RogueTwo Robots

Thanks Kody :)
Its taken a while to get Drumroll to where I wanted in terms of performance but I finally feel thats its close to how I initially intended it to be.

Alex, would love to stick a video up but still got computer problems at the moment which is restricting my upload abilities. That might be getting resolved this week though, Ill need to wait and see. How about a video from Rebel Robots of Drumroll beating Crumple Zone? :proud:

Gary, Kaizer is looking a lot better than it will after its come up against Hornet, Kishar and Pillow Torque :)
The entire lifting fork mechanism is finished now, just requires the tightening of a few bolts here and there. Drives are in place, speedos are in place. Just need to fit in the batteries (which arrived today) and get the whole thing wired up (link, LEDs etc). Then itll be a case of getting the armour cut and fitted, a lick of paint then good to go hopefully. Ill be bringing all my tools and the bots up to Glasgow next weekend to get all the loose ends tied up in the week leading up to Rebel Robots so hope to get plenty of testing and battery cycling done in that time.
If youre in Glasgow anytime that week Gary (2nd-6th Feb) youre more than welcome to swing by and check out the bots (but no sabotaging Kaizer if you do! :P)

hmm that offer of a match against drumroll sounds.....interesting lol get your pc sorted so you can show off how good drumroll is!!!!!

One down, one to go

Drumroll is done! Mechanically its all ready to go. Ive got a replacement battery pack and theyre on trickle charge at the moment, gearing up for a good testing session down the industrial estate tomorrow. Provided nothing breaks there, all that is left to do is the fiddly little things like painting, sharp edge protection and weapon locking pin.
Unfortunately I just couldnt scrape the required weight off in other parts of the robot so Ive had to sacrifice a weapon motor in order to get the robot within the weight limit (its 13.5kg)
Although the energy stored in the drum doesnt change, spin-up times will be slower and maintaining rotation in a series of sucessive hits against resistive objects will be harder but ach well...
Might consider switching the back Hardox wedge to a titanium one in future to claw back some weight and refit the other weapon motor.

Got a list of stuff to do on Kaizer tomorrow to get it ready; Ill be doing the big noisy construction stuff while I can get away with it at home (:proud:) and then all the wiring and internal fittings can be done up at my flat in the coming week.

My computer isnt going to get fixed anytime soon unfortunately so I dont see me getting any pics or vids uploaded before the comp sorry.

One week to go!

Damn...
quote:

Provided nothing breaks

Why oh why do I say these things??!

I took Drumroll down the industrial estate yesterday and tested out the drum. Very impressive stuff. Smashed up a computer monitor, the old drum, and the old chassis. Getting some nice airtime from the drum etc.
I was then driving the robot towards the old chassis again, and unbeknown to me, one of the bolts holding the shaft in had vibrated loose and fallen off (I forgot to loctite it).
Two seconds later, the shaft wiggles out one end, the drum drops to the ground at full speed and SMASH. Sparks from the concrete, a shattered top panel, weapon motor mounts broken and motor ripped out, front bulkhead cracked in two, baseplate bent and tensioner bent. Dont get me wrong, it looked spectacular (and Ill have it on my video camera at Rebel Robots if anyone wants a look) but man, I dont think Ive ever sworn so much in such a short space of time.

Drumroll is not dead though! :mrgreen:

Managed to repair most of the damage. Thankfully the weapon shaft is unbent, drum is undamaged (apart from some blunt teeth) and motor still works, so its almost all back together. Just need to flatten the base panel and come up with a temporary bulkhead fix for Rebel Robots and Robo Challenge. After that I could either cut a new bulkhead or take some time out from competing and start planning/building Drumroll Mk2, with invertibility and gyroscopic dancing :)

Getting an exciting tingling feeling now what with the Rebel Robots arena being officially good to go, plus the fact were only five days away! Wondering whether to get a haircut if were going to be on camera (anyone who has seen my recent Facebook profile pic is free to offer their opinion :P)

Sharp edge protection, locking pins and paint left to go

see the trouble is with these spinner owns is they cant help but smash stuff up and what happens????

they smash their own robot up

lol

Lol been there and done that. There is nothing quite as disheartening when you realise that you have taken the flange off the aluminium pulley that you paid 60 quid for to get custom made :P

Best of luck throwing it back together Jamie.

Never fear, Drumroll arose from the ashes last night and is fully working again *evil cackle*

Even managed to get Kaizer wired up and tested out. Broke something on it too (Im doing well!) but itll get fixed today and finished off :)

Damn...again!

I fixed the broken bit on Kaizer (one of the lifting fork mounting points) Its now been reinforced to make it stronger and Im much happier with it than I was before it broke.

Running it around the kitchen let me get a feel for it although I wont be driving it much at Rebel Robots. Its nippy (so Im feeling more confident about keeping away from the discs of Kishar and Hornet 2) and quite controllable, nice to drive really. As a last test before stopping for the night, I spun it on the spot continuously while raising the lifting forks. I could hear the batteries running down a bit, which is what I wanted so I could trickle charge them again, when all of a sudden....POP!

One of the cells in the pack exploded (not violently, just the loud pop) and damaged another cell in the process. This has left me in a bit of a sticky situation. Im going to go on the hunt for a powerful soldering iron and attempt to make a pack up from the surviving working cells of this pack and the spares from the pack Drumroll damaged. But in the event that Im not able to, or the homemade pack assembly doesnt go too well, can I ask...

Does anyone have a spare pack (either new or used) of 9.6V 3700mAh Nimh batteries in a 4x2 block formation eg:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/9-6v-3700mAh-NiMH-Battery-Pack-Compact-Vapextech_W0QQitemZ320160397744QQcmdZViewItemQQptZ UK_ToysGames_RadioControlled_JN?hash=item320160397 744&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1683%7C66% 3A2%7C65%3A12%7C39%3A1%7C240%3A1318http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/9-6v-3700mAh-N...tech_W0QQitemZ 320160397744QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_ToysGames_RadioC ontrolled_JN?hash=item32016039 7744&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1683%7C66 %3A2%7C65%3A12%7C39%3A1%7C240% 3A1318

that they could bring to Rebel Robots at the weekend as a standby. A new pack off eBay wouldnt arrive in time but if I was to borrow someones pack Id be willing to buy it off them after the event if they wanted to part with it. If anyone can help out, Id be most grateful!

Additionally, does anyone have an idea of what would cause a cell to pop like I described? Is it due to drawing too much current out of the battery, more than it can handle? Im guessing this is the main reason since Kaizer was spinning on the spot and running the actuator at the same time. My other concern is, spinning and lifting the forks is a likely arena scenario, so its not ideal to have cells popping during a fight. Is it possible that the application would be more suited to Nicads (or possibly A123s now that Nicads are hard to get) since it seems to be drawing a lot of current. The setup is four 16.8V drill motors running at 19.2V, plus an Okin Deltadrive actuator driving the forks.

Any insight into the above in relation to battery technology would be helpful, as Im still quite uneducated in that department (too used to the simplicity of SLAs :))

Thanks

well i have a pack of 8.4v in stick form cant remember mah its vapextech pack

vapextech are very good aswell

i doubt you will ever have to spin on spot and lift the forks but dont know what your like in an arena :)

Jamie,

I have a feeling that a battery going pop means that it over heated. Probably due to too much current being drawn.

You have 4 drill motors being overvolted plus a linear actuator running along side. That is a huge amount of current for a pack that should only be able to discharge 35amps max.

If you can afford them I would go for the A123s. Been playing with mine and they are $exy!!!! Huge current discharges and light as hell. Throw them in drumroll and you will notice a huge difference!

nah! stick lipos in get even more than A123s for less weight

Update

Just thought Id give a bit of a post-Rebel Robots update since Ive got nothing better to do (who said anything about studying?)

Firstly to Drumroll; its first fight was against Tuff Luck 2, a bit of a rematch from the UK champs last year. Managed to refrain from getting stuck on each other twice so that was good. Got a few hits in on Tuff Luck but it has a thick shell and the drum was never going to cause much damage. However, Tuff Luck broke down (I think it was a power failure?) and was in the process of being counted out when Drumroll hit it with the drum and promptly broke down itself! Drumroll still won because Tuff Luck had stopped first but the breakdown was slightly worrying.

Back in the pits, a post-mortem revealed that the two speedo plugs had popped out from the mixer, thus removing the BEC supply to the receiver and in turn losing all radio control. Quick fix with tape and cable ties however and it was all good to go again.

Next up was Pain in the Asp. A very good match that had some nice impacts. Im keen to see this fight again actually as the drums potential capability was becoming apparent. However the drive was rubbish leading to some squiffy handling. Thankfully Geoff is a better driver and kept driving towards the drum :)

Just when it was getting fun, I lost one side of my drive - no idea why at first. This limited any attempt to drive towards PITA so I had to hope hed come towards me. Geoff very quickly realised what had happened and altered his tactics to suit, driving round to the back of Drumroll and pushing into the rear wedge. This led to a final score of 6-2 in PITAs favour as I could not do much going round in circles. But I loved the fight so its cool :)

With Drumroll out of the main comp I tried to solve the problem of the bad drive. Never had much time to pull it apart though to the thorough degree that it needed, so I just kept it together and threw it in a whiteboard at the end to drive in circles.

Back home, I took it apart and the cause of the broken drive was that the pinion on the motor shaft had come off so the turning of the motor wasnt being transmitted through the gearbox. Ive replaced the motor for Newcastle and fixed the old one with some Loctite. Not sure how well thatll hold so Ill keep that as my spare.

So overall I was happy with Drumrolls weapon performance, even though I wish it could have progressed a little more in the competition. I was however, disappointed with the speed of the drive. When I take the outer chassis off and drive around the inner chassis (basically where everythings mounted) its speedy as hell. Yes there is an extra 8kg on it when the outer chassis is fixed on but I think its mostly down to the Speed 900 taking a bit of power away from the drives and also the distance between the spinning mass and the drive wheels (quite a bit for a vertical spinner). Not sure how much of an effect the steel floor had. The bike tyre would have gripped it no problem, but not sure if the HDPE front panels are generating too much friction. Might add some Nylon skids for Newcastle, its always seemed to be fine running on the Nylon.

Kaizer went out in the first round to Pillow Torque and thanks to the change from double elimination to single elimination, plus Hornet and Kishar wrecking each other, it was able to avoid a trashing. The most damage was a broken aerial and a damaged gearbox. It suffered from the torque ring slipping in the match against Pillow Torque which resulted in a lovely grinding noise in the match. Thought it was worse than that but thankfully a quick turn of an allen key and they were all good.

Ran it in a couple of whiteboard fights; I was pleased to see the speed it zooms around at at 24V (thanks again to Clive for lending us those cells - think Im going to reconfigure my remaining Vapextech cells to 24V :))
Slammed into the wall a few times (cant have been good for the forks :P) and slammed/got slammed by other robots a fair bit. Damage, as mentioned above, was a jammed wheel caused by a broken gearbox plate (too much slamming!) which was easily fixed on the Saturday night.

Overall opinion: didnt get much competition time but its got potential and Ill hopefully be able to start sorting out a four-bar-lifter for it to replace the forks.

Finally got some photos of Kaizer uploaded too, for those who haven€™t seen it:

http://s31.photobucket.com/albums/c367/ayrshirerobotics/Kaizer%20Mk3%20-%20Build/http://s31.photobucket.com/albums/c3...k3%20-%20Build /

Lifting forks were plundered from Kim Davies garage during the middle of the night :)

Also updated Drumroll€™s build pics a little:

http://s31.photobucket.com/albums/c367/ayrshirerobotics/Drumroll%20-%20Build/?start=160http://s31.photobucket.com/albums/c3...0-%20Build/?st art=160


Wow, bloomin€™ long post. Maybe I should consider that €˜study€™ thing now

Jamie
http://www.ayrshirerobotics.vze.comwww.ayrshirerobotics.vze.com

you didnt mention how you broke p.i.t.a s gear box

big time, such a good shot looked so good on the footage

Well I mentioned the gearbox in the Rebel Robots thread, so didnt want to rub it in again :wink:

I think that was the last hit of the fight wasnt it? In which case it was fluke more than skill; I wasnt aiming, mainly because I couldnt drive properly, so I just spun it round and got lucky with an impact. Cant wait to see the footage of it though :)

EDIT: Ok, turns out I didnt mention it in the Rebel Robots thread, so thanks Alex for bringing it up :proud:

(Message edited by K_C_R on February 12, 2009)

if you had drive working properly you might of got him OOTA you werent far off with that last hit
you realize you were the last spinner in the comp
are you still on electronize? you could get on a sabretooth and really kick arse

Drumroll kicks ass, your so close to having a championship winner RebRobs and Robo Challenge
CrumpleZone isnt far off being there too but i think Drumroll with its Tanto forks :) is one of the best spinners out there

when we going to see the fights craig? was it all good footage for tv?

yea was all brilliant, first 3 fights were a little dark but the rest are great, should have a DVD for May June time for every team who competed

Yep still running Drumroll on Electronize - I thought about a Sabretooth but money currently doesnt allow, plus if it aint broke, dont fix it :)
The Electronizes are still sufficing so Ill stick with them until they break (or possibly change to a Sabretooth for Drumroll Mk2)

Hehe, Tanto forks. I actually borrowed (read: stole :)) most of the design from Nick Martins beater robot from pictures I saw on the Aussie forum. Personally I think its got a bit to go yet before it really kicks ass, but thanks for the support :proud:
Im hoping Drumroll Mk2 will be a lot more kick-ass though - similar layout and design as Proteus (US drumbot that I really admire) and Reboot from Australia. Dunno if Reboot was in action when you were over in Oz Craig but if youve seen pictures or videos of it in action Im sure youll agree its stylish as hell (and damn effective for a friction-driven drum!)

Update

The forum upgrade has made my page order all funky but Ill add some info still anyway.

With three days to go till the UK champs things are well on track. The robots visited Hornet Headquarters at the weekend where I was able to get a lot done to both machines to ensure they would be ready for the upcoming event.

Drumroll is now ready and raring to go:
http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c367/ayrshirerobotics/Drumroll%20-%20Build/DSCN4104.jpghttp://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c3...0-%20Build/DSC N4104.jpg

I discovered one of the wheels is a little loose on the drive so I just need to tighten that up and top-up the batteries. Drive seems a little better than at Rebel and the drum is looking formidable.

Kaizer was suffering from intermittent faults when driving. It would be fine one minute then one side would just cut out and not work again for a while. The problem hasnt been entirely diagnosed - I can only conclude that it was a loose connection somewhere and since Ive now gone over all the connections and redone them, Im hoping its okay.

Critical Damage was orginally signed up for whiteboards at Newcastle but is still in no fighting condition. However over the past day Ive done some work on Bullseye and it should be in running order to have a few whiteboard fights and uphold its excellent combat record at Robochallenge events :lol:

Not much to do now but wait for the weekend to roll on and have an absolute belter!

Oh yes, well be bringing a haggis too for anyone wishing to try/have some. Im just about to head up north to the glens to try and catch one :)

Excellent combat record? Whats that :P

Best of luck at the champs though, Drumroll looks positively evil now. Dont go poisoning anyone with the haggis :proud:

Lol hornet headquarters :rofl:

Mind u, seeing as Pug is wedge-shaped with a forward-hinge flipper, if Pug gets pitted against Kaizer, we may replicate a Panic Attack Vs Firestorm battle Jamie! Looking forward to meeting u this weekend :)

Update

Well the champs came and went, and already I'm wishing there was another one round the corner - I want to get in the arena again!

Drumroll did exceptionally well by its usual standards, going all the way to the semi-finals. It sustained a little damage but nothing lasting and its all back together and ready to go now. Kaizer suffered considerably more damage and is now up for a rebuild.

In Kaizer's first fight, it took a hit from Miss Scorpion after ramming into Wedgie. Both Miss Scorpion and Kaizer became stuck in the corner and Wedgie came along to flip us out, followed almost instantly by Miss Scorpion.
Its second fight saw it take on Ploughbot and LS3, where it again took damage, more this time, against Team Nipper's creation and then became beached on its front forks, which were stuck in the below-ground-level position.
And for its final competition fight it had Savage Evo and Cyberon. It took another beating from Savage but lasted longer than Cyberon, so that left it on 4 points which wasn't enough to see it progress.
It did enter several whiteboards throughout the weekend too though and again took some damage so its in definite need of reconstruction and significant strengthening.

Drumroll started it first fight strongly, managing to flip Stripper over onto its back immobilising it (although Stripper did leave an 8mm deep gash in the HDPE side before this). I then decided that I couldn't cause much damage to Ironside so opted to open the pit......and then drove straight into it!! So I got 2 points for that battle.
Then up against Miss Scorpion and Annihilation, Drumroll took a hit on the side from Miss Scorpion's bar and then a drum-to-bar hit resulted in Miss Scorpion becoming immobilised. I think the bar got bent a bit too. Annihilation received some airtime and a couple of hits, and during a push the pit got opened. A couple of hits later, the bolt came out the end of the drum shaft (same thing as what happened at the industrial estate testing pre-Rebel) and the drum thumped to the deck, unable to spin. A tense shoving match ensued until somehow I managed to get Annihilation lined up behind Miss Scorpion and pushed them both into the pit! Drumroll seemed to gain extreme traction all of a sudden at that point but I won't complain because it won me the match. 4 points.
Final league match came against Mini Mighty Mouse. I was worried about this one becuase MMM is a tough little machine and while the flipper isn't the most powerful, it is effective, constantly flip flip flipping. The roll cage came out for Drumroll to hopefully survive that, but in the end it didn't need it, as Mini Mighty Mouse was suffering from drive problems and wasn't its usual nippy self. Drumroll was able to knock it about the arena a bit until it was immobilised drive-wise and then pushed it into the pit. The 4 points for that victory took me to 10 points overall which was enough to make it through to the knockout rounds.

Next up was Beauty 3, which was over quite quickly as Drumroll pitted it, but to be honest it felt like a hollow victory as Beauty 3 never moved - I think it was down to clearance issues on the floor. But that titanium chassis makes some nice sparks 8)
Then against Aftershock Drumroll started strongly, getting some hits in but Aftershock's HDPE shell was never under any threat of major damage. Will managed to get a flip in and it was all that was needed - Drumroll's self-righting hoops buckled a bit when the robot was upside-down and it failed to self-right correctly and was counted out.

Into the losers melee against Explosion and LS3; both myself and Explosion opted to go for LS3 first as it was the one we both felt was the strongest and therefore had to go :)
After some initial impacts against each other, at somepoint Drumroll swung round and hit Explosion and it went flying out of the arena (flukey hit) which left me stuck with LS3! LS3 seemed to be suffering a bit with drive (I can't remember most of this fight as I've not got it on camera :( ) but Drumroll and LS3 went disc-to-drum, there was a huge impact, and LS3 stopped! So Drumroll went back into the main competition (woo!) Post mortems revealed a huge gash in the rim of LS3s disc where we had collided. I hadn't expected that :shock:

So this time it came up against Beauty 2, but when I spun up on Activate the drum suddenly stopped working and I was caught in a second of hesitation - before I knew it Beauty 2 had me flipped and then OOTA'd. This left me fighting for 3rd place against Savage Evo.
One impact was all it took. Savage Evos disc smacked the very side of the drum at the pulley and pulled the drum out at one end. It also lost all power at this point and since Savage Evo was still going on one wheel, it went on worthily to claim 3rd place.

