Actual Size: Difference between revisions
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===Overview=== |
===Overview=== |
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Despite being thrown all the way across the cage, Actual Size was able to retain both of its wheels, confirming that Morningstar had found an effective solution for mitigating wheel loss even when the anti-tip snowman noses were removed. Aside from a similar weapon axle failure to the one that had occurred against TurboFIEND, it initially appeared that Actual Size had emerged largely unscathed (bisection notwithstanding). However, months later, while examining Actual Size's parts for reuse in Actual Size V2, Morningstar realized that striking Chonkiv had noticeably deformed Actual Size's 1/4" AR500 weapon blade! It served as a strong reminder that 3lb components are no match versus 30lb hardware. |
Despite being thrown all the way across the cage, Actual Size was able to retain both of its wheels, confirming that Morningstar had found an effective solution for mitigating wheel loss even when the anti-tip snowman noses were removed. Aside from a similar weapon axle failure to the one that had occurred against TurboFIEND, it initially appeared that Actual Size had emerged largely unscathed (bisection notwithstanding). However, months later, while examining Actual Size's parts for reuse in Actual Size V2, Morningstar realized that striking Chonkiv had noticeably deformed Actual Size's 1/4" AR500 weapon blade! It served as a strong reminder that 3lb components are no match versus 30lb hardware. |
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===Barnyard Buzz Brawl 2025=== |
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====Actual Size vs Chromatic Aberration==== |
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====Actual Size vs [[Lifeline]]==== |
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====Actual Size vs [[Pinevictus]]==== |
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===September Smackdown at RCE 2025=== |
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====Actual Size vs [[Beeble]]==== |
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====Actual Size vs [[John Undercutter]]==== |
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====Actual Size vs [[Silent Spring]]==== |
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===NHRL November 2025=== |
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====Actual Size vs [[Chaos Upright]]==== |
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====Actual Size vs [[Jet Lag]]==== |
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====Actual Size vs [[Dimachaerus]]==== |
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====Actual Size vs [[Drumder Child]]==== |
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====Actual Size vs [[Project Liftoff]]==== |
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{{Bot Stats|bot=Actual_Size|class=3lb}} |
{{Bot Stats|bot=Actual_Size|class=3lb}} |
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Revision as of 21:40, 6 November 2025
Robot Facts
| Builder/Driver | Max Morningstar |
|---|---|
| Team | TRC |
| Weight Class | 3lb |
| Body Material | TPU Chassis |
| Weapon | Vertical Spinner (AR500) |
| Weapon Drive | TBD |
| Drive | Repeat Drive Max from Repeat Robotics |
| Power | 3S Lipo |
| NHRL record | 5-3 |
| Lifetime record | 9-9 |
Overview
Actual Size is a bigwheel vertical spinner robot built by Max Morningstar. Coming off of an educational but competitively lackluster 2024 season with his bigwheel horizontal spinner Jot, Morningstar sought to take some of the experience gained from Jot and translate those hard-won design lessons into a more traditional (and far more competitively viable) bigwheel design.
Actual Size's first design debuted in December 2024 at the MIT CRC House Battle and finished a respectable 2-2. Sporting a hubmotor weapon and repurposed wheels from Morningstar's January 2024 version of Jot, the design was given the designation V0 because it lacked many of the trademarks of subsequent iterations.
Actual Size V1, which competed in the June 2025 NHRL event, would borrow multiple design elements from the highly successful 12lb bigwheel SLAM PLAN. Most notably, Actual Size V1 sported a hollow weapon shaft that allowed the whole robot to run on a single electrical system, ran its primary weapon with gears instead of belts, and had an optional "stanced" configuration to aid in taking on opponents with horizontal weapons. Actual Size V1 also marked the debut of Morningstar's signature "composite bigwheels", which blend 3D printed TPU with spring steel cleats in order to offer superior traction and durability over more traditional UHMW bigwheel designs. The V1 iteration earned Morningstar a solid knockout win over opponent Reflex, but held some glaring design flaws that revealed themselves in tough losses versus Pipeline Punch and TurboFIEND.
