They are mostly polypropylene and weigh about the same as any other plastic wheel of the same size. I make simple plastic hubs and the wheels really don't take up much of the weight budget. The smaller wheels are easy to turn or drill for extra weight loss but the real attraction is the punishment they can take, so I leave them mostly alone.Originally Posted by shakesc
Update
Been a while. After a brief flurry of activity post-champs, things quietened down a bit with work and other stuff. With no Robots Live event at Edinburgh this year, there was no rush to get a couple of working feathers for June, which is just as well as all of my non-spinner feathers had been stripped down or beaten up.
The next event on the calendar then was going to be the Kinematic Events beetleweight competition, so best get some beetles running. I decided to make a concerted effort to get Flam running for it, starting afresh as the old version had a folded 4mm HDPE chassis which just wouldn't cut it anymore. After rummaging through the scraps box, I decided to make the sides out of 8mm ali (no idea which grade). I also decided to get the drum made early on as that was likely to be the most intensive part. Haven't got a picture of the finished drum, but this is how it was looking early on. The back piece is 2mm steel and the bolts still had to be cut down obviously:
But long story short, it never got finished in time. Reasons being that I made the drum, but didn't account for how I was going to transmit power to it from the brushless and I'd have to have a bit of a redesign/rebuild to incorporate either a pulley or a groove in the tube. It was also bigger than it needed to be (I went for a 60% replica of the feather) and as such, with all the parts in it, it was going to be overweight. So I shelved it - again - and instead went down a different route.
Boom.
Had tried to keep it quiet that I bought this off Harry, but in the end I think almost everyone knew :P
Formerly Red Wedding, now renamed Spin Cycle (as I don't watch Game of Thrones...yet). Standard beetle fare, two 1000rpm motors, lipo battery, Botbitz ESCs and a brushless (not sure of spec) attached to a b!tch of a disc. I got it in an almost ready to run state, just needed to wire up the drive speedos and add a lid really, but it took a bit more work than that overall, working out the brushless ESC programming, setting everything up to my liking, cramming all the wiring into a ridiculously compact space, but got there in the end. Trying to work out how to make everything fit:
As everything was tight up against everything else, I added a small polycarb belt guard to stop things getting caught or worn down:
And this was it ready to run at The Iron Games last week. You can just see the last minute addition of a couple of spiked bolts sticking out the back to stop the robot getting stuck there:
Give or take a couple of instances when it would lose a wheel in battle - something that I'll be looking to address - it smashed its way through the competition to take third overall (losing out to Flatulence in the semis!). Lynx was by far the biggest casualty, getting ripped apart by Spin Cycle in its first fight. It then lost to Headbanger before getting a bye and making it into the aforementioned semis. I let Sam drive Flatulence to make up for totalling his robot in 16 seconds after the 6-hour journey to make it to the event, and he promptly responded by comprehensively beating Spin Cycle. SC then took on Headbanger again in the 3rd place playoff and managed a one-hit KO this time. Overall a good first event and it has given me things to improve on in time for the Games finals in November.
Meanwhile....
Flatulence did what Flatulence does best, which is defy my wish for it to get beaten up and ended. Here it is prior to the fights, looking suitably rough. The only change made for this event was to swap out the MFA motors that were in it for a pair of the 1000rpm eBay motors, which gave it a much needed speed boost:
It first fought against Bonecrusher where, after a couple of minutes of tussling, managed to stack it on its back against the arena wall. It then fought Eggbeater and did what I hoped it would do (and what it did the last time it fought Eggbeater at Deeside in 2013) which was to drive its flipper blade through the big gap in the beater and hoist it up to carry it around the arena. I lost a wheel at that point which made driving a bit difficult but eventually managed to carry it over to the pit and drop it down, Flats included. It then fought FHQWHGADS and employed the same tactics to the same success before seeing off Spin Cycle in the semis. It was then Final time and it was against Eggbeater again. Flatulence was on the back foot to begin with, taking a few blows from Eggy and getting upended in the corner. I managed to get it righted before stalling the beater long enough to wedge the flipper blade in again and, in an almost identical repeat, I drove it over to the pit and dumped it (and myself, again!) in. Job done
After the competition was over we threw the remaining beetles in for a rumble and both Flatulence and Spin Cycle took damage. Spin Cycle is an easy fix, just needs the motors screwed back onto the gearboxes and Loctited. Flatulence needs a little more work but nothing too major. Despite my light-hearted loathing of it, it's got tenacity and seems to be a bit of a crowd-pleaser; I'd even go so far as to say the little fella has won me over. So it seems only fair that I spruce it up for the event in November.
