you want to start a product company in the electronics world, like PCBs are fantastic because you can order five PCBs or you can order 50,000 PCBs and they just keep getting cheaper. And like the companies that you're ordering from just like don't care. It's really weird. Like they. Nobody questions you when you order like 10,000 PCBs at once. So if you don't have any assembled components on them, they'll just cost like pennies. And it's great if you can somehow come up with a product that doesn't require any components, which of course there is an extremely, extremely narrow niche, but it's like infinitely scalable with zero upfront investment, which is great. It's when I got outside of just doing PD boards that things really got serious though, because it's like the power distribution boards and PCB stuff in general. Like I said, it's low upfront cost. All you do is invest your time into designing the board and you pay like maybe a hundred bucks and get like 50 boards or whatever and then it's a matter of your marketing and selling them. So I mean I was at the start of things like 2021. I was making you know, like whole tens of dollars a month from that. It was not exactly life changing money or anything. And I kind of kept on expanding my PCB lineup until eventually I was like, what other things do people really need for combat purposes but that like don't really exist and that I might be able to provide. And the most obvious one that came to me was that tons of people at the time were like buying like Nerf mod motors and then like hacking them onto plantier gearboxes to make powerful brush drive systems. Because this was like before reliable brushless drive was really a thing. I think it was even. It may have been before Blheli 32. Or maybe it was like right around the start that Blheli 32 came into existence. But like brushed stuff was like way easier and more reliable at the time. And it was what pretty much everyone was using. But you were just like buying random stuff from AliExpress or Amazon or Servo City. And I like used Servocity gearboxes in my first bot division. And I had like one competition where I literally broke a motor or two in every fight because the shafts were made out of like cheese and they would just die the moment that anything touched them. So I was like, somebody has to come up with something better than this. So I found some gearboxes that were pretty durable. And I talked to the company out of Darts, which makes NERV mod motors. Well, the first ones. The first dart boxes literally were out of Darts motors and, like, random gearboxes that I found that happened to to be pretty durable after buying a few different ones and trying them out. Um, so that was where things kind of really took off. And I almost gave myself carpal tunnel by having to unscrew and screw in a thousand screws to assemble drive motors to gearboxes. But, yeah, so that was kind of how things really started to ramp up to the point where I was making, like, you know, maybe a couple hundred bucks a month. And from there, it kind of just kept going where I was like, what holes exist in this market that I might be able to fill? What. What problems do people constantly have when trying to design their robots that it's possible to provide a solution for? And then, you know, how is it something that I can afford to, like, do? And as things kept building up from there, the things that I could afford to do kept getting bigger as well. And so it eventually got to the point where I've got, like, the entire SSP Comet robot kit, even though, you know, that that was like, investing, like, weeks of work, months of work, even talking to dozens of suppliers and getting, you know, you know, potentially thousands of dollars of parts on the line. So I actually did pre orders for the first batch because I just couldn't afford to buy all the parts at once for, like, 30 kits. But when I started getting pre orders rolling in, then I was able to actually put the money down and get all the parts and then try and keep them in stock from then on. And things really ramped up at that point. That was when I got to the point where I was actually making, like, you know, a couple thousand dollars in revenue a month. And it was, like, just enough to scrape together to be able to afford my rent. And so I was like, well, I'm now spending, like, 60 hours a week building SSP kits and another 40 hours a week working at DECA. So I decided to quit working my engineering job, which paid much, much better, and took the stupid idea of trying to make money by selling robot parts to people.

[B]

Well, I mean, you. You took that plunge, and it paid off. So one of the things I did want to ask is you mentioned the SSP kit and how much work went into that. How does it feel a couple years removed from that, seeing your SSP kit get, you know, high into the rankings in NHRL and just see people take it and do so well with it. Like you were designed like most of the time bot builders, I mean, maybe removed from, from you and a couple others that I can think of. But most of the time you have your bot, you use it and like it's you seeing it do well for yourself. You have this unique perspective of a design that you have that has been put in other people's hands, that has now gone and become a, like you could be watching a stream and go, that's an SSP kit like that. Like, how does that feel having like your design have that big of an impact on combat robotics as a whole?

[A]

Yeah, I mean, obviously it's pretty awesome. It's like one of the main things that has kept me motivated to keep doing what I've been doing. Every time I go to a competition, I see like, I mean these days it's incredible. Like I'll sometimes see, you know, a third or half of the robots at a competition have at least one of my parts in it at these three pound and one pound competitions, which is like unbelievable. Frankly. I never, when I started doing this, I had never really anticipated it being anywhere close to paying my bills or anything like that. I literally was just like, if I make enough money to just afford to keep division running, like, I'll be pretty happy. But things just kind of kept escalating and it kept on being clear that there was more I could do. And then eventually it became so much work and so much revenue that it made sense to make it my full time job. And that's what I've kind of doubled down on ever since then. So, yeah, I mean, I get an immense sense of satisfaction from being able to see, you know, SSP kits competing even today. And I think that there are a lot of decisions that, I mean there's, I've made plenty of mistakes along the way, don't get me wrong, but I have learned a ton in the process of like running this business. And there are a lot of like major key takeaways that I feel like even if, you know, this business were to collapse tomorrow, like, would be valuable to me for the rest of my life. And yeah, like one of those would be that I think like from the very beginning there was, I'm trying to remember exactly who it was, but there was some like, incredible interview, like podcast interview I listened to where this guy was basically talking about how even if you don't know that you're going to succeed, you should plan for and set yourself up for a success. Because if you like, for Instance, let's say you design a product and you, you know, you know, make a YouTube video about it and then 10 million people see that video and now, you know, 10,000 people want to buy your product. Right. If you have absolutely zero way of being able to handle that sort of order volume ever and no plan on how to do that. I mean, just look at Kickstarter, you know, like how many products get launched on Kickstarter and some guys like, you know, my goal is to raise $5,000 to make 12 of these and then they get like $500,000 and they have to figure out how to make 12,000 of them. And now they're like completely screwed because they don't have the slightest idea what they're doing. Right. So yeah, at a less extreme scale though, it's like I had kind of like put in place systems and plans from the beginning that I thought at least had some way of becoming scalable. And that made it so that it wasn't quite as painful of a learning curve when I started actually expanding to the point where now I have like a hundred products. My systems are definitely not perfect. But I, I made the, the decisions earlier to scale my like website and change things up when it was going to be way less painful and difficult to do so in order to make it so much easier where I'm at now to support that breadth of product repertoire. And like, I think one thing that has proven that this is, this was a good decision is that like I wrote not to, to knock on Repeat Rocks in any way, but like I switched my website over from Squarespace to shopify like 2 years before repeat Robotics then later decided to switch from using, I think it was big cartel to Shopify because I found out that Shopify was just an infinitely better, more scalable way to run an e commerce store. And so I thought I felt pretty validated when I saw that he was making the switch over very relatively recently in fact, because it just is a better system to have in place for operating at the scale that both of us are at. I'm honest.

