also is there somewhere else nearer to East Anglia that does hardox?
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also is there somewhere else nearer to East Anglia that does hardox?
Wow! Drumroll looks amazing! Great job Jamie. :D
jamie, how wide are those 125mm wheels?
I think the same width as the 100mm and 75mm wheels?
Short answer: no idea :roll:
25mm wide if i remember right
thanks!
Mine are 30mm wide, if that's any help.
Anyway:
Event Report
The UK Champs was a bit of a fail for Drumroll. Everything that could go wrong seemed to go wrong and I don't think it got through one fight without some problem or other. Most expensive failure was the Victor 885 catching fire during a whiteboard; turns out two of the corner FETs touched each other. I've yet to check it to see if it's repairable but if it's going to cost at least half the price or more of a new unit, I'm not going to bother.
So Drumroll was supposed to spend the Friday on display and looking pretty but once Grant came round asking if there were any robots for whiteboards I couldn't resist throwing it in for some fun. First fight was pretty pants, one of the wheels came loose and the drum didn't do much (I think the robot also spent most of it upside down), then fight after fight all manner of things happened, including armour bolts vibrating loose causing the hardox sides to fall off (my fault for not balancing the drum :roll: ), the rear wedge hinges being completely mangled by Boner (half-expected them to take punishment but not be goosed before competition day) and the aforementioned Victor issue (replaced with a SSR and Battleswitch thanks to Gary and Tom respectively)
The drum was also never really effective on the Friday; part of that may be due to the drum being quite light compared to the old one, but I think the main problem was my batteries. I never got round to conditioning them before the champs so they weren't really providing their full potential. It was a bit better on the Saturday as a result of some charges/discharges.
As for the Saturday fights:
Against NST; the remaining armour pieces got smashed and a weld or two broke, drum fell out and then the receiver battery broke and came out of the switch holder, thereby killing control to the robot.
Against Cyberon and Stagefright; I think I spent a lot of the fight inverted again, can't remember too much of what happened (need to rewatch the video) but then my Corona receiver gave up the ghost (second one to do so, I don't think they like shocks) so Drumroll was dead for the remainder of the fight.
Against Asgard and Heatwave; had a lack of drive on one side of the robot due to the grub screws in the drill gearbox not being tight enough (the drill/gearbox was a replacement for one that broke from an NST hit) so all I could do was spin in circles with the drum spinning, generating some minor gyroscopic forces, and hope for a lucky hit here and there. Somehow managed to get two points from that battle after one of my opponents drove into the pit but with a grand pathetic total of five points, it wasn't enough to see me through to the knock-out stages.
At that point I needed to fix the wheel if I was to continue with whiteboards or a possible shot at the Annihilator, but it was stuck on well and truly and proving a pain to remove, so at that point I was really fed-up and pi$$ed off with the robot so it was consigned to the car boot for the remainder of the event.
The strange thing was that I thought the robot was much improved going into this competition compared with the spec running at the 2010 Champs; back then it finished 12th and got to the Annihilator final, but this time it came joint 26th (tied with Cicatrix, ironic considering I built it :proud: ) so it was a horribly below-par performance in my opinion.
Upgrades
So how to improve it? Starting from the basics; the RG1000 chassis pieces are going to be replaced with 16mm Nylon to add some weight and improve structural properties. The plans for an aluminium chassis have been ditched as I feel Nylon is perfectly sufficient, I know how it will perform and I have surplus from Carcinus' material. The old Drumroll chassis was made in 2007 and only got 'decommissioned' so to speak late last year, so it definitely does the business. And although I'm planning on setting up a shed for a workshop, it would also still be easier to work with Nylon than aluminium with my current facilities so all things considered, it makes sense.
Next thing I'm thinking of is taking out the Nimhs (Carcinus can have them) and putting a lipo pack in there. I remember noticing how much of an improvement there was in old Drumroll/Boner at the champs last year when Gary put a lipo pack in it, and with the FlightPower discount just now it would be a good time to splash out on a pack or two.
Control-wise, everything was fine with the Scorpion XL so no repairs or improvements needed there. The Speed 900 is also fine so I'll be sticking with that for now, and sorting out my own SSR/battleswitch combo for controlling it.
Armour-wise, I'm going to weld on a back panel to connect the two side panels together so that the armour is all one piece, and then sort some custom-made hinges for the wedge at the back. That'll just consist of some pieces of steel welded to the wedge and back panel, then held together with a couple of big bolts.
All that should offer a big improvement over its most recent performance and then I'll see how it gets on and take any further modifications from there. No rush for it though, the next event is Robots Live Edinburgh so priority will fall to Carcinus and hopefully Grond :)
Should've just welded a big chunk of windmill on the front instead of the drum, that would've done it :lol: :lol: :lol:
They're turbines, not bloody windmills! :P
And yeah, should've just built a pusher too. Would've been much less hassle and I'd have probably got some decent fights :lame:
You will get a good discount from flightpower, but they just wont actually send you any lipos. There good like that.