So that's that for now. Got a few things that I'm wanting to make progress on robot-wise and not really sure what to focus on first. I'm still limited to weekends and half of them are usually already busy for one thing or another so it'll be slow going, but Robots Live will be at Glasgow Comic Con at the end of September so should probably sort out the feathers for that.
Kicking your arse with your own robot as revenge, worth the journey
Seriously though was great seeing you again man and both bots were looking great (ignoring the fact one was built by someone else).
I'm not at all surprised Lynx got totaled after getting it back home for a closer look, the machining was top notch but 6082 is not a good material for thin chassis parts, i can literally bend it with my bare hands.
If you're at the Beetle champs in November we can have a proper spinner scrap with NotLynx (may or may not be a beetle Last rites with 7075 chassis parts.....)
thats assuming either of oyu make it through a match with bonecrusher mk3.... loved the fight with flatulance was my personal favourit and i do fell if i had been able to get a better drive train working it would have been more intresting cause i would have been able to push you about going to get the next scoope much lower to the ground though so wont be an issue this time
What servo do you use in Flatulance? Would it be ok to see a picture of the insides?
I've failed pretty badly at keeping this updated due to it being much easier to update the Facebook page, but here's one to see the year out:
Ode to 2015
As the last few hours of 2015 tick away, it's time for a quick look back at the last year of combat carnage, and what a year it has been!
The first event of the year was no mere skirmish, it was the 2015 Featherweight World Championships hosted by Robo Challenge and held over four days at the Gadget Show Live, and was the best event yet! Over 40 robots from all around the world battling it out to become the victor. Drumroll had a complete rebuild and new drum and, combined with the reliable internals from the 2014 version, performed very well, finishing 10th, making it a top ten world featherweight robot (just!).
From then, it was off to a new event in a new(ish) weight class, with the beetleweight Iron Games in Clydebank held by Kinematic Events. Our first major foray into beetleweight competition and our first trophies in ten years as Flatulence and Spin Cycle finished 1st and 3rd respectively; a great event all round.
In September we attended the Glasgow Comic Con event to put the robots through their paces in the Robots Live arena. Onyx went eight fights without breaking or burning anything out, and was even under the control of Robert Picardo, aka The Doctor from Star Trek: Voyager, while Drumroll saw a few fights and was doing reasonably well until it smoked a drive motor. Oops!
Finally, to round off the year, it was the Fighting Robots Association Beetleweight Championships down in Bromsgrove, again hosted by Kinematic Events, and again another successful event as Flatulence came 2nd overall and won Best Driver, while Spin Cycle was awarded Best Aesthetics, serving as a consolation considering its underwhelming performance :P
So, all in all, it has been a cracking and successful year. Many thanks to all the teams and competitors, who have become very good friends in this fantastic spobby. You all make the time and money we spend on our machines, occasionally to see them destroyed, totally worth it. Best wishes to all of you in 2016!
As for 2016, we're considering taking a year out from the combat side of things. Time to work on the machines is very limited due to grown-up work and all the robots need some investment (and more importantly, time) put into them in order for them to maintain their competitiveness in the arena. If we do take a break, we won't be disappearing completely. There will still be plenty of updates here and a lot of focus will be given to our next building project. It'll be a robot, but not a combat robot. Have a basic parts pic and a blurry scribbled drawing by way of teasing
Happy New Year!
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks