Team Health & Safety - First Time Builder

[Zenith]

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With the crate back home from the Euros, it's time to see where This Is Not A Drill did well and where it could be improved.

The Bad

• Drive power. Dear god, it was horrible. The 16mm motors are enough to get it going, but once it experiences any resistance at all the motors can't be bothered

• The servo is too fickle for my liking. I'd rather have a simple motor with an ESC powering the lifter rather than something which shits the bed if the going gets tricky

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• From a construction point of view the wedge mounts were a big risk. Had the bolts holding the nutstrips in place been torn through the HDPE then the entire chassis would have to be rebuilt. The wedge prongs also prevented me from using other setups.

The Good

• Despite the lack of power, I liked how it drove. Because the wheels are quite far back, it could 'swing' the front around when driving backwards - something I really liked.

• The electronics also held up quite well. I'd learnt soldering whilst building and it seemed all of the joints were in fine order - TINAD suffered major hits but kept going, something which thoroughly surprised me.

• The front armor. Both the wedge and the wedgelets held up fine, even though the big wedge suffered the full might of Bourbon's drum.

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The one thing I was most impressed by though was its overall ruggidness - compared to other HDPE bots it struck me how obscenely overkill the chassis seemed to be. The chassis proved during the build it was already crazy strong without any screws or fasteners in any kind, and during the tournament the pieces of 15mm interlocking HDPE didn't budge at all. Oh, and still TINAD miraculously managed to stay nearly 200g underweight.

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Also the wheelguards did the trick. 5mm HDPE can take a direct hit and remain in place - good.

For the new version, I'm upping the drive power and I'm switching to a similar lifting system to Catalyst, as I feel it's both more powerful and more reliable.

I'm also changing the front, aiming for completely interchangeability. I want various setups to be possible apart from the typical wedge, and this means the chassis will have to change.

The only area where sacrifices will have to be made is coincidentally also the chassis - with the new drive motors and lifter system the chassis will have to become higher, and the additional room (and weight) required will force me to slim down some areas. If anything though, I should be able to have the same width and length. I loved the dimensions of the first version, so for the next incarnation I'm going to try and keep it this way. Now let's hope I'm also within weight again, ha!

To be continued with the first build segment of Mk2! Watch this space.