[B]

Shopify not a sponsor.

[A]

Yeah, I'm honestly talking about for so long up until then. There's things other than Shopify that will work. But the, the big difference is like you're going from paying, you know, tens of dollars a month to like my Shopify plan is a thousand dollars a year. It's like 80 bucks a month. And then on top of that I'm paying for tons of like third party add ons and apps. So like my monthly bill from Shopify is not small, but I knew that it would make a lot of sense and I made that decision when it wasn't a better financial decision, knowing that it would, would eventually be a better decision.

[B]

Right now. Now are you doing order fulfillment yourself

[C]

or is there a third party doing it now?

[A]

Yeah. So right now, just because robotics technically is a two person operation, so I have myself as the only full time employee and my assistant Josh who works with me part time, he does almost all of the order fulfillment. So he works as a contractor with me. Technically not an employee, but yeah. So I'm the only full time employee still, but yeah, Josh has been helping me out for you know, around like 15 to 25 hours a week and he does almost all the order fulfillment for me now, like three days a week. I do a little bit here and there when I have to. But yeah, for the most part that's been enough to keep up with it. And I, I looked into doing what I think Repeat's doing now, which is like using a third party logistics service, but it ended up being way too costly and, and didn't make a lot of sense. Uh, this is, that's another step that like maybe I'll have to take if things were to scale up like 10x from where they are now. But there are like a laundry list of reasons why I feel like it's. I, I can deliver a better experience for my customers and make my own life a lot easier by keeping everything in house.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, it makes sense. And you have someone that you know, you, you have the, I don't want to call it the, not the grunt work. Cause it's not. That's not what I mean. But you like, you, you took the stuff that you're like this is just repeat over and over and over again. Let me have someone else take care of that so I can concentrate on the more design stuff. And speaking of design, we talked about the SSP kit. The other thing that I wanted to touch on was the hub motor. Designing the hub motor, coming up with that idea and now seeing it as a major player in the game as far as vertical and horizontal spinners, like that's, that's going to be awesome. What does that headspace look like? Because now not just the bot kit, you also have like a weapon, a weapon component that is just making such a big impact on the sport as a whole. That's, I mean, how does that feel?

[A]

Yeah, I mean that one was interesting too because I feel like the, the hub motor was a pretty big gamble as far as, you know. I had to invest a significant amount of time of money. But like the SSP kit, I basically was like. One of the original reasons I designed the SSP kit was cause I saw the D2 kits existed and people were buying them. And, like, at that time was right around the time that they were starting to become pretty uncompetitive. And like, to. To operate a D2 kit, you have these giant, chunky, exposed wheels. The wheels are like $30 a pair, and they're made of foam, and they get torn up, like, every single fight. And so people are spending like. Like 30 to $60 per fight just to keep their D2 cuts in the arena. I was like, there's. There's no way that this is sustainable for most builders. And I feel like I could do something that's just better than this in every way and more importantly, has an active weapon. So it's NHRL legal, right? And so I. I basically designed the SSP kit from the start with the goal in mind of making it better than the D2 kit in every conceivable way. Which meant that since people were buying the D2 kit, there was no reason that people wouldn't be buying an ssp. The hub motor is very different from that, though, because with the hub motor, I was basically trying to distill down something that every single bot had done very differently and in their own individual, unique way and make a version of it that as many people as possible would be okay with standardizing on. And that's much harder because with weapon systems up until then, basically a hundred percent of people in Beetle Waits were running belt drive. It was like, definitely, I'd say, like less than a percent of people were doing something else. And if they had a spinner specifically. So hub motors were obviously a thing that people have been doing for a very long time, but they always required cutting apart an existing motor and modifying it in some significant ways to make it survive the forces of a combat robot weapon. And not many people were willing to make that trade off. So it wasn't obvious that, like, a significant percentage of builders would even be willing to pay for something that did the work for them in that regard. And I knew it was going to cost significantly more than a weapon motor for a belt drive system. Although, if you can, when you add up, you know, the price of the pulleys, the belts, the extra frame components, it's not quite as staggering of an additional cost. But it's still, you know, it's still going to be more expensive just because the machining and everything that's required, it's. And it's on such a small scale. I mean, like, I'm sure that, you know, HobbyKing sells 12,000 prop drive motors a year, but I'm selling like hundreds maybe of hub motors a year, so it's gonna be more costly because it's lower volume. But I, I basically took that gamble and I was like, I think if I do this, if I execute on this well enough that it'll be able to convince people that hub motors are a viable strategy. And the reason that they aren't so far is mostly just because they're so high effort that so few people are even willing to try. Not that they're inherently worse than a belt drive system. And so that's pretty much what I sought out to do. And I think I did a, well, a good enough job that, you know, the, the results speak for themselves. You know, Turbofiend, one entire tournament using it. There's been a ton of hammer saws in the three pound class. They've been using them. Tons of one pound bots have been using them. I mean, I brought Sonic to a first place without one, but I broke my motor shaft in like half my fights. And then when I switched to the hub motor, I fought much harder opponents and got second place at the MIT event recently with it and didn't break a single motor. So it definitely ended up being a much better system for, for that style of robot.

[B]

Yeah, so. So I will. I just want to make a note that Corey is not on because his laptop crept out. So he's kind of dropped off and is trying to figure that out. I'm not sure if he'll come back, but if anyone's wondering, that's why his voice. Well, his voice has not been heard this entire episode, but he was having some issues and. Yeah, but I wish Corey was on because when I was designing Reaper, I wanted to do a hub motor and it was at the time that you had not had the hub motors out. And he helped me design a jacket that goes around the motor that the weapon then sits on and gets bolted onto. And then literally we did that. I ordered all the weapon blades, the weapon blades came in, we had the system in place. And then look, there's a commercial from Seth saying that he has these new hub motors now. It was literally like that close of a thing. And I was like, are you serious?

[A]

Yeah, I do. I didn't design my hub motors in any way the same way that Corey designed his because mine are metal instead of plastic. But I do think I did talk to him while I was in the design process to get an idea of like, how he was isolating the shock away from the motor because inside of his hub motor, his hub motor was like printed in on matter, you know, on a. What's it called? His was printed on a markforged 3D printer with like their proprietary onyx carbon fiber nylon, which I don't know. If you've never held it in your hands, you wouldn't understand that. It's like surprisingly different from like most carbon fiber nylons on the market. And I still don't quite understand it having compared them side by side. But like, even, like, even like matterhackers Nylon X has like way less flexibility and impact resistance than the onyx stuff. But it also at the time it was impossible to print on anything that wasn't a markforged printer. Yeah, Bamboo Labs printers didn't exist yet. So, um, it was out of the question for me. So I went with metal on mine. But his system is kind of interesting because he takes a. He. He was one of the only people that I've seen take a basically completely stock motor and just add stuff around it that makes it so the motor doesn't break, rather than having to cut it apart and just use the magnet ring and the stator.

