Robot Wars Series VIII - Week 4 Discussion

**typhoon_driver** · 15th August 2016, 13:18

Thanks for comments everyone. It was a very tough heat but a fun one to film in.

With regards to the drive motors, I will say categorically that their failure was my fault and not that of NPC. Essentially the drive motors weren't shock mounted as they should have been. Had they been then they wouldn't have had issue. This will be something I'm putting into place if there is a series 2. The wheels were just cheap sack truck puncture proof wheels. In retrospect, not appropriate for use as the hubs were made of thin stamped steel. I'll be removing these and upgrading in favour of something a little tougher. I'm keeping the exposed wheels as it wasn't the fact they were exposed that caused issues and it would detract from the look of the machine.

With regards to the disc. It currently only spins in one direction. I would however like to drop our twin solenoid control in favour of full speed control. This would allow us to not only run in each direction but to also run the disc at less than full speed if we fancy (not that we generally would). I LOVE the crazy gyro dancing when we are upside down. I've had a few recommendations to try and stabilise it or a self righter but to hell with it, it's cool so it stays

**leorcc** · 15th August 2016, 13:29

It looked to me that the disc had a bend in it after the fight with Storm II Gary, at least it sounded like it.

**typhoon_driver** · 15th August 2016, 13:44

It finally got bend up to hit the chassis in that fight yeah. Going up against wedges right the way through along with our aerial acrobatics warped the 20mm thick hardox disc up by 10mm so it was knocking the underside of the chassis. New discs will get cut for a second series. Playing with designs now.

**R9000** · 15th August 2016, 14:06

One thing I forgot to mention - I felt few things hit home better than judge Lucy Rogers' bit on internet forums and other online communication - I was surprised they didn't mention and combat robot sites actually.

**R9000** · 15th August 2016, 22:19

Hmm, I don't recall reliability ever being an issue before, and they said Team Storm were still worried about burn-outs in the episode anyway. :/

**maddox10** · 15th August 2016, 22:24

I know Storm 2 at live events had Ampflow motors, and no longer the very expensive and fragile LEM130's.

Another machine that used the LEM's was Brutus. But after eating at least one every live event, that machine went to a replacement for Bosch 750's, and got a lot more reliable after that.

**daveimi** · 16th August 2016, 06:37

I was gonna say I knew storm was using lems at some point that were known for unreliability.

Gary do you think you'd ever try a bar instead of a disk just to see how it span up compared to a disk? :-)

**typhoon_driver** · 16th August 2016, 11:14

In short, no. A number of reasons why,

- A disc looks cooler (imo) and there are many bar spinners but not many large discs kicking around so I like to be a bit different
- A disc is much more stable during a collision with an opponent. If you watch the gyro forces acting on carbide or tombstone, the bot generally gets thrown away at funny angles meaning it takes a bit longer to line up for another hit. As a disc has mass all the way around, it's far more stable during a horizontal collision. If you watch some of PP3Ds hits, we either get knocked horizontally across the arena or launched up into the air but we stay near horizontal
- It's easier to get more of the spinning mass to the outer edge where you want it to store kinetic energy.