Vertical or Horizontal?

Hello,

I was wondering on opinions about horizontal and vertical disks. I know verticals pack more inertia but the gyroscopic forces are immense. Any Opinions.

Thanks,

Onslaught team

verticals pack no more inertia than horizontals. That is down merely to the design of the disc and speed it runs at.

Horizontals have to do damage to be effective whereas a vertical can just flip opponents around.

The gyro forces act against a vertical as you have a wide wheelbase whereas they actually help a horizontal stay horizontal when it is flipped.

Its all about what you would rather build more than anything else.

I always wonder the outcome if the 2 come together, would a horizontal cause more damage by hitting a vetical from the side.

well that happen at euro champs but i cant remember who won

A vertical disc head on with a horizontal is all just a big gamble really. If they are of similar specs its all about whos tooth hits the other disc first!
As Gary says, a vertical disc is good for flipping a robot over aswell, and it often causes damage to the underneath/bottom corners of the robot which useally twists the chassis alot easier than a horizontal spinner. But then again, a horizontal spinner is usually better against wedge robots head on - and it looks really spectacular when both robots spin across the arena after a good hit :)

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=m1uLA6D1BV8http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=m1uLA6D1BV8

The horizontal vs vertical is an interesting question but as grant says, its all about who hits who first and generally comes down to what happens in the space of a few hundredths of a second.

If a horizontal disc hits an object equal forces are appled to the disc and the object (Newtons laws etc,) hence Hypno Disc throwing its self sideways and breaking down on a number of occasions.
When a vertical (spinning upwards) hits an object much more of the force is applied to the object as the robot cannot move downwards (assuming its on a strong floor).
So in terms of effect vertical wins but as has been mentioned steering it can be a problem.

Ive just realised there is a sort of acception to the rule in the hoizontal spinner/Newton stakes!
Little Spinner! Because it, uniquely, has the spinner axis between the drive wheels, on the same line it gets a much reduced sideways jolt when it strikes!

Steering can be a huge problem for horizontal discs too. look at warhead for example. Mike, thats not always the case. it just means that all the force going into you oponent also goes through you axles etc and so some things need to be built stronger. I believe that you can get more of the energy in a horizontal spinner into the opponent due to the friction on the floor. Alot of it depends on the design, but its basically what ever you think looks best, fits in wih your design etc etc.

Basically what happens with horizontal spinners is the opponent flies in one direction and your robot in the opposite direction. A vertical one does the same bit that one has the arena and the whole globe underneath it to help it stay put.

Apart from that you have the helicopter effect that if a robot has a disk horizontal spinning anticlockwise the robot can turn faster to the right than to the left, and clockwise vice versa. Warhead is a prime example of that.

Overal vertical spinners are better manouverable but they have the problem that one wheel will start to lift at turns if the disk is at high rpms due to the gyroscopic effect.

btw, that is why with Adrians spinner the wheels are as wide apart and as close to the disk as we can fit them without going overboard with weight. It helps enormously with the driving.

So would you recomend a drum, vertical spinner, or horizontal spinner. I know it depends on what I would like but Im thinking attacking and a good show for the audience. Thanks for all your advice by the way.:)

Rob and the Onslaught team

Sorry everyone I have been looking at the wrong team name on our paper. We arnt Onslaught soz. (Coz I was on this a few days ago and I saw woodies team name!)

I think we changed to Whiplash so were still searching for names.

Sorry!:uhoh:

I still prefer vertical spinners, with the wheels wide apart. Like Hornet 2, Nebelwerfer, Katjuscha, S3, Plofbox 2.

But yes, that is a matter of personal taste. Horizontal disks have 1 big advantage, you can fit a larger diameter disk.

btw, with the Nebelwerfer - Pro-lodju fight, the very first hit we must have connected at exactly the very same split second to get that effect. If we did that a 100 times over we would probably not be able to reproduce it.

Nightmare

I find that the wheels lifting off as I go around a corner isnt a major problem with hornet 2. My wheelbase is 750mm (enormous by featherweight standards) but the wheels only lift a maximum of 150mm into the air. It is still able to turn nicely as there is still a wheel in contact with the ground.

There is one other problem with a vertical though, you only have a very slim area with which to do damage and so your driving has to be tip top whereas a horizontal can have a huge area around the machine to do damage.

Its up to you, I think with featherweights verticals are more fun (waits for a whole lot of comments from the horizontals :)) but thats just me.

No i agree with you there Gary. :)

And the lift of the wheels is so low because your wheelbase is so wide which means you have more leaveradge down, thats why i prefer that as well.

