The Riptide Beetleweight Chronicles

[Flag Captured]

Thought I might as well set up a thread detailing the builds of my upcoming beetleweight machines, got 3 (technically 2) on the go at the minute, and I'll keep this updated with progress of the lot! Will probably edit this too when I have pictures of them all in progress.

The first one I'm building is a 4WD lifter with possibly the biggest drive motors you've ever seen in your life. May or may not be an exaggeration. I'm calling it 'Unmitigated Disaster' and it should be... well, an unmitigated disaster. Should be nice to drive about though. 20mm HDPE around the sides for armour, 2mm hdpe base and maybe doubling up for the lid. 3S/4S battery, standard 10a escs and some kind of servo on the lifter. Probably will be pushing it for weight, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it!

[picture here]


Second is a horizontal bar spinner, Abandon, which will be an aluminium bar on aluminium bulkheads, aiming for about 10,000rpm on a 180mm bar, 400-500g monster. Should cause some pretty nice dents! Got a vague list of plans for components, but the only constant throughout them are the ebay gearmotors, looking at some sub-1000rpm ones to keep speed low as I won't need lots.

The third one, 'Tell It To The Cleaning Lady On Monday' (hopefully someone gets that reference), is actually technically still the second one since I'm just doubling up on bulkheads and basic structure, though it will have a single tooth bar, still at 400-ish grams as well as hopefully somewhere in the region of 15000+ rpm if my calculations work out right on the motor I've gone for, and 1200 RPM gearmotors. It will be utterly ludicrous and wholly hilarious for the three seconds it stays together for before ricocheting off into the distance, never to be seen again. Probably.



Getting started on the first of these tomorrow, so will post results - might have a go at CAD-ing up the other two from the sketches I have, but will definitely try and get those designs up in some form soon!

[Revsmin]

Because the cleaning lady has weekends off, right?

[Niels - Team K.a.L.M.]

Get building, I'd love to see photo's.

Bear in mind that the 10a BotBitz Esc's will only take 3s.

[harry hills]

Not so true. I ran them on 4s. No more use of the BEC but controllers worked fine. Sabertooth was much nicer though.

[Flag Captured]

Weren't they the old ones that went up to 4s or something?

Makes my life easier though anyway, running them on 3s is a lot easier than 4, probably...

Plans today were ruined by nature/life so I'll get started properly on this beetle this week. It almost certainly won't be in weight on first build, but hopefully will be able to refine it a little to get it into a battle-ready state at some point. Will try and bring this one to Stevenage where the HW champs are (?) in the inevitable absence of the other two bar spinners.

[harry hills]

the 12a or 10a premiums were 4s. I got the cheapy ones because I'm a cheapy person.

[knightrous]

It's the BEC (generic 7805 LDO regulator) that gets silly hot on the 10A's when running higher then 3S, if you unsolder it and use an external BEC/RX pack they can go closer to 18v (Naked Turtle ran them on 6S A123 for triggering solenoids on it's flipper)

[Niels - Team K.a.L.M.]

Is there a guide to unsolder it?

[knightrous]

Not really, just find it, and unsolder it.

[Flag Captured]

That's not too bad then, I may do that anyways if I get a pair just to have the option. I have a pair of motors that I have no idea what the voltage are, so I think 3s may be the safe option haha