Actual Size V2, debuting at the Barnyard Buzz Brawl 2025 event, saw Actual Size swap away from a hollow weapon shaft but lean further into SLAM PLAN's all-or-nothing style of bigwheel design by fully exposing both drive motors. The composite bigwheels will be returning, redesigned to be even larger in diameter, as will the stanced configuration.
Actual Size's name and angry eyes are both references to HUGE, the robot that pioneered the modern bigwheel vertical spinner design. The name itself comes from the song She's Actual Size by alt rock group They Might Be Giants. Morningstar prefers the live version of the song, which he grew up listening to on CD with his family. That version of the song can be found on YouTube here.
Fight History
MIT CRC House Battle - December 2024
Actual Size debuted at the inaugural MIT CRC House Battle, an event hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Combat Robotics Club. Fresh off of competing with Jot at the October 2024 NHRL event, builder and driver Max Morningstar had only a few weeks to turn around a design for a then-unnamed 3lb bigwheel robot with a vertically spinning weapon.
In addition to the time constraints he faced, Morningstar (who had rather spontaneously decided to attend the MIT event) was low on cash and so designed the robot to be as cheap to produce as possible. To accomplish this, the robot was designed almost entirely out of 3D printed TPU, with the only metal components being the weapon blade and two aluminum side plates onto which the drive motors and wheels mounted. The exception to this was the UHMW bigwheels, though here too Morningstar was able to save money. The bigwheels that Actual Size used at the MIT event were actually the exact wheels that Jot had fought with in the January 2024 NHRL event, albeit with refurbished cleats and being driven by gears instead of axle-mounted on the drive motors.
The decision to reuse January Jot's wheels was as much driven by cost as by frustration. One of the biggest recurring failure points on Jot's several iterations were the wheels, so rather than try and develop a new design Morningstar chose to instead use the only wheels he had on hand that had proven their durability in combat. This simplified the challenge of designing the new robot considerably.
While the chassis and wheel designs were able to be crafted directly off of the lessons learned from Jot, one new challenge that Morningstar had to surmount was the issue of powering the vertical spinning weapon and securing the two chassis halves of the robot. For this, Morningstar looked to his other 2024 beetleweight robot, Lemon Vinaigrette, which had used the RDY-5536 Hubmotor from Just Cuz Robotics in the September 2024 NHRL event. Morningstar had been impressed by the hubmotor's ease of use and effectiveness, and saw the motor as a way to seamlessly integrate a weapon system into the robot that could also act as an anchor between the two chassis halves. With the RDY-5536 selected, Morningstar was able to complete what he referred to as the "V0" design of Actual Size, assemble the robot, and eagerly set off to his seventh and final combat robotics competition of 2024.
Actual Size vs Flycut
By random chance, Actual Size was one of four robots selected to fight in Round 1 of the MIT event's double elimination bracket. This smaller round (necessitated by the number of competitors in the tournament) would see Actual Size pitted against the 2WD vertical spinner robot Flycut. However, Flycut was unable to be ready in time for the fight and so Actual Size picked up its first win of the day by forfeit, advancing into Round 2 of the Winner's Bracket.
Actual Size vs Basics
Actual Size's first real fight of the day was against the fearsome 2WD drum robot Basics, from Donald Sung of Team Pandamonium. The fight began with a series of weapon-on-weapon hits, as Donald kept his drum firmly pointed and Actual Size and Morningstar, attempting to snipe the drum's belt, obliged by driving into the weapon repeatedly. This exchanges were fairly even until a particularly nasty exchange shattered the magnets in Actual Size's hubmotor, killing its weapon. The repeated strikes also ending up caused a solder connection to break on one of Actual Size's drive sides, meaning that it had only a single wheel active. With half drive nonfunctional and no weapon, Actual Size tapped out, taking its first loss of the day and dropping into the Loser's bracket.
