I'll be ordering spares, maybe go up to 11 or 12mm just in case the current one isn't up to it, i remember Jamie (drumroll) saying that he used 6mm for the top of drumroll and the only thing to get through was a hydraulic crusher. The only bits i can see being a problem are the mounting points but hopefully it'll be fine.
Don't worry, when I had SMIDSY I had a 10mm polycarb top on and thor took a nice hit. Made some dents but it didn't crack so you should be fine
My only worry would be the fact that it's on a smaller frame, hence it's got less of a chance to bend and absorb the impact but I'm sure it'll be fine!
Being such a small piece is definitely a worry, the baseplate is only A4 size so if it takes a big hit it's not going to flex too much, i imagine it would take a pretty big impact to do anything meaningful though.
Yeah it definitely should be more than enough. The 6mm piece on Drumroll that I mentioned is less than A4 (only 180mm x 215mm) and Little Hitter couldn't crack it. And as impressive as Grant's new axe is, I would expect it to survive that too.
6mm HDPE on top of T2 took multiple hits from LH3, no problem. It gets a small dent and if it hits an edge it slightly deforms but it's generally fine.
This year on Rango I have just 5mm HDPE. I will admit, that's not a lot at all, lol. As for safety of 10mm polycarb, the entire arena is made in that thickness. The trick is in leaving it a bit loose so in an impact the middle can bow in and the edges lift. Without this it may crack. The arena is safe because the panels are huge and all of the bolts are loose, hence the iconic rattly sound when something hits the arena wall.
Perhaps... All I could suggest really is getting a spare sheet and giving it a good hit with a hammer to see what happens, or even test your own weaponry on it - that's how I tested (and subsequently broke) the HardWired I prototype, though it did prove that I'd got the wrong material haha!
I think the biggest thing to take care of is the holes for the screws, since they're probably the main weak point there.
Smacking it with my own weapon is actually a brilliant idea, i'll have a 1.5kg axe run off a 250 watt scooter motor which should be capable of a fairly impressive whack, i'm sure if it can survive a direct hit from that it'll survive most things.
Well it works twofold then, if both work nicely and stand up to it, you've got a good setup! It's really all about crash testing it and ironing out creases once you've got it nearly done... don't want to get to the champs and find out there's an issue with it!
That's all I'll be doing with HardWired II, smashing it into walls at full pelt, throwing it around outside, seeing it anything comes loose or whatever. If it can't stand up to that, there's no way it'll be able to stand up to other robots in the arena!
I'll be testing, testing and more testing before the champs to make sure it's all sound, i can't simulate a full combat siuation but i can get it as good as possible
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