A team of engineers spent 426 days building the world's biggest spider 'mech' robot—before abandoning it due to spiralling costs.
What started off as a 'three month' project in September 2021 quickly turned into a 1.5 year headache for the boffs at Hacksmith, a company that turns fictional technologies into real-world projects.
The so-called 'Megahex' was initially inspired by industrial ground excavators, and looks like something out of a James Cameron blockbuster.
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In a huge 30-minute Youtube video (embedded below), the team explained that engineering began well but quickly became bogged down in a number of technical issues.
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They then faced difficulties getting everything from the exhausts to the standing test to work, all while going way over the planned budget and timeline.
Finally, the team were able to begin outdoor testing, with the video showing incredible footage of the Megahex walking around outside and smashing the ground beneath it. They only had a few moments to celebrate their success before the frame holding one of the legs ripped in half.
Bogdan said: "There's no way that we could just keep on allocating so much time and so much money to this project just for it to take five steps and another thing breaks. We got our goal, it was walking, that was our goal, we reached it and honestly it was time to call it a day."
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He added: "Complete honesty with you, we really should not have greenlit this project.
"This project should not have happened. IT was way more complicated than we anticipated, we had way more issues than we thought,the timing and [the] difficulty was just way over estimated."
It's not clear how much the Megahex cost Hacksmith Industries, but Ian Hillier, the company's cofounder, said: "This is why companies go bankrupt when they build mechs. I'd probably have a better return on investment making a [YouTube] video if I dug a big hole, put a bunch of cash inside, and light it on fire."
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