[B]

Yeah, no, this. This is literally the one he helped me design for Reaper is it's a sleeve of TPU that then has a flat circle that comes off of it. That the weapon has a circle cut in the middle of it that is the perfect size to slide over that sleeve. So it's a sleeve that sits snugly onto the motor that the weapon then sits onto and gets bolted onto. And then there's another part that comes on the other side of it so it sandwiches it and it separates itself from the motor so that it's still delivering that hit from the motor, but it's not directly connected to the motor where it's going to send that shockwave into the motor. Yeah, he. I went back and forth with him multiple times over. Like, does this look good? This is good. And he helped me. He basically helped me design the entire robot. The only difference is that I need is actually I need to. I wanted to change it over to a hub motor, but in its current state it works really well. So again, wish Corey was still on, but props to him for. But that's what I use is. Is his. His hub motor design.

[A]

So, yeah, I mean obviously having him just won the 30 pound class. He is an incredible engineer. He's been doing comet robot stuff for probably a pretty similar amount of time than I have. Not maybe longer. I'm not sure. I mean I started in college before team just because robotics a couple years before. I'm not sure exactly when he started but it was probably in a similar time frame. He really does his stuff. Just cause. Robotics revolutionized robot combat by bringing off the shelf hub motors to the world. Those designed to take any steel blade you want and slap them on a motor and be able to take the punishment and dish out some massive hits in combat. Now we bring you the modular hub motor drum system we call Scarab. Scarab is a 100 millimeter wide, 65 millimeter effective diameter drum with hardened S7 tool steel teeth. 2024 aluminum hub, fully modular with replaceable magnet rings that can be swapped out with two screws in seconds. This has been designed from the ground up to be the most modular and most repairable weapon system you'll ever find. Off the shelf. Check it out at justcuzrobotics.com scarab that's j u s t c u z robotics.com scarab buy your scarab today and get a free weapon lock tag with your order. Just make sure to add the tag to your cart and it should cost $0. Check it out at justcuzrobotics.coms scarab or just google S C A R A B and just C U Z Robotics.

[B]

Hey everyone, you're already listening, so you know the fights don't end when the episode does. But the Havoc Rundown now lives over at Havoc Rundown.com again, that's Havoc. Havocrundown.com that's where we're posting Combat Robotics news, hosting every episode of the show and running the largest Combat Robotics bot registry that's ever been put together. Stats, history, teams and results, all built to grow alongside the sport. We're also curating fight videos, rolling out community games and dropping merch for anyone who wants to rep the chaos. And the 2026 fantasy league is live right now. You can create your own fantasy league for a full season or spin one up for a single day Event draft. Robots track performance across events and compete in a way that actually fits how Combat Robotics is run. This year, our focus is the sport as a whole. If robots are fighting, it belongs in the conversation. All leagues, all formats, all rule sets. From local events to competitions around the world. We have got you covered. Thank you for listening. Everyone, let's get you back to the episode and back to the chaos right now. Yeah. Okay, so before we get too far in and answer any of these questions that we have, we're going to slide over to our signature segment, which is the five in focus. So this is five different questions from five different perspectives. We have a question for Corey, even though he's not on, but we're actually going to start with you, Ryan. Why don't you ask your question? All right.

[C]

Your products have been a huge part in revolutionizing how combat robots are created, designed, and fought. What do you see as the being the next product or revolution that's going to change combat robots? Like, your hub motor completely changed how people build robots. Like, most people use your hub motors now and. Or use, like any hub motor. Like, that's the new thing. Well, that's been the new thing for a few years. What do you think is the next product?

[A]

That is a tough one, to be honest with you. I think I could give two different answers to that. Which is a product that I have already designed, which is the Scarab, and a product that I have not yet attempted to design. But, yeah, I think that probably the Scarab is, while maybe not in its current form, I think the flexibility and modularity of that system where people can do crazy stuff. Like Cheddar did, like, a solid seal version of the drum, and he just reused the same stator, magnet ring and shaft and bearings and just made a custom hub for it. Like, you can do crazy stuff like that with the Scarab system, and you don't even have to use the same aluminum hub and steel teeth that I designed for it. But I do think with the aluminum hub and steel teeth, with their current rendition, it will be shockingly reliable system and the upkeep to run it. Like I talked about with the D2 kit, I thought that was the biggest problem. It's just that you have to pay so much money every time it fights in damage. Like, the. The goal with the hub motor is even though the motor's in harm's way, you've got to make it resilient enough that it won't take damage. Every single fight that takes it out of commission. And if it does take damage, then you got to make the parts that are getting damaged as cheap as possible and easy as possible to replace. And that was really my goal with the Scarab. It was to make something that's really compact, hits super hard, has as few downsides as possible as a result of being a hub motor in Terms of being vulnerable to damage, but also with the, you know, inevitability that comet robot parts do get damaged, is still going to be field serviceable with the replaceable magnet ring that you can just remove with two screws and get back into it without having to pay for a new $150 motor. Because, like, obviously it's an expensive product and there's no way around that. I have never made any attempt to hide the fact that that is an extremely complicated product with a lot of parts and those parts I want to make no compromises on the quality of the materials. And that made it relatively expensive. Like somebody was asking, why not use AR600? Well, the first version, the beta version used AR600 and the teeth cracked and blunted because AR600 just isn't as durable as S7. And so new version uses S7. Why am I using 2024 aluminum? Because it's more durable than 7075, even though it's a little more expensive. And those are materials that not very many people are using. Not because people didn't know that they were good, but because they're relatively expensive to get and to, to like for S7, like you have to buy it in an unhardened state, machine it, then harden it and keep your tolerances dead on. Like even the manufacturer that I got these teeth from, I ordered like 200 teeth and the first one, 100 that they made didn't meet the flatness tolerance that I specified in the drawing. And they let me know that and I said, no, that's not good enough. And they offered to remake them all. So literally, even the professional machinists that work with this material data and day out have a difficult time processing that material. But the heat treat process is critical to making it as good as it can be. As you'll hear from, you know, red buildings of Tombstone and in the robots combat manual, which I pored over during the design of this, there's like, there's a shocking amount of information. There's like entire chapters specifically on like designing an aluminum weapon with steel insert teeth on in the combat manual. So it's definitely a, a thing that has been done before and can be done successfully.

[B]

Okay, very cool. So Corey's question, of course he's not on yet, I'm not sure, be back on. But Cora's question is combat robotics is usually a chaotic hobby that we use to escape our nine to five jobs. You've turned it into what a lot of us dream of making a part of your Career. How do you avoid getting burnt out being around Comet Robotics in your everyday life? And what keeps the fighting side fresh for you?

