RogueTwo Robots

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)