So all in all a reasonably successful and unbelieveably fun event. Drumroll has been donated a brushless motor and controller which has some insane speed and power to it. I'm going to try and test it with the drum over my uni easter holidays (in a couple of weeks) but the forces going through it as a result of the extra power may be too much for the current chassis and might have to be kept for Mk.2 (coming 2010).

For the mean time, here's some pictures from the event:
http://s31.photobucket.com/albums/c3...champs%202009/

I can say that Drumroll was fantastic a well fort 4th place :)
yes against Beauty3 we moved to the only place in the areana which our wheels were off the ground lol Doh but apart from that we had no damage

( LS3 and the other 5 spinners has bent b3 beyound repair)

and Beauty 2 well what can i say Lucky AGAIN!!

Update

I mentioned about five months ago what happens when I'm supposed to be studying. Well, its happened again! Another robot has been designed!

To be fair, more redesigned than conceived from scratch. This robot has existed in the form of either graphite or a POP (pile of parts) since October 2005, when I first got my hands on a 4000N linear actuator. It was originally designed to run in Rex's Robot Challenge events (until it dawned on me that there wasn't gonna be another one of them anytime soon) so it had wiper motors for drive and bulky sealed lead-acid batteries. Its now been upgraded to full-on FRA rules featherweight status;

I'm talking Snakebite!
(and not the drink, for the alcoholics amongst us :))

The closest this robot ever came to completion was a wooden prototype that I got moving in September 2007;
http://s31.photobucket.com/albums/c367/ ... -%20Build/

and since then all that has happened is that the prototype got pulled apart and the components shoved in a box under my bed. All my focus (and money!) at the time went on getting Drumroll weaponised.

However, with a whole summer ahead of me in which to build I now want to get this beast together again. Its changed in looks and style since those pictures were taken and if it all works as planned, it ought to be quite funky to operate. 8)

With the tag-champs provisionally going ahead in September, I've got 3 months to bring Snakebite to life (work won't start until after my exams finish at the end of May). I could have an easier job and just rebuild Kaizer but I've got no motivation to reconstruct that so soon after building it over Christmas. Besides I want to churn out something a lot more creative and exciting than a box-on-wheels.

A few pictures may appear over the months of the build but I'm going to keep most of it under wraps until competition time. After that it'll be pictures galore :D
I just thought I'd give info on it as it was last night I decided to go ahead with it, plus it provides a welcome distraction from the attempts to study. Same old story eh? :roll:

P.S. Kane, if you read this and you're not too busy at somepoint, could you possibly move this into the Build Diaries section please, now that we've got a dedicated area for ramblings such as this :)
Many thanks

Well exams are now done and dusted so I can get back to building bots. The plan to complete Snakebite, as mentioned above, probably won't happen in time for the tag champs, there's too much work required to go into it and I don't have the time or money to do it justice.

Instead I'll be working on a new robot to submit alongside Drumroll for the tags:
http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c3...d/DSCN4164.jpg

Basic spec; 12V drill motors for drive, windscreen wiper motor for the weapon, two 9.6V Nimh packs for 19.2V in series and Electronize speedos. Grabbing claws are driven by the wiper motor through a threaded rod from an old car scissor jack. The jack's arms will be the link to the claws providing the motion. The claws themselves will be slightly different in shape to the 'pencils of doom' :lol: They'll most likely be welded box-section steel too.

This'll be under my team-mate's control at the tags but will become my dad's replacement for Bullseye once I get Snakebite built.

Drumroll is up for a rebuild. The current chassis is still run-able but with the added power that'll be going through it from the brushless, I'm not sure if it'll last another competition. I also want to ditch the need for self-righting hoops and am aiming for a nippier drive. The design will be close to this:

http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c3...mroll_mk23.jpg

http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c3...k1_mk2_iso.jpg
A comparison with the old/current design.

http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c3...1_mk2_iso1.jpg
And again, from the back.

The chassis is 12mm polypro for the time being. It's been suggested I go for a pocketed aluminium milled chassis (*coughKennycough* :lol: ) but for the first build I'm going to use low-cost plastic, just to make sure the design is viable and effective. When I've won the lottery I'll go for milled aluminium, or laser cut-and-welded ti or something sexy :)
The only part I'm not happy with at the moment is the shape of the parts round the wheels. I'm not going to redesign them in CAD though, I'll just wait until I get round to building it and improvise on the spot.

Components are all the same as the current machine with exception of the brushless motor replacing the Speed 900s. The motor mount will be adjustable however, so that I can swap the brushless out for the Speed 900 if it burns out or I don't feel its performing very well.

Work will hopefully begin on both of these after the weekend

WHOA. Loving that new design concept, Jamie. :) Should turn out quite nicely.

Thanks Kody - I wish I could say it was all my own ideas but in fact its quite the opposite. The basic layout/design is from the American featherweight Proteus and the shape of the front forks was based on the design of an Australian egg-beater robot called Misfortune. I also kept the design of Reboot in mind (again from Australia) when designing but there aren't any majorly noticable 'borrowed ideas' from that robot........yet :lol:

Direct Plastics order arrived with material for the chassis' of the new robots.

Inside the packaging was a packet of Haribo Goldbears.

I R Happy :D

(and so concludes the most pointless and worthless build diary entry to date)

looks good jamie cant work out how the weapon motor connects to the drum with hit other parts though?????

maybe call the grabber robot golden bear ???? :)

good job

The belt connecting the motor to the drum will run round the cordless drill gearboxes and will have tensioners in place so that the belt clears them. I haven't finalised a tensioner design yet, which is why it doesn't show in the pictures. Plus I don't know how to CAD timing belts :oops:
I've done a really crude drawing in Paint though, to show the basic idea:

http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c3...e_belt_fig.jpg

It may add to the complexity of the system but its a method that allows me to have my drive wheels as close to the drum and inline with the weapon axle as possible, thus minimising a percentage of the gyroscopic effects.

The grabbing robot was called Incisor as it was all I could come up with name-wise that didn't already rip off the names of other crushing robots. I had tried to look for crab species to use as a name since I feel it has a bit of a crab look to it but all the species names weren't really suited to robots.
However I spent the other night trawling the net and found a page of the original Latin/Greek names for crab species and as such it shall now be called Carcinus :)
(carcinus maenas is Greek for shore crab - but maenas detracts from it as a bot name, so I shortened it :))

Update

Well progress has been a lot slower than anticipated over the past couple of weeks. I went through a lack-of-motivaton phase last week after falling out with the polypropylene. Cutting the 12mm stuff for the Drumroll chassis, it would melt really easily even with the slowest speed setting on the jigsaw, and then the blade would start to seize up. I was disappointed with it as I had never suffered problems like this to the same degree cutting 20mm Nylon and 12mm HDPE. But it turns out all it needed was some loving and copious amounts of WD-40 sprayed in the cutting zone every few seconds. I've gotten away with not using cutting lubricant before on plastics but this type was having none of it!

So cutting done, all the holes for bolting the chassis together have been drilled and tapped and the main parts have gone together:

http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c3...d/DSCN4280.jpg

Its a solid and rugged little construction; I'm happy with it so far. Compared with the CAD drawing however, you may notice the angled rear sides have been ditched in favour of a boring box. Basically the internal space gained by the angled sides was not needed and just added to the general bulk of the robot, plus cutting and bolting a box together is much easier :lol:
I don't like the overall boxy look though, so I'll still be adding some cosmetic fins etc as per the CAD image in my previous update.