This fight would end up being pivotal for future Actual Size iterations. The fight gave Morningstar two key insights: firstly that as a driver he wanted to be able to confidently go weapon on weapon with opposing bots, and secondly that a bigwheel hubmotor would not be conducive to this driving style. The logic behind this was that the additional energy of an oversized bigwheel blade, which are generally larger in diameter than most vertical weapons, stopping suddenly (as often occurs during hard weapon-on-weapon strikes) meant that there was a good probability of such a magnet-shattering failure occurring again in the future. Actual Size would never again run with a hubmotor weapon. The fight is also significant because it marked the first fight of what would come to be a budding rivalry between Actual Size and the robots of Team Pandamonium.
Actual Size vs Power Outlet
Actual Size's third match of the day was against Power Outlet, a newly built robot designed by a member of MIT's Combat Robotics Club. Actual Size had been seemingly fully repaired after its fight with Basics, and both robots made it to the arena, but Power Outlet was unable to turn on due to unknown electrical issues. As a result, Actual Size took its second forfeit win of the day and advanced to Round 3 of the Loser's Bracket.
Actual Size vs Hat Trick
Actual Size's fourth fight of the day was against Hat Trick, a classic midcutter horizontal. Morningstar was excited for the fight, since it marked an opportunity to gather data around how Actual Size's bigwheels performed against a horizontal. Heartbreakingly, upon reaching the arena it became clear that half of Actual Size's electronics were nonfunctional, and that Actual Size's weapon and half of its drive were once again disabled. Not wanting to give up a chance to fight, Morningstar chose to run the match anyway, limping Actual Size around the box as it was knocked around by Hat Trick. Despite its wheels holding up fairly well against the horizontal, eventually the solder joints on the functioning drive side also failed and Actual Size was counted out for the KO. The loss to Hat Trick pushed Actual Size out of the loser's bracket and ended its first event, with Actual Size leaving having achieved an even record of 2-2.
NHRL June 2025
With a substantial 6 month break between the MIT event and driver Max Morningstar's next planned competition of the June 2025 NHRL event, Morningstar had an opportunity to do an extensive redesign of Actual Size. This redesign focused on three things: Actual Size's bigwheels, the weapon stack, and the ever-present challenge of connecting the two halves of Actual Size's chassis.
The redesign of the bigwheels for Actual Size had been a long time coming. Originally, Morningstar had based the wheels for his first bigwheel robot Jot on the cleated UHMW wheels of High Steaks], a bigwheel vert by veteran builder Mike Jeffries. The traction that the spring steel cleats on these wheels provided were excellent, but the durability of these cleats was lacking. An excellent example was in Jot's bracket-ending fight against Sir Spinny at NHRL in Janaury 2024, where almost every single cleat was stripped off the robot due to repeated strikes by Sir Spinny. Morningstar tried to provide more protection for the cleats by sandwiching them between thinner pieces of UHMW for Jot's October 2024 NHRL event, but these wheels proved far too fragile (as seen in Jot's brutal loss against Kamino in the qualifying rounds). Morningstar liked the traction of these cleats, but realized that the geometry needed to adequately secure them would be highly challenging to accomplished with a 2D UHMW part. This revelation pushed Morningstar to the development of Actual Size's composite wheels. Made of 3D printed TPU, the wheels were designed to offer superior protection for the cleats while hopefully delivering just as much durability as UHMW.
It is worth briefly pausing to speak about the 12lb robot SLAM PLAN. Driven by Brendan Steele, SLAM PLAN had an incredibly dominant 2024 season, winning Motorama, the October NHRL event, and the NHRL Championships. Seeking to replicate this success (while simultaneously being wary of the "cargo cult" phenomenon that can quickly creep into combat robot design), Morningstar selectively incorporated certain elements of SLAM PLAN's design into Actual Size. These elements included using a hollow weapon shaft to run the whole robot off of one electrical system, making the weapon gear driven instead of belt driven, and having two chassis configurations to allow for "stanced" wheels when fighting horizontal spinners.