[A]

Yeah, that's a tough question. It is something that I do struggle with. So I'm not going to say I have the best solution to that problem right now. But in my eyes, one thing that has helped is that even though I do have, like, the YouTube channel and the stuff that I do is kind of a reflection on myself and my business publicly, when I post videos on there, every time I go to a competition, I'm hanging out with my robot friends and talking about robot things. And when I'm fighting my bot and it's the three minutes that it's in the arena, I've got my adrenaline pumping and I'm trying to focus on how can I beat the other robot that's sitting in the opposite corner. Like, that is still very divorced in my mind from the running a business aspect of my job. Right. So it kind of feels like there's like two or three different, you know, headspaces. There's like the business side of things, there's like the YouTube side of things, and then there's the actual competing side of things. And I feel like the competing side of things for me is still enough of just a hobby that I can still enjoy it as a hobby, even though it is in some ways in service of the bigger picture, like business stuff and the YouTube stuff as well, that, that I've been struggling with the most in trying to figure out how to make it not feel like a job right now, because it used to be purely a hobby, and now I feel like it's become more purely a job, and it's been much harder to motivate myself to make videos regularly. Part of that is just, like, I could talk for a long time about just how the YouTube algorithm supposedly works. And if you're not constantly making, like, really engaging content that your videos underperform. And it takes, you know, more and more hours to edit videos into engaging content. So it's like every single video that I make, I have to pour more and more time into, and that makes it pretty, you know, demotivating to work on the next video after the last one is like, oh, I spent like 12 hours editing that video, and now I have to make one that may take 13 hours or 14 hours. So, yeah, I have been trying to figure out a good way around that. Maybe I'll do like a second channel where I upload less polished stuff or I'll play around with Some new formats that don't require the same level of fit and finish. Or maybe I'll just release more videos, but some of them are not as polished as others. But that's something I'm still actively trying to work on.

[C]

Maybe, maybe if the business goes 10x you could hire a intern to make the videos.

[A]

I think in a perfect world I would do that. But part of the issue too is like I've like played around with that idea before, but I feel like it would take as much time and effort to explain to somebody how to make a Just Cause Robotics video as it would for me to make it, you know, just do it. Yeah, it's a very, very specific kind of style and voice that I feel I have. And when I've tried hiring other editors to make like shorts or whatever they like do, you know, like the TikTok edits like booms out of X and stuff. I'm just like, that's what TikTok wants. But that's not what I want.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, I, I, I love your content every time you put out a new video. I even have watched most of the tour tutorial videos and everything like that. And I think a lot of the community sees your, especially your teaching stuff as like bibles of just like I've seen multiple times somebody ask a question somewhere and then either you or another builder is like, oh, Seth has the answer here. Here's the video answering your question right here.

[A]

Yeah, that, that was one of the things that I really focused on earlier on. I haven't made as many tutorial videos lately, partly because I've covered a lot of stuff and not all of it needs to be updated. But also because I, I spent a very long time making like a repertoire of like 30 to 50 videos that I knew would be, you know, quote unquote, like evergreen in the YouTube lingo that videos that anybody could reference at any time and that they'll find via search five years later and still find relevant. I do think at some point I'll probably have to remake a good number of those videos over time. Like especially things about like choosing the right weapon motor. Like I made a new video on that recently. Cause it's like hub motors exist now and that changes everything really, like you said. But you know, there's the things that really needed updating I have done more recently like talking about AM32 and how to use it radio control, stuff that changed quite a bit from before everyone was using like OpenTX to now. And I'll probably have to make another video on that at some point talking about like ELRS systems that have become really popular as well.

[C]

Oh, I would love an elrs. Although I, I have used already the system to get my pocket working because now I have a radio master pocket. And once you learn how to do that system, it's like, oh, I didn't realize that a transmitter can literally do whatever you want. Like I didn't realize that it wasn't like a pre programmed thing like originally when we first started especially like it before I was into combat robotics, I was like, oh, it just does what it does and it's just, it is a thing that is what it is. But once you know how to use systems like elrs, it's like, oh, I can literally control my robot however I want. And I can get as complex down to like making control arcs and stuff like that. And feel in making the robot work exactly how I want in the controller, the transmitter work exactly as it needs to. I love the ELRS system now. I've been playing with it a lot.

[A]

Yeah, a lot of the features that you're talking about I think are things that I can do even with just like a flysky receiver, but using same radio that you would use with the LRS stuff, just the four in one version of it. And yeah, so that, yeah, the going from like an, an FSI 6 to like a pocket or a Zorro where you have a full HTX operating system on your controller and a screen and like buttons and dials and things like it's overwhelming at first, but it gives you like infinite control. I mean you can literally write computer code in LUA script and run scripts on your radio that control aspects of your robot. Literally. You can basically use the tran. The, you can, you can essentially use the microcontroller in your radio to control your robot without even needing to put one in your bottom, which is insane.

[D]

There's a lot of videos on ELRS for drones, but a lot of them don't cover the most important things for robots. Like servo stretching. You can do in, in there. You can do the fail safe. They don't go over PWM because W is PWM for drones anymore. You can use multiple receivers setting up the binding keys. Like there's a lot of great stuff. Like there's one guy that has like a 40 minute video that tells you almost everything. Yeah, it's like specifically drone information which most of it transfers. But Seth, if you can make that video for robots, that is.

[A]

I kind of did that already I have like an ultimate guide to radios. But it's. And it's like 45 minutes long. But half of it is on the FSI 6 and half of it is on SDX. And I didn't go that deep into HDX. Like I definitely think that I could do another video that's an hour just on edge DX stuff I don't even do like Lewis grips. Like I don't even use all the features. But there are a lot of things that are like incredibly helpful in niche situations. Like in like the SSP kit for example. Cause I've got the modularity, I can run the servo or I can run the vertical spinner. Right. You can just map the stick three to both channel three and channel four of the receiver. So I have the receiver channel three with the endpoints set for the servo and receiver channel four full throttle for the spinner. And it responds to a direction switch on my transmitter. So it goes from spin it forward to spin backward when I flip a switch. So even though I'm using the same stick to control both of those things because they're not active at the same time, I can just use one input to control two completely different outputs. Which is like not a thing that 98% of people ever need. But it's super useful for a modular robot. And basically everyone who's doing a modular robot with different weapon options that aren't all spinners would widely benefit from that.

[D]

I think it also be worth having like a five minute video possibly a little longer if it needs to on just how to connect your radio Master Zorro or Pocket to a receiver firmware, fail safe and mixing. Because there's a lot of people that come to safety who put an ELRS together or they built the ERIC kit and Sam's video didn't like he has a really good video. But it's sometimes it's nice like having someone else's explanation. So you can just be like, here's the link. I can't leave safety to fix your robot. But watch this. That's got you.

[A]

I think 3/4 of 3/4 of events that I've attended, I have had to help somebody set fail safes or get their radio to bind to their or the receiver to bind to their transmitter.

[B]

So let's move on. Thomas, why don't you ask. I sandwiched you in between right in the middle. Why don't you ask your secret question?

[D]

Yes. So Seth, there's you, there's Peter, there's a lot of other Companies and everyone's making their products too darn good. So what happens when we inevitably get to the point where we have miniature nuclear reactors and Vibranium Unobtainium Indestructibilium armor? What happens? Everyone's paying $3,000 for an ESC and this. When are we going to start implementing like some, some time limits into the motors that just cause them to fail or armor that falls apart after 12 hits to make it, mix it up, make it a little more fair.