Must admit i do like verticals they put on a good show not only the sparks but the other robot flying through the air. If you want to see a horizontal that will be a b----- to drive my new one. motor is being ordered this week so should have it done for the champs:proud:

Hypno vs puddy cat = hypno (wont let me spell it right)
warhead vs nightmare = warhead
euro champ was a horizontal


To settle it ill have to go head on with hornet at full speed. If garys ok with that lol

both ways r good!

but garys a flipper and a spinner

Lol if im still running fine at the end of the featherweight champs then we can have a full on hit Dave :)

Thats of course making the assumption we dont come up against each other in the comp

Fluffy vs 259 certainly went badly for the vertical spinner!

What about drums then?

Or you could just build one that could do both. EG. Strike terror

http://home.kendra.com/mauser/bot/http://home.kendra.com/mauser/bot/

Drums can be quite successfull, but do tend to be a bit heavy and suffer the same drawbacks as verticals.

Plus side is that if they stop working they still make a good bumper.

I like that strike terror - never seen it before but very interesting

During the dutch wars series 2 we had something that tried the same as Strike Terror but failed. It was called vortex inducer if i remember correctly.

the mechanism would have to be tremendously strong to be effective. I cant see if being scaled down to a featherweight. You would have to have so much weight off the disc and in the supports etc that it seems somewhat pointless.

True. Going back to the original question, I believe that the horis. spinnners are better. although they cannot flip people over like verticle ones. they leave less of your body exposed to attack (FBS. ect.) and they also can prevent you from being fliped over due to the inertia it creates when spinning. Compared to a verticle that the slightest incline can send you flying (eg the nightmere vs S.O.W match)also if you are going to build a successful verti. spinner you will need it to be a very big disk, thus making a large body to handle steering (eg. nightmere) and thus having weak armour and no defence when the disk breaks.

It doesnt need to be as big as Nightmare to be effective. Look at Hornet 2 for example, compared to the rost of the robot it is actualy quite small.

the only down side to some vertical spinners is the exposed wheels. thats what i would go for if i came up against hornet. apart from that i really like them and i want a vertical in a future project.. i would love to see what would happen if i came disk to disk with hornet, not that i would be looking forward to it mind!



(Message edited by ady on January 25, 2008)

everyone says the same, look at those exposed wheels etc. Funny thing is that generally people then forget about the spinning mass at the front of the machine :)

Plofbox 2, that also made it into the semi-finals had major problems with his wheel guards. Next time we will leave them exposed, because it is not worth protecting. The worst another robot can do to it is bend the axle or take a gash out of the plastic. wit will wobble, but it will still work.

Plofbox 2 is going to 18V instead of the 12V it ran in the euro champs last year. That will improve its spin up time what was the big bottleneck last time. It did perform very well though, I was impressed how far Ridouan came with his vertical spinner.

Well Gary, I never go for the wheels, I aim for 10 cm away from the disk to get my flipper under. :)

What about drums then?

*waves in support of the drums* :)

Like Leo said, drums can be quite successful. Particularly in the States where Helios from http://www.teamcosmos.comwww.teamcosmos.com ruled the roost for a while, drums are incredibly popular, espically in feathers and 6kg machines. (see also http://www.teammadcow.comwww.teammadcow.com)

Yes they can be heavy - mine is 3.2kg - but if you concentrate most of that weight on the outer periphery (general spinner logic) and power it off a decent motor theres no reason for it to be ineffective. Again as Leo pointed out, if it breaks youve got a bumper - thats 3.2kg of stainless steel and a little bit of Hardox that Ive got protecting the front end of my bot if the drum transmission breaks. If it doesnt break them thats a nice bit of spinning metal Ive got at the front :)

But really, its all down to personal preference - I chose a drum because theyre relatively untried here and I wanted to try and raise their profile by demonstrating their levels of effectiveness. Sure, any videos you may have seen of Drumroll so far arent particulary impressive (down to poor battery conditioning) but very recently its performance has improved greatly and thats without making any of the mods Ive got in mind to increase its destructive capability.

Just need to wait till May to test it in battle again :sad:

quote:

Just need to wait till May to test it in battle again

You could come over to holland, we are setting up the demo arena with lexan to test with spinners this saturday in Bergen op Zoom and in 2 weeks in Schiedam. Just get your rowboat and and come to holland. :)

I might as well say (Despite the section title) that I am in the building stage of a antweight roller (yes Leo, more Bling Bling wheels) called Uppercutter, armed with a drum. Ill like to see how it does at RRC.

My favorite type would have to be Horizontals for the same reason as above: larger area to hit, more stable, bigger disc, etc.
Im not a great fan of drums but ed wallaces DB5 (or 6 or whatever it is now) has got to be the best drum ive seen (if he can just stop his astro getting smashed lol).
Of course the ultimate spinners are the FBS as you have all the benefits of the horizontals plus you always hit and have great armour.