The decision to emulate these elements of SLAM PLAN guided the redesign of the robot's weapon stack and chassis connection. Shaft supports were selected to act as the fastening point between the two chassis halves, since they would not obstruct the wires being routed through the shaft. The choice to use shaft supports would prove to be disastrous in the debut of the new Actual Size design, dubbed "V1", at the NHRL June 2025 event.
Actual Size vs Reflex
Actual Size's first fight of the day was against Reflex, a 2WD eggbeater vert. Going into the day, the non-stanced configuration of Actual Size was having drive issues, so Morningstar had to run the stanced configuration. This was not a major concern, since Reflex was running a standard FingerTech Beater Bar, which did not have the reach to hit Actual Size's chassis even while stanced.
The robots were initially somewhat evenly matched until Actual Size was able to snipe the weapon belt off of Reflex. For the rest of the match, Actual Size was able to knock Reflex around the box until its top plate popped off, exposing the robot's internals and prompting a tapout. This started Actual Size's day at 1-0 and allowed it to advance into the Cusp.
For driver Max Morningstar, this fight marked what he considered to be his first "true" win in combat robotics, meaning a win in which a robot he had fully designed went into the arena fully functioning, against a fully functioning opponent, and disabled that opponent through inflicted damage. Considering Morningstar had first competed at the January 2023 NHRL event (with Deep Cut), this meant that finding this first "true" win took 859 days to achieve.
Actual Size vs Pipeline Punch
Actual Size's second match of the day was against Pipeline Punch, a fearsome robot from the midwestern United States. Unlike Reflex, Pipeline Punch had enough weapon reach to hit the chassis of Actual Size even when non-stanced. Despite this, Morningstar didn't change up his strategy, choosing to focus on delivering weapon-on-weapon hits in an attempt to remove Pipeline Punch's weapon belt, or damage its weapon motor.
Like the previous fight, the first few exchanges between the two robots were relatively even. However, unlike the previous fight, the devastating blow came when Pipeline Punch was able to remove one of the "snowman noses" that Actual Size used to keep from tipping onto a wheel. These snowman noses are designed to be ablative as necessary, but what Morningstar hadn't realized is that the new bolts holding on Actual Size's wheel had a smaller head than the previous revision, which meant that there was now nothing retaining the wheel onto the drive axle! The next hit from Pipeline Punch removed the wheel entirely, prompting a swift tapout from Actual Size and pushing it into the Bubble at 1-1.
Actual Size vs TurboFIEND
It was soon determined that Actual Size would be facing Golden Dumpster-winning TurboFIEND for its chance at a spot in the bracket. TurboFIEND, which at the time was the #2 ranked 3lb robot at NHRL and was being driven by the highly skilled Dima Papasian, once again had a smaller weapon diameter than could reasonably strike at Actual Size's chassis, so Morningstar was cautiously optimistic at his chances during the fight despite his opponent's pedigree.
The resulting fight was a bloodbath for Actual Size. Right off the bat, Morningstar's inexperience driving the robot showed through when, after TurboFIEND hit a tight turn and gyro'd onto its head, Actual Size was unable to capitalize and land a hit on the vulnerable robot. This paled, however, in comparison to the structural failures beginning to occur on Actual Size. The shaft supports that held the weapon shaft had no way to laterally constrain the weapon axle, which meant that every time the chassis halves were reconnected Morningstar had to "eyeball" how much room to give the weapon so that it could spin freely on the axle. In the prep for the Bubble fight, Morningstar over-widened the gap between chassis halves ever so slightly, resulting in the overlap between the weapon gear and its driving motor gear to be insufficient. This led to the motor gear, made of aluminum, quickly slipping against the TPU weapon gear, melting its teeth and disabling the weapon soon after the match began.