[A]

If you ask Jameson go, I think he'd tell you we're already at the Vibranium Unobtainium armor stage. It's called tpu. Um, like robots just don't break. Robots just don't break like they used to. You know, if you design it right, you can get away with a lot of BS in your robot design. In the 1 pound and 3 pound class and the 150 gram class too, which I just haven't really been a part of personally. But yeah, I mean it's a tough question to answer. I think that the realistic answer is that like with any form of competition this is an arms race, right. And if you, if you look at it from one perspective, you could say Comet Robotics is kind of old because it's gone back. There's like a 20 year history. But if you look at it from another perspective, Combat Robotics is still a brand new sport and the technology that we're using is always changing. And I think that that's one thing that really makes Combat Robotics different from a lot of other engineering related sports is like sure, in F1 they are now making the cars go from gas powered to hybrid electric. And that's a huge change the teams have to deal with especially this year because they changed the rules for how much energy you can get out of the electric motor. Significantly more. But like at the end of the day, if you looked at a race car from five years ago and you looked at a race car from 25 years ago, they used almost all the same parts, but there was a lot more engineering effort into optimizing those parts. With Comet robots I think there's a little of both. There's a little bit of new technology that completely changes things that slowly people adopt over time. And there's also a lot of really, really, really intricate optimization that the top tier bots are always doing that's not visible to anyone else. And it's all behind the scenes. And like I, I've said this many times before but like if you took division version one and put it up against, like, division version 4.5, like, version one would lose probably 99% of the time. Right? And I think that if you look at the first version of almost any bot that's been around for five years against the current version, they would get decimated every time. And it's not because the builder is, you know, that much better necessarily, but it's also because of everything around that. Like, you're saying, like, people are making hub motors, people are making, you know, durable drive motors. People are making TPU bots, which used to be such a weird thing. Like, I remember Squishy at, like, one of my first nhrls, and I was like, oh, that's super weird. You can make a robot that's Squishy. It was such a unique idea that he called the robot Squishy because no one had done it really. And then now every time.

[C]

Wait, you don't. You do. You don't miss the nylon. Everybody trying to figure out what the actual print settings to use for printing nylon parts.

[A]

You know, that was the whole era.

[C]

That was a fun thing.

[D]

3D printing.

[A]

3D printing is the biggest thing that has changed Comet Robotics. Yeah, for sure, because you used to be able to 3D print stuff, but now you can 3D print basically every part of your robot's physical instruction, and it won't even be bad. And it won't even require you to pay more than 300 bucks for your printer either. Like, when I bought. I just bought the Bambu Lab X2D yesterday. That was released yesterday, and I bought my X1 carbon about a year after it was released, when it wasn't on Kickstarter anymore, I paid, like, $1,450 for the X1 carbon with an AMS and the X1 carbon standalone back then was, I think, 1200 or $1,250.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

Now, the X2D gives you a chamber heater, gives you a second extruder with a Bowden setup, but still second extruder. So you can print dual material. You can print dissimilar support materials. You can do TPU with PL supports, whatever. It gives you, you know, a camera to check what the first layer going down is like, which. The LIDAR system on the X1 supposedly does that, but honestly, I can't tell the difference between my P1s that doesn't have it. And it also gives you, like, an advanced filtration system. The AMS has a dryer built into it, and it costs significantly less. Like, 900 bucks for the AMS combo, 650 for the printer alone. It's like half the price of what the X1 carbon was back then. And it's an objectively so much better machine. And, you know, before the X1 carbon came out, I was using a Prusa Mk3s and an artillery sidewinder X2. And before that, I had my college convinced to buy a creality CR10. And before that I had convinced or somebody at my high school had bought a MakerBot Roll K2. So, like, I've used like every era of the shittiest imaginable 3D pattern up to these modern printers. So if there's anybody who can appreciate how good 3D printers have become in the last like 10 years, it's me. And it's literally like anybody can just like turnkey print a carbon fiber nylon part with that $650 printer or even some like $400 printers these days. Whereas you are paying thousands of dollars for like an ultimaker to have any shot of getting like a good nylon print.

[D]

Kids don't remember the pain of having to take two resistors, wrap them in tape, put them in fiberglass blankets, stick some silicone in there, put into a block, build your printer out of wood. Remember, wood shrinks and expands with temperature and humidity. And then you had this platform that was supposed to automate your building, but no, all it did was automate the failure of your prints. And you know how much that cost? It was like $2,000. Oh, plus or minus. Dimensions were like a millimeter. Yeah, that was quality.

[B]

Okay, so very cool. Let us move on to Ashley's question. Ashley is currently in Vegas, but she sent in her question, which is actually Vegas themed. So you have been to Vegas a few times for Battlebots with Bloodsport. You're going back again with Bloodsport for the pro league. Pro league, right. I'm saying that right. Pro league filming. Um, so her question is, if you have any downtime in Vegas, what is one weird or wacky place that you would like to visit or have visited?

[A]

Uh, one of my favorite things that I did in Vegas was I saw the Piff the Magic Dragon comedy magic show. I can strongly recommend that to anybody who is up there. If that's.

[B]

I saw him when he was in Connecticut, so yes, very strongly recommend. Yep, yep, he's very good. If anyone has not seen him, you can catch him on YouTube.

[A]

Look up like America's Got Talent. Piff the magic dragon on YouTube. It's hilarious.

[B]

He was on Penn and Teller's show as well.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Fool us, I think. Yeah.

[A]

So I also saw Penn and Teller show like a year and a half or two years ago in the Boston area as well. They're also fantastic, very cool.

[B]

Yep, I will second that recommendation. And then the last question is mine. So how has running Just cause Robotics changed the way you personally approach building and competing compared to before you started the company?

[A]

Um, yeah, that's a bit complicated. I think that again, I've been trying to kind of divorce the like hobby, enjoyment of competing with the business section of my life and haven't necessarily had the greatest success. But I have felt like almost all of my bots these days. I feel almost obligated to be using them as test beds for parts that I am currently or planning on selling. Not always. Like I'm working on a 12 pounder now that's gonna have very, very little in the way of like parts that I sell because I just don't have any 12 pound repertoire right now really. But I definitely like getting the experience of my customers and figuring out what the failure modes are, you know, myself and what areas of improvement there are for my components the hard way. Because, you know, I think it's just kind of like a, an untold fact that if you sell, you know, 200 products to random people around the world and then you get like five emails from people saying they're not happy with them, there's probably 45 other people who weren't happy but just didn't say anything and they're just never gonna buy from you again. So getting the feedback myself is the only way I can guarantee that I know exactly what is going wrong and that what areas need to be improved. And yes, I do actually just talk to people who use my parts as well or I ask them specifically for feedback. And that does help to an extent. But I'm never going to catch every possible issue myself. I just have a much better chance of catching an issue when I test the parts myself than I will by never using it.

