Team Riptide: Hardwired and other builds

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I can get photos of the bits I have left lol

It's not revolutionary like, it's literally just a pair of gr01s bolted to some polycarb

[Rapidrory]

For the lifter, one option could be to put a cam on the end of the gearbox that pokes out the bottom of the bot and can rotate all the way round... Nice and simple/ compact, it won't stall out the gearbox and motor, and you'll get an amusing hopping motion if you hold it at full power :L

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The Fhqwhgads is dead, long live the Fhqwhgads

Burgess Hill was this weekend, and with it came the Beetleweight Tag Tournament. Long Story short, Fhqwhgads was paired with Incomplete Control and together went undefeated for the win thanks to some clever tactics (people like to team up on the champ, who knew?)



I felt Fhqwhgads was lacking in power this time, turns out this was thanks to the soldering on the motors. Ellis (the man behind Ranglebox.com) spoke to me about it saying that it's the heat from soldering that can damage the brushes and cause the motors to lose power. Explains how the machine went from being able to push Limpet XS around the arena with ease to not being able to push anything at all. The foam wheels probably didn't help either in all fairness, they were spinning a lot too.

As a result, I've taken the decision to retire the robot from competition entirely and start work on a totally new machine for the Beetleweight championships, if I can even afford it. I'd hate to have it just get obliterated in round one because of a few inherent design flaws that are starting to become all too apparent... On the bright side, undefeated past that incident with Newton. My longest win streak ever! In fact, may well be my only win streak higher than 1...

Wodge


(image blatantly stolen)

Brand new addition to the team, Haz (Massacre, Flatpack, other cool robots) gave me the chassis to Wodge at the weekend which was promptly brought in to replace the alarmingly unfinished Lobster Knife Fight (more on that another time). Was rather happy to have this one on the team, it was actually the inspiration for Fhqwhgads' almighty wedge of derp which I still maintain was what won me the competition. It sure as heck wasn't driving skill or build quality...

Wodge worked alright til it set fire to itself. Yay Botbitz 10a's.



Future for this one is basically to be a more sensible Fhqwhgads 3, with more brushless and probably magnets. May add a weapon at some point if I have weight/ability to.

The Rift
[menacing laughter]

Featherweights
Also because one instance of kindness wasn't enough, Haz also gave me the old Massacre (2014) chassis. It's quite a nice little base for going and building next year's featherweight champs entry on - going for an overhead lifter or disc. More on that when I get to it!

[daveimi]

Wodge looks a bit like the Trilobite stuff from the states

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Hardwired 3

Sorta writing this in anticipation of getting accepted for the upcoming Insomnia event (which I think is doubtful at best) but I've finally taken the plunge to build a robot that isn't made of wood and hopefully isn't total crap.

Initial plan was once again (just like Overdrive) 'Hardwired 2 with a disc' but as time's gone on I've done similar to Overdrive and gone for a new chassis, all watercut out of hardox and goes together with M6 threaded bar and Saturn 16s from Ranglebox (/ad)



It's basically Also Riptoff built similarly to how Tormenta 3 and Pulsar have been designed - the weld-less design is extremely useful for someone like me with no welder or really many tools. Means it's a very quick fit together which I'll be needing!

Will update more when (if) the build goes ahead in the next few weeks ahead of the event. Still more to do on the cad but it's not gonna change a whole lot beyond that image id imagine, visually!

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Update time!

Hardwired 3 AKA How I learned time management is an important skill

It's been a few weeks now since Insomnia (an appropriate event name considering) so I've had enough time to reflect on Hardwired 3 and all it's flaws. It's many, many flaws. This isn't going to be a traditional build diary because of the nature of how it came to be - there wasn't really much of a build. Think of this as more of a review of how bad this thing was hah.

First things first, the final cad:





Very little time remained before the event, so getting this done quickly was of the absolute most importance - as a result there were some pretty mega oversights in building the thing. Specifically, there's no mountings for the lid or baseplate on there which was just as well considering the thing turned out to be 13.55kg on the day but we'll get to that later...

You can see the improvements since the last revision - it has the ears on it to assist inverted driving and a bent wedge. In the cad this is 5mm but due to supply issues ended up being 6 which didn't help weight issues. Also didn't help with weight distribution issues either which is again something I'll get to later.

The whole machine is built Ellis-style, using waterjetted panels connected with Ranglebox m6 nutstrip except with a fraction of the legitness of Ranglebox builds. I like this sort of design due to the fact that it allows me to spend as little time in the actual build phase as possible, being horribly arthritic means that actually building is difficult - with this I literally just need to hacksaw some bits of aluminium bar, maybe file a few things down, bolt them together and bingo. Also means it goes together extremely fast which was helpful considering the circumstance.

The whole machine is a mix of 4mm (most panels) and 6mm (wedge, bulkheads) hardox 500 with bits of aluminium (ears) in places to save weight where hardox would have just been overkill. Worked well again but I think the 6mm could easily all be knocked down to 5 or even 4 to save some additional weight.

