My Beetleweight Stuff

[Andy]

Thats interesting, might give the heating a go, mines 2mm hdpe bent round without any heat so there is a lot of tension on the pieces

[tweedermeister]

Thats interesting, might give the heating a go, mines 2mm hdpe bent round without any heat so there is a lot of tension on the pieces

On Noxa it also helps how it's mounted, the strip is only mounted at the sides near the front with those bent brackets so has less flex in places that will take the hits better whereas at the back and around the wheels it can flex a lot more to take as much energy away from the hit as possible near the more fragile parts of the frame.

[tweedermeister]

With Reading done and the work week out of the way I can finally make a post event post.

Ash 2 was finished about a week prior to the event so with plenty of time to spare I packed it after testing the brushless drive and weapon. Little did I know however that the brushless drive would be the bane of my existence for the duration of the event (more on that later).

A couple of comparison pics of the cad to the actual bot:









Onto the event itself, weight being over the limit by 2g meant I had to remove 2 of the bolts holding the lid on to be compliant and allowed to compete, which was no big deal.

First fight was a Melee with Ion and Eclipse, immediately as the fight started one of my wheels stopped moving and I was left hobbling about the arena, then getting flipped by Ion and the same happening to Eclipse. I was to be counted out but thankfully Andy hit me again and I was able to right myself and Eclipse was counted out as I was still at least mobile enough to traverse the arena.

Turns out one of the pinions on my brushless drive had come loose, so as quickly as I could I removed the set araldite from it and the brushless motor shaft and reglued them allowing for as much time as possible before reassembling and fighting again.

2nd fight was against Ysabelle, the same problem started happening on the same wheel which was confusing, after a decent hit from Ysabelle flipped Ash and it self righted the wheel miraculously decided to work, without enough time to make a difference however and the decision was awarded to Ysabelle.

This put Ash into the losers bracket and into a 4 way rumble between Ash, Bourbon, Blackout and Fat Lip:



Thankfully in this fight my drive was working, what wasn't working however was the Fingertech wheels, they gave very little grip on the floor and made it difficult to get far enough under opponents for the weapon to take effect. This also caused Ash to drift a lot due to it being weighted towards the front because of the weapon.

I have since fixed the wheel grip issue by applying a layer of liquid latex to the Fingertech wheels which adds a massive amount of grip which should help a great deal in future fights.

That rumble went well giving Ash the win on a judges decision based on the damage done to Fat Lip, I would have been more aggressive but the combination of lack of grip and the wedge being fixed and ground scraping made it impossible to leave that tile of the arena floor without presenting the back of Ash to Fat Lip and exposing myself to an easy pitting.

After this fight I went on to fight Ysabelle again, this time with working drive. During this fight the wedge issue stemming from lack of grip persisted through most of it, although thankfully at one point I got enough of a runup to get under Ysabelle and get a decent hit sending the two bots apart. After this Ysabelle seemed to be having weapon issues so I gave it one more hit to flip it and start the countdown, there wasn't anough time left in the match to finish the countdown however and as the fight ended Ysabelle self righted.

Ash won that fight on a judges decision.

This put Ash through to fight Limpet in the Semi Finals, this was a fight I was greatly looking forward to after fighting Fat Lip and it going as well as it did. However the brushless drive decided that it didn't want to work again, this time one of the bullet connectors snapped off one of the motors before the fight rendering one side locked up and the other unable to move the whole bot because of lack of grip, so almost immediately as the fight started Ash was counted out.

This put Ash into a 3rd place playoff fight with Ion, a bot I was looking forward to fighting. The fight started with some weapon to weapon bumps but nothing spectacular, Ion then landed a hit on Ash's exposed side flipping it over, after self rightin one of Ash's wheels seemed to respond much later than the other so my mobility was impaired, however after some more weapon to weapon bumps Ion was immobilised due to the screws holding the wheels on coming loose after the hits. After the fight I took the wheel that was unresponsive to find the set screw holding it on had come loose but stayed on enough that the motor would still turn the wheel just on a bit of a delay.

This gave Ash 2 a 3rd place finish, my best in any formal competition yet:



Hopefully now the drive is sorted it should be a fierce opponent in the future.

I also put together a short highlights video from Ash's best fights over the course of the competition:



Thanks for Reading, Jack