Today we’d like to introduce you to Matt Bores.
Matt, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
My story begins way back in the late ’90s and early 2000s when I was just coming into high school at the time. One evening while flipping through the channels on TV I stumbled across a program that very much piqued my interest. Two remote control robots inside of a large arena fighting to the death!
The TV show was called Battlebots, and aired on Comedy Central at the time. I watched fight after fight, studying all of the different designs people had come up with. I had always enjoyed designing & building things, and I thought this was the perfect outlet for me, Week after week I watched every match and episode, and drew hundreds of napkin sketches of various designs flooding my head.
Of course, I was only a young high school student at the time and had virtually no mechanical background, but that was about to change drastically. This show lit a fire inside of me to learn how to build one of these machines. I spent countless late nights on my computer reading, researching, asking questions to builders and doing everything that I possibly could to figure out how to build one of these things.
Two years late, as a sophomore in high school I managed to convince my parents I (sort of) knew what I was doing and built my first combat robot, a 120-pound machine named Aftershock. Aftershock actually went on to do very well in smaller tournaments, even winning one of them! I was hooked for life.
Fast forward over 20 years to today, and I’ve since designed and built numerous combat robots and have competed all over the country. During that time period I formed a team with a good friend of mine in New York named Adam. Adam designed his own robot and managed to get accepted to compete on the TV show Battlebots when it finally came back after a long hiatus. I traveled to the event and helped him work on the robot in the pits, it was my first chance at actually seeing the televised event I had always watched as a kid, in person.
Since then, I have designed & built my own 30lb machine name Emulsifier. Emulsifier was refined over the next 4 years where it has since went on to win multiple events and “most destructive” awards. It currently was fortunate enough to win the national championship and become the #1 ranked 30lb robot in the country.
Due to the success Emulsifier was having in the 30lb weight class, I had decided to apply to Battlebots with a 250lb scaled up version of it. Eventually the robot was accepted onto the TV show, and I finally had the opportunity to be on the show I grew up obsessively watching as a teenager.
Once accepted, I had about 10 weeks to completely finish the scaled-up design and build the robot. This was one of the most stressful time periods of my life in terms of workload. Many sleepless nights, no time to rest, and hundreds of hours later the 250lb machine was born and ready to go to Las Vegas to compete against the best 250lb machines in the world. Once in Vegas, I met up with Adam and his robot Shatter, where we competed as a single team (BOTS FC) with both Robots.
To find out how Emulsifier does in its first ever season of Battlebots, tune in to Discovery channel or watch on the Discovery+ app. The episodes air every Thursday night at 9 pm EST and are available earlier to Discovery+ members.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The biggest obstacle was designing and building a 250lb robot in the span of 10 weeks. This involved building out a complete 3D model down to every last nut & bolt, outsourcing many parts to be manufactured at machine shops, ordering and tracking hundreds of components, assembling and troubleshooting the robot, and handling the logistics of getting everything to Las Vegas and back.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
My day job is working as an engineer/sales consultant for a large machine shop.
We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
Success is setting goals for yourself and working hard to achieve them.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.botsfc.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/botsfc/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BotsFC/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/Bots_F_C
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/botsfc
