Got quite a few interesting bits of news...

Firstly David W is selling us Hells Angel which will give us a chance to have our first look at pneumatics. Spinners are all well and good but in the end they are just a big motor and a lump of metal so it will be fun to get on with something a little trickier.

The current plan is to re purpose the chassis, reconfigure the internal layout to make it smaller (David has said this is possible) and then build a nice new chassis with some better armour. This machine wont be for competitions but give us something that is interesting for audiences to watch at live events and heavyweight meets.

Secondly we have taken a stock check of everything we have... and it is a lot. We have enough electronics to build 2 whole machines so we will be building a second whiteboard machine, either pneumatic or with a linear actuator, so that we can both rumble at the heavyweight events.

Thirdly, as beetles are definitely on the up I have concepted not only a few beetle machines but a beetle arena...

Beetle Arena 01.jpg Beetle Bar Spinner.jpg

[Conker 2 & 3 are in there for scale along with the beetle concept]

The arena is around 400kg when built and is 2m x 2m x 1m with 10mm Polycarbonate on every side and a 4mm thick steel floor. Finally there is a 200mm tall 4mm thick kickboard round the edge and a door at either side of the arena. The arena would actually serve as both a Beetle arena but also as a featherweight testing and demonstration area. In the same way you can demo/test a single heavyweight in the RoboChallange arena you could demo/test a single feather in the Beetle arena. There are currently no rules about this and I feel that it is something that aught to be talked about and decided upon.

As for the beetle machine we are going with the 1.5kg limit to match Iron Conkers so this machine has a 3mm Grade 5 Ti base, 1.2mm Grade 5 armour and is fitted with a 100g bar. Doesn't sound much but inside are 3 3S 1000mAh lipos. Two in series, giving 22.2V, power a HK-2520-1360Kv brushless motor which directly drives the bar. So, in theory, the bar will do 30'000 RPM. I doubt that we would ever go anywhere near that, mainly because of engagement, but its nice to know its possible.