RogueTwo Robots

[Max]

What is that sticking out of your electronize?

[Anttazz]

The relay you mean? They all have them.

[jonny]

15amp ones do, 30amp ones don't have the relay sticking out. Shame you're not sticking to the strafen idea, maybe I'll try it with omen :P

[mattsdragons]

My 15a don't have relaYs sticking out, just got flat red rectangles

[harry hills]

yours are the new flavor then

[RogueTwoRobots]

Seen quite a few updates and videos of robot testing today. Things here have taken a step back though.

When testing Drumroll to make sure that everything was still running fine, I noticed one side of drive wasn't working. I reckoned it was the pinion gear that had come loose on the drill motor shaft (and I was right) but in the process of stripping it down I had to butcher the wheel nut insert. Tried to re-do it this evening but didn't work too well, so switched to the Banebots hybrids I had for back-up. But one of them is off-centre slightly so the robot drives poorly going forward and just spins around one wheel going backwards. Basically, out of four wheels, I only have one reliable one, and the nut insert on that is starting to show signs of loosening up. So I think some steel hubs with the nut inserts welded on and with wheels bolted to the hubs is the approach I'll have to take.

Also stuck the batteries for the MDF bot on charge and, despite the chargers supposedly having some form of basic auto-detect feature, they managed to overcharge the batteries and one of the packs started hissing and was too hot to touch (similar problem happened at Barnsley a couple of years ago, for those that remember). I'm not sure if it's the chargers or the packs, as I charged Carcinus' packs on fast charge the other day without any problems, and they're the same style of pack. So I think I'll need to sort out getting a few more of the intelligent chargers with display screens to cut down on battery distruction.

To cut a long story short, currently the only working robot is Carcinus, which still needs its armour redone. I was supposed to meet up with Tony tomorrow to put the bots through their paces but have cancelled that to focus on fixing everything. The MDF bot is now low priority as I have no spare battery packs, so I'll try and get it running (by borrowing Carcinus' packs after it loses ) but only if I get the other robots finished first.

These last few build days were supposed to be relaxing, but now is when everything is going wrong
Better than having it going wrong in the arena I guess.

[RogueTwoRobots]

Update

Well, things have gone considerably better since Sunday. The wheel nut issue with Drumroll has been fixed by welding them onto a couple of 6mm steel bars, to which the wheels get bolted. So hopefully another possible failure point resolved. The robot still has some tendency to pull to the left when reversing, which is something it didn't do previously, but it's not major enough to annoy me. The old Drumroll couldn't reverse straight for peanuts so I'm sort of used to it.

Carcinus hasn't had any problems and I've made up a bit of armour to protect the drill at the back, so it's all ready to go, although I don't expect the claw bolts or linkages to withstand any serious spinner impacts. Luckily there aren't any in its heats, so unless it somehow makes it through and gets drawn against a spinner, or it suicidally jumps into a spinner whiteboard, it should be fine.

MDF bot isn't complete either. I put some tails on the drill motors as a start, but then couldn't be bothered trying to rush it when everything else was complete, so just left it.

But all in all, as happy as I can be with the state of the robots. I think I've eliminated as many weak areas as possible, but there are bound to be problems that come up in the arena that I haven't accounted for, or that are just unavoidable. Got annoyed with the robots (mainly Drumroll) last year but just gonna try and relax and enjoy the event this time

Did a wee photo-shoot as well:

[harry hills]

they are both class machines, 'specialy drumroll, i would love to fight that.

[Anttazz]

Both looking awesome, hope Drumroll finally comes good for you this time, you have a seeding to live up to afterall :wink: . Does the armour improve Carcinus' usefulness at all

Looking forward to seeing the videos from the event too.

[RogueTwoRobots]

Carcinus' usefulness

What's that?

But ta muchly, I'll make sure to get my usual collection of footage if I can. Dunno if the armour improves the bot much (not weighed it to see how much weight it adds) but it should at least stop it from having its guts thrown everywhere.