Hey all, been a while

Telekinesis fought at Insomnia 61 UK FW Champs weekend before last so time for an update

tele render disassembled.jpgTeleRender1.3 1 (1).jpg
These fancy renders show the upgrades it got since I tested it at Manchester and Guildford.
thumbnail_IMG_5331.jpg
When I fully assembled the robot with the armour for the first time the day before the event, I realised the blue wheel hubs were sticking out more than I planned and fouling on the hardox wheel guards, so I bodged together a set of thinner colson ones and pressed in an aluminium bore on each, these were held on with an M6 grub screw to the gearbox shafts, not ideal but it seemed to work ok.



This was the weapon and drive test done after tech check at the event, all seems ok so far! One issue appeared when I hit the wall in an attempt to slow the weapon down after I had turned it off, the bushing between the bevel gear and the weapon motor shaft had slipped on the impact, which was never an ideal solution and something I have plans to upgrade to a custom 8mm keyed shaft in future, I originally thought the grub screw had sheared but thankfully the bushing slip was fixed by Adrian kindly using his epoxy to fill the gaps and strengthen it, which went on to last for the next 2 days of fights.

First fight was a 1v1 against Scruffy, I should have used the disc for this fight really but thought the bar, although being lower energy, would be a quicker spin up and be more reliable.



thumbnail_IMG_5351.jpg Some damage to Scruffy's forks, one of which I now have as a souvenir It also sheared base plate bolts and cut his wheels which was always the idea with the robot, even though I felt quite bad about it

Next fight was against Utopia and Gerty, this fight went well until my link came out, which I will fix with a better connector and link cover for next time.



thumbnail_IMG_5355.jpg Lots of glancing blows on Utopia's well angled wedge.

The next fight was against 722, which I knew wouldn't be an easy fight but was hoping it would be an entertaining one either way. The fight turned out pretty quick, as my link came out again, along with the gearbox seizing as the main shaft bearings popped out the gearbox on an impact. He also took off one of my side wheelguards, shearing the 5 m6 bolts holding it on, new armour with better mounting in future!



The fourth and final qualifier match was against Neon, another undercutter, and Hatchet. I knew this one wasn't going to be pretty either way



Neon outdrove me and got one of my wheels pretty early on, from then on I was on the backfoot, he managed to also hit my base plate and shatter the polycarbonate holding the battery in, and sheared some bolts holding the drive in place, resulting in gruesome looking by the end of the fight! This hit also lost tension for the weapon, moving the mounting plate on the bottom of the robot. Did manage to hit his pulley at some point though, not quite sure when.

thumbnail_IMG_5368.jpg thumbnail_IMG_5363.jpg
This put me out of the competition on 8 points. At the time I thought the robot might have been a write off but it turned out to be quite easily reassembled with replacing a few sheared bolts, so I signed up for the annihilator.

thumbnail_IMG_5364.jpgthumbnail_IMG_5367.jpg
Made a new hdpe base plate to hold the battery in, the rest was held in ok by the aluminium underneath.

The annihilator was against Equinox, Hatchet, Mr Mangle, Mantis, Omega and Come here and say that again. The first 3 fights were very quick, all ending with Equinox OOTAing other robots, which let me stay back and stay in without doing much at all. For the first two fights the weapon hardly worked with the motor gear coming loose from the shaft again, so finally had time to fix this for the third round, which was a frantic rush but just about worked out.

The fourth Annihilator fight was sadly the last one for me, as I instantly span up and had a head on hit with Equinox, which killed one of the 550 drive motors and eventually deemed me immobile.

Video of the fight and small bit of damage to Equinox's drum from the impact.



thumbnail_IMG_5375.jpg

I went on to have one more whiteboard with the robot but the gearbox had issues from the start, siezing up once again after one or two hits, meaning the robot never really hit something at full power with the disc which was a shame, but overall the robot worked pretty well and with reliability and robustness improved, should be fun to use again next time!

Telekinesis at the end of the event:
thumbnail_IMG_5378.jpg

Improvement Ideas:
-New gearbox to fix the issues with it, making the transmission for the weapon a lot more reliable.

thumbnail_IMG_5448.jpg
The threads mounting the box went by the end of the event, probably because the gearbox was relatively soft aluminium (6082) and there wasn't enough material for them - this will need a redesign. The motor could do with a custom 8mm keyed shaft to remove the middle man, being the bushing, to mount the gear to it better. Angle grinder gears should be more efficient than bevel gears for the high RPM of the gearbox too.

-3536 NTM drive motors on the drive, to increase the drive speed from 7mph which seemed a bit sluggish, to around 14mph for more bite and to make the robot more effective in bigger arenas, they will also save weight for other upgrades.

-New side armour, either redesigned out of hardox to be mounted better, or out of HDPE/aluminium which will absorb more impact and be less likely to bend/break.

-General strengthening to all the motors and the chassis in the robot. I'd like to add back support on all three motors.

-Taper roller bearings in the weapon.
thumbnail_IMG_5447.jpg
Overall the weapon set up I was very happy with, especially the shoulder bolt for the disc, that didn't bend like I thought it might. Though the deep groove bearings are both crunchy and were most likely acting as bushings rather than bearings for the last few fights. Hopefully with the right preloading from shim washers, taper roller bearings will be stronger in future.

Thats all for now, cheers