[C]

But the best part is you update your products. You update with version twos and like version 1.2s and everything like that. And I think those are, and it's always like those little incremental things to make it just like to solve those problems and everything like that, which I, I, I really appreciate. But I, I don't want to skip past. You're building a 12?

[A]

Yeah, well, that's the plan. I don't have anything close to a finished robot right now. I don't Even have anything close to a finished CAD right now. But yeah, basically. So I made a 12 pounder last year, sort of. I bought an existing 12 that was D6 inspired. I renamed it to Integration and it completely sucked and went.02. And so my original plan was to take Integration's vertical spinning blade, which was almost 16 inches in diameter, and just turn it horizontal and make a mid cutter. However, I realized that the reason the mid cutter, the reason the vertical spinner didn't work at all was that there were so many compromises made to the frame to be able to support such a big diameter spinner and it would just never be stiff enough for that to work. And I will have the same problem trying to run that same size blade as a horizontal. It'll just be slightly better. So I've pivoted to doing fully custom everything from scratch basically and reusing none of the parts from integration. Except maybe I'll use like some of the electronics. But I'm planning on doing like different drive motors, different wheels, different weapon motor, different weapon drive system. I really. The biggest takeaway that I had from integration was that I absolutely hate V belts, which is a very, very counter cultural take. But I don't like having to tension my weapon systems. And I do hub motors in all of my bots that are in the like three pound class because I hate having detention belt systems and find them to be unreliable and annoying. Even though most people have success with them eventually. When it comes to V belts, like you have to get the tension right or they just don't work. The timing belts, they're much more forgiving and that's what I used on division and I had good success with. But doing timing belts at 12 pound scale isn't something most people do. But I'm going to try and do it.

[C]

Okay, see, See what you need to do is you need to design a 12 pound hub motor and then you need to order about a hundred and something from China and then you could sell them and then make a 12 pounder based off.

[A]

Yeah, unfortunately I feel like the market's still not quite there. It was kind of funny with the Zomboxes too. I like developed this thing that I thought was really great and that was way better than the other things that existed. And then nobody bought them for a really long time.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And all of a sudden a bunch of schools and the guys going to New Zealand bought like my entire remaining stock in like three weeks. So I basically was like, oh crap, now I have to reorder these and it's going to take two months to get more, but they are on the way. But like the, yeah, the 30 pound class, again, like the 12 pound class. It's so much smaller and less predictable than the three pound class, it turns out. And I don't really know what order quantities make sense for things, but I'm pretty sure 200 is unfortunately way too high.

[B]

Okay, so that was my question. We are going to move on to our last segment which is the listener mailbag. You've reached the voicemail of the HAVOC rundown. Please leave your message after the tone. So we got questions from all of our listeners who wanted to hear from you. So we're going to do these kind of rapid fire because there are quite a lot of them. But as usual and on the Discord, if you join our Discord, you'll see the mailbag and you can put in your own mailbag question to ask any of our guests. We usually ask about a week before that. This is the guest we're going to have. Does anyone have any questions? And you can put in your own question there if you ever wondered how. But Nick is very prolific for asking the first question whenever we put a mailbag up. So of course Nick from Crafty Cat comment is the first question that we have on here. He says neither you or Peter were at April nhrl a rarity. Can you confirm you were participating in a secret fight club for robot part supplier superiority?

[A]

Unfortunately no. I think both of us were busy with BattleBots Prep potentially or various other things. But I mean Peter doesn't make it to every single event. But I, I have made it to most nhrs that I can make it to. However, yeah, this, this time I was trying to take some time off because I did four events in like five weekends or something in the, in like March and into or February into March. And I was just feeling a little bit burnt out from that. I needed some time to like collect my thoughts and I am like six months behind on event recap videos as well, which I still need to deal with. But that's my plan to deal with after BattleBots Pro League filming.

[C]

Very fair. What you need to do is just do a video that's just fight single line reaction. Fight single line reaction.

[B]

This is my catch up video. His other question is if you could bring one product to market ignoring all feasibility and practicality of getting it to that point, what would it be?

[A]

The one thing that people keep asking for that I don't know if it's has any practical way of existing But I think would be sick as hell is like a hub motor that is just a wheel, but it also has an integrated esc and it's just like. You just, like, bolt it to your robot and that's your entire drive side.

[B]

Oh, wow. Okay. Just.

[C]

That would be sick.

[B]

Yeah, that'd be very cool. So Che sent in this question. Before we get to the question, I just want to do a quick shout out for Rain. Rain won first place in the antweight division at the Red Dirt Rumble. He fought Peter Garnash four times in one day, still going seven and one throughout the entire day. So he had a great performance and took first place. So, Rain, congratulations on that win and on to his question. His question is, how did you think of the design for the SSP kit?

[A]

I mean, like I said, it was Basically, I had two goals. One, make sawing better than the D2 kit in every conceivable way. And two, make sure it had an active weapon that was NATRIL compliant. And in service of doing that, I had a lot of different concepts I played with over several months. Mark Konsberg, the builder of Erebus and Berserker, I shared, like, a lot of the early CAD sketches with him, and we were talking back and forth because at the time, he had been reaching out to me for feedback on his designs as well. Um, so, yeah, like, the. There were a lot of different, like, concepts that I played with, and I settled pretty early on having there need to be wheel guards so that you didn't have to replace the wheels and drive motors every fight. And the lifting arm being a servo driven, because that's just like a million times easier than anything else, really. Um, and figuring out the geometry and the packaging of all that and developing the motherboard alongside it to make it way easier to wire up than any other kit on the market. Those were aspects that I came up with as I was going through the design process with the intention of making the best possible experience for somebody who had zero combat robotics or robotics experience of any kind and had never touched a soldering iron before. And I was very intentional about that aspect of the design in a way that I think most Comet robot kit builders aren't. And I feel like most of the comic robot kits that have hit the market, including the D2 kit, were basically designed by somebody who had built Comet robots for people who had built Comet robots. But my approach was to make a comment robot that was not for people who had already built Comet robots.

[B]

Okay, that. Yeah, very cool. Brendan Bennett, Young has what three, two questions here. What are some lessons you've learned about product design from when you started to now? And what's your favorite product that you've had and why'd you like it?