With no weapon, TurboFIEND was free to begin attacking Actual Size without fear of reprisal. These attacks quickly began shredding Actual Size's wheels, as well as the TPU "legs" that enable Actual Size to drive. Once the wheels were sufficiently damaged, TurboFIEND was able to get the chassis low enough that it could land a direct hit on the aluminum plate into which the shaft support for the weapon axle was mounted. This hit broke the tension on the shaft support and the weapon axle pulled free, bisecting Actual Size and bringing a swift and spectacular end to the fight. Actual Size's brutal loss against TurboFIEND ended its day, and marked the second time in as many competitions that Actual Size had lost to a robot from Team Pandamonium. The loss knocked Actual Size out of the event, and it finished the day at 1-2.
Rumble: Chonkiv vs Everybody
Left with one intact and fully functional Actual Size copy, Morningstar decided to enter it into the "Chonkiv Rumble", a special event where the 30lb Golden Dumpster-winning shell spinner Chonkiv would face off against a variety of robots from other weight classes.
While being loaded in, many of the rumble's participants opted to stay a health distance away from the menacing Chonkiv. Morningstar, never one to shy away from a challenge, planted Actual Size right next to the daunting opponent. When the rumble started, Morningstar immediately drove Actual Size directly into Chonkiv's weapon, and was promptly hurled clear across the arena in two pieces, ending its participation in the rumble and bringing an end to the final V1 Actual Size.
Despite being thrown all the way across the cage, Actual Size was able to retain both of its wheels, confirming that Morningstar had found an effective solution for mitigating wheel loss even when the anti-tip snowman noses were removed. Aside from a similar weapon axle failure to the one that had occurred against TurboFIEND, it initially appeared that Actual Size had emerged largely unscathed (bisection notwithstanding). However, months later, while examining Actual Size's parts for reuse in Actual Size V2, Morningstar realized that striking Chonkiv had noticeably deformed Actual Size's 1/4" AR500 weapon blade! It served as a strong reminder that 3lb components are no match versus 30lb hardware.
Barnyard Buzz Brawl 2025
Actual Size vs Chromatic Aberration
Actual Size vs Lifeline
Actual Size vs Pinevictus
September Smackdown at RCE 2025
Actual Size vs Beeble
Actual Size vs John Undercutter
Actual Size vs Silent Spring
NHRL November 2025
Actual Size vs Chaos Upright
Actual Size vs Jet Lag
Actual Size vs Dimachaerus
Actual Size vs Drumder Child
Actual Size vs Project Liftoff
Statistics
Info
- Rank: #76 in 3lb.
- Last 5 fights: WWWWL
- Current streak: L1 (0 KOs/KO'd)
- Longest winning streak: 4 (2 KOs)
- Longest losing streak: 2 (2 KO'd)
- Avg fight time (seconds): 106.0
Record
| Year | Events | Fights | W | L | % | KOs | KO'd |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-19 | |||||||
| 2020 | |||||||
| 2021 | |||||||
| 2022 | |||||||
| 2023 | |||||||
| 2024 | |||||||
| 2025 | 2 | 8 | 5 | 3 | 0.625 | 3 | 2 |
| All-Time | 2 | 8 | 5 | 3 | 0.625 | 3 | 0 |
Events
| Date | Fought as | Reached | Place | Fights | W | L | KOs | KO'd |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| June 7, 2025 | Actual Size | Prelims Rd. 3 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 2 | |
| November 1, 2025 | Actual Size | Quarterfinals | 5 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 0 |
Opponents
| Opponent | Fights | W | L | KOs | KO'd | Last Meeting |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jet Lag | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | November 1, 2025 |
| Drumder Child | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | November 1, 2025 |
| Reflex | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | June 7, 2025 |
| Chaos Upright | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | November 1, 2025 |
| Dimachaerus | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | November 1, 2025 |
| Pipeline Punch | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | June 7, 2025 |
| TurboFIEND | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | June 7, 2025 |
| Project LiftOff | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | November 1, 2025 |
Click "Expand" to see this table.
Full Fight History
* Forfeits before the 2024 season are not counted in a bot's W-L record. Forfeits from 2024 and on are counted in a bot's W-L record.
For more information on how points are calculated for rankings, click here.
Click "Expand" to see this table.
Select Fights
Video links coming soon!
