Tech Check question- (for lifters)

a hypothetical example, razer uses a bike starter motor to run the hydraulic pump. These can be easilly imaginged in a lead screw application. These are body earthed, and many robots are body earthed.
A link is removed, in doing so, a loose wire falls on the terminal of the motor, it fire up, and the weapon moves, it can happen, it has happened, and will happen again.

i pulled the link from one of my feathers, unity, at the tendering show, and it carried on running at full power because of my then team mate incorrectly wiring it. Simple mistake, but then if he can do it, so can others.

rather than say, I think this will occur and others say no it wont i suggest we just make it compulsory for all active weapons without exception be physically locked in position when out of the arena. for storm 2 for example, this takes only a strut of the correct length bracing the arm to the back of the chassis in the open position. If there is a failure that results in weapon movement, i would rather see smoking motors than falling fingers.

Slightly off-topic but sort of related to the hydraulic weapons mentioned above. With hydraulic (and pneumatic) systems theres always the danger of the hoses/connections bursting. The pic below I found on the Scrapheap Challenge forum and was the result of an hydraulic hose connection bursting when the system was pressurised to 6000p.s.i (I know the robot limit is around 3000p.s.i - but thatll still be pretty deadly)

http://www.steamscenes.org.uk/ttu/00001694.jpghttp://www.steamscenes.org.uk/ttu/00001694.jpg

Urgh!!

Thats gross!..But I think it should serve as a warning to all of us who play with any type of combat robot....

To quote a line from thay exellent 1980s US police series Hill Street Blues
... Lets be careful out there!

ouch ouch ouch ouch! Used an old rotting pipe from a JCB or somthing i pressume?

Turns out he was testing aircraft components.

Taken from the Scrapheap forum:

quote:

He was testing an aircraft component to max pressure, when a pipe to the test rig pressure gauge sprang a pin hole leak, when his hand passed in front of the jet of aircraft hydraulic fluid, it was injected through the skin with a fair quantity of oil.
At the time there was very little visible damage, and all that damage you can see in the photos is the result of the hospital cutting away contaminated flesh. They also cut into his forearm to let it bleed to flush out the oil, and at one stage his hand and forearm was looking like it was at risk of being lopped off!

After all the operations and a bit of time (the accident happened a few years ago now) hes made a good recovery, with only the little finger and the ring finger next to it being still damaged, and some loss of flesh and muscle on his hand between little finger and wrist.