[A]

Yeah, I mean, I've. I've learned a million things that. That could be a whole other podcast episode, of course. Like, one of the things that I learned early on that was like a hard to swallow pill was when you ask people what they want, they don't tell you. And either it's not necessarily that they're gonna lie to you about what they want, but it's more so that they don't understand the. The huge amount of nuance in making the cost benefit analysis decisions that are involved in actually bringing a product to life. So, like, if someone says, I want something that's small, lightweight, durable, and cheap. Right. You can't really do that.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So I asked people in one survey a long time ago, rank your choices between small, lightweight, durable, cheap, high power, and a few other things. One of the things I found early on that was, that was the most surprising to me was everyone's obsessed with weight in comic robots, but consistently people ranked size as higher importance than weight. Having a smaller component was more important to them than having a lighter weight component. And granted, that was a survey of like 50 people, so it's not a huge representative sample size. But that was one thing that kind of stuck with me and that I felt like was an interesting priority to keep in mind when judging what design decisions to make in my products. And so, yeah, just, I think the, the biggest thing is when you're trying to design a product, the, the biggest thing to keep in mind is like, who is your target customer and what is it that they actually want? And that is a very difficult question to answer. It is not going to make your life that much easier to know that that is a question you need to answer. But it's good to keep it in the back of your mind, because I think that, like, you'll see all these things, like the tech from the tech world, like, you know, remember the AI pin, the humane AI pin? This was a product that solved a problem zero people had that absolutely nobody had asked for and absolutely nobody wanted, and it didn't even work. So during the process of developing that, they could have saved themselves a lot of money and a lot of time if they had just asked themselves, first, who wants this? Second of all, what do the people who want this actually need it to be able to do? And third, can I actually make it do those things. The answer to all three of those questions would have led them to probably stop and just give up before they had released it.

[B]

Well, that, that's kind of. I haven't seen any recent ads for it, but at least probably about a year ago there was a lot of ads for those like boxes that you, that you had in your pocket that had an AI built into it. And that's all it was, was. It was just an AI that you would just ask questions to and it would answer. And every time I saw one of those ads, all I could think was, yeah, that's my phone.

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

Why, why, why do I have to pay a thousand dollars to you to get a separate box that asks the answers AI questions Like the answer to

[A]

that question, Justin, is that because that company wasn't OpenAI, they thought the only way they could make money was by selling you hardware you didn't need.

[B]

Right,

[C]

Exactly.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Um, so Andrew asks. He says, let's get some hard hitting journalism here. I'm going to pick two of these. So what, what color and brand of thread locker do you think tastes the best? And would you rather fight ten 3 pound Gazelle lights or one 30 pound Chainsaw Kitty?

[A]

It's definitely Loctite 242, blue raspberry flavor, the best one. But I got on my fingers regularly because the big bottle that I have has like extraordinarily low viscosity for some unknown reason. And every time I close the lid it like squirts out on me.

[B]

Oh God.

[A]

What was the second part of the question?

[B]

Would you rather fight ten three pound gazelle lights or one 30 pound chainsaw kitty?

[A]

Probably the 30 pound chainsaw kitty because if I got up high enough it probably couldn't hurt me. But heat rises.

[B]

Okay, okay. So Tom Farkas said, well, this isn't a question, it's just a statement, but did you know that the back plate of Paws is called the Seth plate after you reached in and unplugged it with SSP forever ago? And he also said, I also just want to say I appreciate all the products you've brought to making build building bots so much easier.

[A]

So that's from you too, Tom.

[B]

Aidan from Radix Radix says, I'm curious if you could hold back, pull. I'm curious if you could pull back the curtain on the logistics of running a Combat Robotics web store. There are probably some items that sell like crazy and some more niche items. What are some high volume items that you may not, might not Expect or vice versa.

[A]

One of the surprising high volume items is the, the just basic PCB switch that has just nothing else. Just as a switch. Like I'll get orders of like 20, 30, 40 of them at a time from schools that are sometimes not even doing beetles just for like ant weights because it's, it is cheaper than the cheapest other alternative. And this is a functioning Comet robot switch.

[C]

Um, right.

[A]

So that, that one's a surprisingly popular item and I've literally bought like, I think like a thousand PCBs at a time for that just because they cost nothing and I need to keep a stock on hand for those like random huge orders. Um, yeah, that's probably the most surprising, just like weird high volume one. Another thing that I thought was surprising was when I looked over like my sales data, I basically, I used a Claude code to Vibe code, an app that basically lets me look at sales data on a week by week basis over time. Which is technically you can do with Shopify analytics, but on a single product basis it's like really annoying. You have to like create like a bunch of filters and changing which product you're looking at is like a pain. And I also can use it to basically try and predict when I'm going to run out of stock of stuff. And the biggest reason I did that instead of just looking at like how many sold in the last 90 days is because sometimes products do run out of stock. So like if I'm, if I'm saying I saw I sold like 50 blitz lights in the last 90 days, but they were out of stock for 80 of those 90 days, that's pretty useless information. So being able to look at the graph over time of sales and see that none of them sold for you know, eight of those nine weeks, that's like super valuable.

[B]

So you, you Vibe coded yourself a very simplistic version of Salesforce, essentially.

[A]

Yeah, but it's free.

[B]

I mean Salesforce is like thousands of dollars. So I'm not, I'm not saying you should have bought Salesforce. I'm just saying like that's, that's basically what you did.

[A]

My brother for a brief time tried running a business where he was doing like direct to business sales or like trying to get schools basically to buy from him. And so he had like a whole like customer management thing which I have not had to mess with. But for that he used I think Katana. And like when I looked at Katana, they literally were like, how much revenue do you make each year? And I replied and they're like we do not serve companies as small as yours. You literally can't even pay us to use our software.

[B]

Yeah, that would basically, I think if you asked, if you tried to get Salesforce, they would probably say the same thing. Cause they're used to like gigantic corporations. So Gwen from Jackalope says. Hey Seth, big fan of the color orange. Thanks for your service. In addition to your product design and supplier management, you also have a robust in house manufacturing setup. What would you, what would you say is your favorite tool to use to make your products? Or what is your favorite hidden gem for a home shop tool?

[A]

I mean the favorite hidden gem for a home Shop is the A1 mini. Like it's. Even if you have another 3D printer, it's the cheapest other nozzle that just makes stuff like people in the machine shop world will talk about spindles instead of all machines. It's like how many spindles do you have? Like even if you have one machine that's like a really, really crappy CNC mill, but you've got your, you know, heavy production CNC mill running 24 7. Having that other spindle able to be used for like one off jobs and stuff is really valuable. And so for me, having an A1 Mini just on hand so that when my other printers are busy, I can just send jobs off to it. Super valuable and you can't really beat it for like 250 bucks or whatever it is these days. Maybe on sale for 200 sometimes 219 currently.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Yeah. And aside from that, I've been really enjoying trying to make maximal use out of my CNC router. It is not the sort of thing that any hobbyist reasonably should own necessarily right now. Not the one that I have in particular, I mean because it's like over ten grand with all the add ons that I added to it. But as a business owner it made a lot of sense for me and I'm just now starting to get to the point where it's like easily going to be paying for itself. And that was a huge gamble that I took when I bought it like over a year ago. But I, you know, saw where things were headed with the tariffs and everything and it ended up making a lot of sense and I'm glad that I have it. And it's definitely not a very turnkey thing like a 3D printer. Learning how to do CNC machining is very hard. I started back in college and I still by no means consider myself an expert machinist and I make dumb mistakes Constantly. But there are a lot more CNC machines hitting the market these days that do appeal to beginners, and that might start to make sense. I feel like that's the next avenue for comet robot builders is people wanting to make metal parts in house, which right now you just can't really do without using a band saw and paper templates and a drill press. There isn't really an automated way to make super accurate metal parts at home that doesn't cost many thousands of dollars. But those things are coming down in price real fast as our laser cutters as well. Fiber lasers, like, I mean, jerryrigeverything. He made a video very recently where he was like, you know, I bought this $100,000 Trump brand laser and that was like two years ago. And now you can buy an X tool metal fab for $20,000. And it does most of the same work that the big laser does. It's just smaller. And apparently the price of fiber laser sources has come down by like 10x in the last 5 years.

