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Machine Arts is a swell machine shop in Santa Barbara. Contact them for CNC or other machining work. They also have some tumbling & finishing machines to make their parts come out looking extra sweet. Machine Arts did the majority of the machining for the upgraded Towering Inferno & Dr. Inferno Jr., as well as some work on Hell on Wheels.

Specialty Tool carries a huge selection of nuts, bolts, allthread, cable, hand tools, wrenches, and any other flavor of fastener you could possibly desire, not to mention hand tools, metal stock, power tools, electrical connectors, etc. They've opened up an unlimited tab for me for all the fastener bits I needed to assemble Dr. Inferno Jr., Towering Inferno, Mini Inferno, Hell on Wheels, and Lame-O Inferno, as well as other odds & ends & tools & such.

Robotic Power Solutions is Steve Hill's robots-only division of his Hilltop Batteries company, producing the awesome BattlePack batteries. They supplied the Infernolab with great NiMH batteries for Dr. Inferno Jr., Hell on Wheels, & Lame-O Inferno, as well as lightweight, high capacity NiMH radio receiver packs for Dr. Inferno Jr., Hell on Wheels, & Towering Inferno.

Industrial Forming, a cool local company specializes in vacuum forming but they also do heat bending, molding, some maching, and plastics distribution. They helped out the Infernolab by providing the polycarbonate body panels for revision 2 of Towering Inferno and the season 6.0 rebuild of Dr. Inferno Jr.. They also made & helped design custom-bent polycarb Vantec 3-series covers & vacuum-formed electronics mounting systems for Towering Inferno.

PTC makes the powerful Pro/Engineer CAD software. It's a great tool for designing bots on a computer before sitting down and making parts. Plus, the drawings can be fed directly to computer-controlled metal machining equipment to make multiple copies of perfect parts. Towering Inferno was designed primarily on Pro/Engineer software, after I'd figured out the basic design. PTC also supplied me with a laptop computer & the latest software so I can continue designing infernal bots even when I'm on the road!

G&G Technology/Thin Gap is a research facility in Ventura that, among other things, is developing revolutionary sweet new motors with technology never seen before for this type of application. I put pair of their extremely powerful, light, effecient, high speed motors in Hell on Wheels.

Systimatic / International Knife & Saw, the world's leading supplier of industrial cutting tools, has a keen involvement in robotic combat. They sent me a nice supply of circular saws to use on Dr. Inferno Jr. and are sending me some new custom crazy triangular sawblades for the new version of the Doc.. They make some big nasty saws & even do custom orders. They also made me crazy custom chain guard saw blades for Towering Inferno.

Portable Power Systems has got tons of batteries and battery-related items for sale. They gave me four 24V 8Ah Hawker Cyclon Monoblock sets that were custom hot-melted together to make for some sweet battery power for Towering Inferno.

Russ Greene works at a cool precision sheet metal fabrication shop in Louisiana. He & his cohorts helped out by making some ever-so-sweet aluminum sheet metal fenders for Towering Inferno for 2 seasons (and fixing up bent ones for a 3rd season).

The University of California Santa Barbara, the school that I am attending as a graduate student in the Mechanical Engineering department, gives me not only access to amazing facilities (including a super machine shop with all of the tools I could ever desire), but a wealth of personal resources in the form of experienced staff and faculty members.

• Nelson Bednersh, superintendent of the engineering student shop, is the most talented welder in the known universe. And then some.
• Andy Weinberg, who made some Towering Inferno parts for me and who always has good advice and is always offering to help me out.
• Nick Dinapoli, mechanical engineering student project advisor, recognizes the value of UCSB students participating in robotic combat events and has set aside healthy budgets each year since 1995 for combat robot development.
• Peter Allen (engineering publicity), the chancellor's public relations office, and UCSB public relations have offered me digital video equipment, filmed my robots for university investment promotions, and invited me and my creations to appear at university investors' benefit events.

Online Metals is a power affiliate of the Infernolab. What does that mean? Well, you can order robot-buildin' materials right here on the Infernolab pages. Just click and start browsing their aluminum, titanium, steel, polycarbonate, etc. Their motto is "Small quanitities...fast!" and they'll even cut the material to your required sizes.

Individual Sponsors:

• Toni Armstrong Jr., Chicago, for generous monetary contributions
• Reeves Little, old high school bud in San Jose, for capturing some videos for me and helping me with my mailing list

Hosting.com, a web hosting service, hosted the Infernolab web site on their server for quite a while.

Switzer Communications is the PR firm that represents LEGO Mindstorms. Tim Gnatek of Switzer was the brainchild of the LEGO RoboGladiators and Mindstorms Mayhem competitions and the man I have to thank for receiving obscenely huge piles of LEGO.

LEGO, the finest toy/design tool/engineering tool in the universe. The Mindstorms robot kits bring sophisticated robotics to the masses, with amazing versatility, flexibility, and sophistication. Go out and buy LEGO Technic sets today! Right now! Do it!

Alliance Finishing specializes in anodizing and other processes to make your metal parts look fancy, be more durable, or have other desirable surface material properties. Alliance fronted for some aluminum for the Towering Inferno rebuild and provided finishing services (anodizing & nickel plating).

Bell-Everman, a nifty local robotics company, helped me with the acquisition, machining, and assembly of the big nasty custom machined parts for the original build of Towering Inferno. Get a load of their sweet award-winning KAOS positioning robots.

Magnetic Moments, a company started by my former robotics professor, Brad Paden, makes some neat electromagnetic levitating bearings. They're also working on another other instructional control system, and parts for an artifical heart. Neat stuff. They helped out with Dr. Inferno Jr.'s 1st 2 events.

Urethane Rubber is a specialist in, well, urethane rubber! They create various types of urethane in all sorts of shapes & forms & can even pour custom molds. They hooked me up with great tire tread for Towering Inferno. E-mail production manager Rodney Sewell or give him a call at 714-731-1325 for more info on urethane for your projects.

Christian Carlberg, robot builder extraordinaire, donated Dr. Inferno's drive motors, machined a few pieces for me, helped me locate parts and materials, gave me sound robot-building advice, and completely funded our joint project, Slugger. Oh, and he makes such cool robots.

Worldmachine Technologies, a leading web engineering and application integration company, donated big bucks to the Infernolab. These funds went toward the cost of construction for Dr. Inferno Jr. & Towering Inferno, the maintenance of Missing Link, and the costs of attending BotBash and BattleBots in 2000.

Mouser Electronics is a provider of all things electric and electronic, a great catalog resource. A large part of their business is from hobbyists and mad scientists, so they got a kick out of my robots. They gave me a finite-yet-handy line of credit for their catalog.

The Carylyle-Johnson Machine Company sells amazing clutches and brakes. A bunch of friendly, helpful people. They gave me Missing Link's compact, efficient, in-line ball speed reducers.

Jim Smentowski, fellow bot builder, has a great website full of resources. He hosted the huge files in my InfernoTV section before I got set up with hosting.com, and he's done most of my video captures, too.