Team Gas Diary's

[Gaseraki]

Cheers Dave and haven't quite entered the game
Been terrible and have parts for 2 ants and probably 2 feathers

[daveimi]

Wow are they LEM's / Etek's in a feather!! Or scooter motors etc?

[Gaseraki]

300 watt scooter motors which are planned to be overvolted and run by a wotty
Yep silly, I know.
Upgrade goals are to bring the voltage from 24 to close to 30 with liths and replace the wotty with a sidewinder for space
I did try to run it on an scorpion XXL but it blew before it even reached the arena.
This version will also be much quicker at over 15mph

[Gaseraki]

Sadly as I expected I havnt been able to spend much time in the past couple of days working on Trojan but I have made a few important decisions.

For the drive in Trojan 2 I had about 3.5 gear reduction with one sprocket system going from the motor to the two wheels.

To make things more reliable I have decided to go for two separate systems. First reduction through spur gears to the front wheels then 6mm chain and sprockets to the rear wheels.
Already done some work towards this by constructing one of the wheels and nearly hacksawed all the sprockets. Lots of arm work needed!

After watching some past videos I realise that having the biggest motors in the world wont mean jack if you dont have grip to take advantage of the torque. I have more grip but I still will be wheel spinning constantly. So I decided to get more speed and changed the reduction from 3.5 to 2.
This will make the robots max speed of 20mph! But should still have the torque to push other robots quite easily. Should be entertaining!
So just ordered some sprockets and now doing 2 chain systems. If things are a bit crazy I can just go to the
sprockets and the 3.5 reduction.

2013-05-31 08.40.42.jpg
Also thinking about the lifting prongs at the front and it might be tricky. But I think a worm gear reduction from a drill motor will have good results. Needs to be an afterthought as I need to work out what weight i have.


Also had a quick sketch up in 3d of the next feather. Bit more impressive looking but probably won't be as good.
carnifex.jpgfex.jpg
This weekend will be set on finishing the chassis and all the tiny little plates that attach around the wheels.

Wow I might even look good to possibly make Guildford but personal promises need to hold up. I am not going to rush.


Few questions
Is 6mm chain fine? I used to have ⅜ and that was far too big

Suitable featherweight armour nowadays. Ali, ti or steel. Would 2mm steel be a deathwish on the front plate? I had 3mm ali plate on the top for a long while and seemed fine against little hitter. Last time I fought a featherweight spinner was back in 2003 so my experience with them is limited
Lastly how do I set my avatar to appear in my posts?

[PJ-27]

Go top right - settings
Left bottom side - My profile
Edit Avatar

Your profile picture and avatar are 2 different things. The avatar is the one that appears on the forum itself next to your posts.

For image re-sizing I use this. Quick and easy:
http://www.shrinkpictures.com/

[Gaseraki]

You're a star. Cheers bud

[PJ-27]

You're welcome.

As for the robot stuff, people love plastics are armour at the moment. HDPE weighs 1/8th that of steel, so a combination of the potential thickness you can use and it's great impact resistance (plus the fact that at that width it can also be strutural) means it's very popular.
Ti is great, light and strong but expensive. And then people use wear resistant steels like Hardox for spinner proof armour, but hard to find and heavy.

As for drive transfer I believe lots of people use those chains, but nowadays people are edging towards timing pulleys and belts. They're lighter, don't stretch and don't come off. You can also get HDT belts if you're worried about them breaking.

That grabbing robot looks awesome!

[Ellis]

Looking forward to this build! Will be crazy if this thing still has the grunt at just 2:1.

2mm steel definitely is a deathwish. Pretty much 2mm of anything is a deathwish, save maybe high grade ti. We had I think 4mm steel on the front of our machine for the champs, and after just two fights with the spinner that came 6th (Inertia XL) it was literally like a piece of lettuce. Useless. You're more or less limited to Hardox, titanium or very thick plastic (HDPE works well) these days.

We also happened to use 6mm chain for our weapon and I'd say don't bother, if you can avoid it. It will work, but it stretches an alarming amount (you'll most likely need more than one tensioner), and getting it on and off is a huge pita, we found. We are going to move to "HTD" timing belts. I have good word that 9mm wide HTD5 belts work very very well for drive and spinning weapon transmission. Here's one source of many in the UK: http://www.beltingonline.com/5mm-htd-timing-belts-4575 - payoff in being lighter with the aluminium pulleys, too.

Keep us posted.

[Gaseraki]

In the last version I did used to have 8mm HDPE but the front scoop used to get so scuffed I would almost have to replace it after each event. I dont really need it for support any more as the chassie is quiet strong.
Hardox is of course awesome but isnt the thinest you can get it at 3.2mm still? And thinner its too brittle (something along those lines)
Steel or ti on the front scoop I think is my main options. But im not sure if 2mm steel is too thin
Quite heavy as well at about 1kg just for the front plate
.5 kg 2mm ti - Might look into that

Timming belts are nice. I did get these parts a few years ago and belts where only really availble from specific suppliers and where rather expensive. Now I see them on technobots. Another thing to possible replace for the weaponised version if the chains are unstable.

Thanks for the kind words on the feather. Been wanting to build a heavy like that for years. Infact this is the topic from 2008 (oh my)
highq2dk7.jpgCarnifex Heavy
In the thread there is a video of the mech in action (electric)
Really wish I could make the heavy. Maybe next year. Have prity much everything to do it.

[Ellis]

A while ago I designed a similar weapon! That design looks awesome. I love this sort of mechanism. I came up with essentially the same, just switched around for faster lift...

http://oi40.tinypic.com/a5gah5.jpg

I designed that before this year's champs, I definitely would not build it in that design now, having gained more experience.