There was a slight design flaw too (more like me hoping I could get away with it based on CAD drawings). The diameter of the drum is larger than the total length of the front skids, so the teeth hit the ground on a revolution. Easily solved with the addition of some extra skid pads as shown (not made out of duct tape and cardboard on the finished product) to raise the height of the front of the robot slightly and allow the drum to spin freely:

http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c3...d/DSCN4277.jpg

Low-lying wedges beware though; drum tooth ground clearance is minimal so don't expect to get away with not sustaining damage :twisted:

http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c3...d/DSCN4279.jpg

Next steps, scheduled for tomorrow, are to get the drill motors fitted in place, throw in the speedos and batteries and hopefully get a quick runabout to see how the new setup (faster, wider wheelbase, different CoG) handles.

Need to get my finger out and make a start on Carcinus too

Looks good Jamie

post some more pictures of todays work :)

also how tall is the new drumroll????

looking very nice and neat so far:)

the same thing was happening to me on wednesday, i had to cut out 2 ali lids for pinsor and i was clogging up jig saw blades like nothing else, 10 clogged blades in, i had to go to screw fix and get some blades made for ali and when they started clogging up aswell i was beginning to think it wasn't worth the waste of petrol but then froggy told about the wonders or WD40:)

Thanks guys

Alex - the boxy part of the chassis is 75mm high (and I'm planning on tapering the back now the same was Kaizer was, if I can get away with even less internal space - its gonna be tight!) and the height at the front skids will be about 130mm when I get the additional skid pads fitted in place.

Calum - I'd never really considered WD-40 to be the best lubricant for cutting stuff, I always thought a more liquid-like fluid was needed, and I also didn't know if the WD-40 would have any weakening or corroding effects on plastic but it seem fine, and I'll need to stock up on a couple more cans soon. Hoping to get the videos uploaded for you today as well for the old weapons setup; yesterday's time managed to disappear a lot faster than I anticipated :|

ok thanks that would be great:)

Guys don't bother with the WD40 as its quite pricey and a waste of good lubricant!

Instead just buy a litre of coolant here http://www.chronos.ltd.uk/acatalog/Chro ... c_124.html

The 1 Litre Multicut Soluble Oil is brilliant for all cutting operations. Just take a sports cap lucazade bottle, pour a shot of the oil in and then fill up with water. I use this with my lathes and have no problem and that litre will last you a LONG time if you dilute it correctly, believe me!

You do have to spend a min of 10 quid with chronos but I'm pretty sure you could find some other random tool that you never even considered using before for a couple quid.

O and the new chassis looks good Jamie :)

Update

Well I didn't get it driving today; it was one of those days where you think everything will be nice and simple, screw a few screws in, bolt/tape some things down, wire up some connections and it'll all be good but instead it turns into one of those days where little niggling things slow you down, get in the way and generally just annoy the crap out of you.

The rear of the robot got cut to a taper because otherwise the wheels would not touch the ground, and tapering it shortened the length of the base and solved that problem. But its very tight for space inside now (tighter even than my dad when it comes to paying for shopping/restaurant bills etc :lol:)
I always prefer to build my robots to contain as much power as possible in as small a space as possible, but I'm pushing it a bit this time:

http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c3...d/DSCN4284.jpg

May not look too squished but by the time I add a second battery pack (to go in the void on the right-hand side) motor mount, Victor speedo mount, wires, radio gear, removeable link, LED, aerial etc it'll be difficult to work with. So I'm going to really have to keep wires trimmed and everything neat and tidy if I don't want to drive myself nuts at events trying to effect repairs. It'll be a bit better when the brushless is fitted, but since the bigger motor/speedo combo of the Speed 900 is my back-up and space is limited, I figured it'd be better to mount that in place first to make sure it fits and then swap in the smaller brushless setup. Should be plenty of room inside once I've indulged in some A123s, Scorpion or Sabretooth controller etc :D

Gonna take a building break for a few days after today frustrated me quite a bit (part of me wants to chuck the current chassis, remake it from Nylon and stick to the original CAD layout) and such a break coincides nicely with going back up to Glasgow for the weekend to work :)