Another design quirk is the presence of the rubber shock mounts holding the entire rear of the machine together - this was an idea shamelessly ripped from US scarybot Also Riptoff and whilst it seemed to do the thing for Riptoff I didn't much find any great use for it, still a nice little trial I suppose.

Friday Night: The Build

So yeah everything turned up Friday afternoon. As anyone enduring my complaining across that week will have known, the event was in less than 12 hours away and Parcelforce still hadn't delivered the things they should have done some days prior. Hence half the build literally being at the event.

Few photos I took in the midst of ragequitting:





The slot together design really did assist in a quick assembly. It took about half an hour to get it to a robot shaped thing which was very helpful - I managed to do that and paint it whilst I was waiting for the rest of the stuff to turn up. When the parcel did arrive very late in the day it was again a pretty swift bolt-together affair, few issues that I ran into with assembly that I didn't get to sort until the event - just trivial things that ended up taking a long time really.

The Event

Hardwired 3 missed its first 3 fights much to my disappointment. It eventually came together in time for the second day's second run of fights, where I was drawn against Clank 5 (which, as it happened would have been its first fight anyway). First things first, death hum:



Say what you will about the machine, it's not great but that noise is terrific and I love it. Much, much nicer sound than the precursor, Overdrive.

Fight 1: Hardwired 3 vs Clank 5



Not a great deal happening here I'll be honest. Did highlight a good number of issues though - despite the fact the drum holds a frankly insane amount of power on paper the wedge was actually causing issues with bite, as was the lack of traction in the arena. got a few hits on Clank and managed to finish it off. It actually retired from the competition after this, a fact I'm both terribly guilty about but immensely proud of. Yay I broke something at last ha.

Fight 2: Hardwired 3 vs Explosion



Hardwired 3 tore Explosion to shreds within seconds of activate being called and went on to win the championship. Oh wait, no, I ended up out the arena in 30 seconds.

In all fairness I'd have really done a number on Explosion had I got the wedge working properly - I had thought to do an anti-flipper wedge but just didn't get the time since I was driving home every night to save money. Damn you, expensive hotel pricing.

Fight 3: The Rumble
"Just make sure you don't break it before your other competition fights I guess" - Rory Mangles



Lol oops.

Having basically counted myself out from even slightly placing by my robot being done at the last minute (something came up) I thought I'd get some proper testing in on some whiteboards. This seemed a great idea at the time. I managed to smack Omega out of the arena (first OOTA yay) and break all the bolts on one side of the disc since they weren't high tensile. That jammed the mechanism and then Pendulum caught a wheel at the back. Strangely, this Saturn still worked fine and it was the other side's 775 that died - it stalled and overheated on 6s thanks to a cracked magnet, got hot enough to ignite the tape holding the electronics in and well yeah. My bad.

This was not good, it basically put the weaponry side of the robot out of business for the rest of the event. I mean I could have fixed it with the necessary amount of effort, but effort. Rory checked over my electronics again like the wizard he is and deemed them all to be fine despite us thinking a TZ had blown up - that's a stalled 775 to the point of fire not killing one of those things. Genuinely bulletproof.

Fights ergh to whatever - vs something or other and thingymcwhatsitcalled

I think I fought omega and disturbance next? Loss from being pushed into the pit, fairly trivial stuff - nothing to report other than the lack of disc made it drive so much nicer. Weight distribution needed looking at for sure. Still fun fights though just can't remember them for the life of me haha.


Hardwired 3.1

So it got sold already and I'm planning to rebuild but much, much better. The big flaws this time were disc design, wedgelets and weight distribution so the new one is going to have 4wd and a larger drisc, bigger teeth and better wedgelets to help get under things better. Ti chassis is planned too as well as brushless drive to squeeze every last bit of wasted weight out of this thing, unsure where to put said weight but it's nice to have it. The key inspiration for this next one is very obviously Shard as well as Ripto, I'll upload the photos of the cad at some point when I'm able to, but having spoken to the minds behind 720, Shard, DB10, Riptoff and so on I think I'm a lot more clued up now on how to make an average spinner into a good one. Still will probably require some development but certainly is headed in a much, much better direction. For now though, I'm focusing on Phantom, the planned heavyweight. More on that soon!

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Interior Crocodile Alligator



robot sucks, doesnt drive. looks cool tho

[daveimi]

Oh wow what weight class?

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Antweight, was supposed to be going to ant freeze but it's looking like I'll be forced to drop out thanks to technical issues.

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Long time no updates

Yeah so I basically gave up on robots for a while due to some reasons just after Insomnia last year. With the next one being relatively soon I've opted to dig HW3 back out the shed and make it do less of a suck. Almost a total overhaul but retaining the same chassis. Well... the front half of it anyway. With a bit of luck it should be a massive improvement - no pictures yet sine I'm waiting for the event for the reveal, however...

Livewire



So after the sale for this thing fell through I got bored of trying to sell it for way less than it's probably worth and ended up building it into a functional thing. Disc's geared for about 10k and makes a hell of a noise which I'm happy about. It's applied for the upcoming championships (to go to a separate driver) and after that it's destined for Extreme Robots live events (eventually) with the spinner friendliness.