[B]

So Stephanie from Dark Horse Robotics says, hi, Seth, how much help does your kitty provide you in the workshop?

[A]

My kitty is not allowed in the workshop because I don't want her to hurt herself. There are aluminum chips all over the floor right now.

[B]

Okay, that makes sense.

[A]

She makes cute mewing noises from the stairs and then I chase her back up the stairs.

[B]

Patrick from Sad Octopus and Under Destruction says, like so many other builders, much of our first build was possible because of your content. Everything from weapon balancing to the radio mixes. Thank you for all you do for the community. His question is, if you had to pick just one fight to show someone who has no idea what division is, which one would you link to them?

[A]

Oh, that is a tough one. I think maybe it would be, oh, what was one of the more recent ones? That was really cool. I think division versus the Throngler might be a good one. Or maybe Division versus Plumbop, that was an even more recent one.

[B]

Okay, why those?

[A]

I've even posted that one yet.

[B]

Well, you said you're six months behind. So Julian Papazian says, well, he starts off with a threat. Release some 12 pound drive motors or else, which I think you were talking about the, the 12 pound supply for for stuff. And he says, if it has to be a question, what is your number one hobby besides robots?

[A]

That's a tough one. Honestly, I haven't had that much time to do other hobby things. I would say, as far as like, total number of hours I spent on it, guitar playing, I Started when I was 10 years old. I barely ever practice these days because I don't have that much time. But I am at least somewhat competent at playing guitar and I currently have too many guitars because the correct number of guitars to own is always one more.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

Matthew from Kilico says, seth, would you love division even if it was a worm?

[A]

Probably not.

[D]

What?

[A]

I don't think it would be NHL legal if it was a worm.

[B]

Okay. So I wanted Corey to be here to read this himself, but I'll read it anyway. Seth, people come and go within the sport. People you see five to 10 years ago are not at all the same people you see nowadays. I'm glad you have stuck it through and continue to iterate off of a design that started out as a heavy inspiration and gave it a spin to

[C]

make it your own.

[B]

So that's just from Corey.

[A]

That was awesome. And yeah, I don't intend to go anywhere. It's. It's been a really fun time. And like I said, the sport's changing all the time, so that keeps it fresh, it keeps it interesting. And I really love the sport and I love all the people that I've met through it, including Corey and you guys. It's been super awesome to have like this amazing group of friends that I get to meet up with every few weeks or months and hang out and talk shop and kill each other's toys.

[C]

I would like to reply with for you. I know you are in the community, not only the guy who people buy, who we hand our wallets to every few weeks, but also like, you are the person that, like, I know if I DM you and go, hey, this is the problem I'm having. What? What do I do? Like, you have the answer and that is like something that there's nobody else. Like, you can't go into another space and just like DM like the person who designs things and they would actually have an answer for you or anything like that. So I, I just like, I hope you realize how big of a part of this community you are and like, how much the things that you make and like, participation that you have. Like, I mean, like, I think most of the Beatles that have ever won a golden dumpster are like, oh, that is. With your parts in it. Like, that's cool as hell.

[A]

Yeah, I really appreciate that. And yeah, I think that's just one of the superpowers that every small business owner has, is the ability to actually talk to our customers. Hopefully. I mean, obviously not every small business at the same scale as mine. Like, there are people who, you know, have. Who run like a, you know, I don't know, like a software startup where they just release an app that makes like a million dollars as a single person. And maybe they actually do have like a million customers and they can't talk to them all.

[C]

But.

[A]

But like, for somebody doing like actual like e commerce stuff, like, I am, I think a lot of small businesses exist like mine, and I found a bunch of them by accident recently that you can just like call them up and you're talking to the founder of the company. It's pretty cool.

[B]

So we're gonna end off on a question that you're gonna have to explain to me because I don't know what it means. So it's. It's probably one of those inside. I'm not sure if it's from one of your videos or. But Alex from the Pandas, driver and builder of coal says, how is Milo? I'm not sure what that means.

[A]

Yeah, so that is unfortunately kind of a depressing question.

[B]

Oh, no.

[A]

So I won't. I won't try and kill the vibe too much, but Milo was my cat. Unfortunately. I had Milo in a few videos and around a year ago I broke off my ex and he lives with my ex now. So I actually do not know how Milo is. Oh, that's a different cat now named Siri Cirilla. Named after the Witcher character, not after the Apple's Siri. You know, whatever. Cirilla is great and she is extremely happy and active all the time. She's about three years old now, but she still acts like a kitten and she's a lot of fun.

[B]

But has she been in any of your videos?

[A]

She has not yet. She does not really sit still long enough. And she also, both Milo and her, like, can't, couldn't stand being held and refused to be in my lap for any period of time. But Milo would sleep on a bed, like right here on my desk, which is why he ended up in some of my videos like a year ago. Siri hates cat beds with a burning passion. For some reason, she will just sleep on, like, random things or like a towel on the floor. At some point, I'm sure she'll walk into the frame and one of my videos or something.

[C]

Yeah, we've already seen her go past a couple of times.

[B]

Okay, very cool. So that's gonna do it for this episode of the Havoc Rundown. Huge thanks to Seth for joining us. Be sure to check out Just Cause Robotics at just.just cause robotics.com or if you search on YouTube or if you go into the builder section of our website. We also have a bunch of your videos there in our tutorial section. So thank you Seth for being on and talking to us about what you are doing now, how the business is going and all that kind of stuff in that world.

[D]

Tap pictures on the Discord Seth. Be sure to post some.

[A]

Oh I have. I literally have like hundreds of theory

[D]

photos in the discord.

[B]

We we have an off topic section. You can throw a whole bunch of pictures up there. So we covered a ton today from product design and builder insight to where the sport is heading next. As always, it's getting great, getting a behind the scenes perspective from someone shaping the scene in real time. Looking ahead, we've got some exciting events coming up. We'll all be at the rce event on April 25th where Ryan and I will both be competing and we're going to be running some of the media and doing a bunch of media coverage and interviews and all those kind of things. So keep an eye out for that. And then right around the corner is the next NHL event on May 2nd. We're expecting more high level competition and innovation. Make sure to follow us on social media. Stay up to date. Go of course go to our website haveitrun.com and if you enjoyed the episode, share it with someone who loves Comfort Robotics as much as you do that may not know who we are. Until next time, keep the bus spinning and the hits massive. Everyone say goodbye to our listeners.

[D]

Bye gamers.

[A]

And remember, in the words of Martin Mason, adopt, don't shop.

[B]

Yeah, love it.