Shrapnel - Feather Vert Spinner

**Revsmin** · 29th August 2017, 00:25

Fight 6:

We traded blows, each left some marks on the other:

Fatal blow for Straddle seemed to be a power cable coming loose, which was a shame. I managed to smoke a drive motor in that fight, not sure how because the gearbox was fine but replaced it with a spare given my Rory of team Nuts who also helped wire it into the bot while I bummed about sharpening the wedge ready to fight my next opponent: Explosion

Fight 7:

And here's a gif taken from the judges table where it hit the wall:

The lead up to that was very dull really, just two very low bots trying to keep facing the other until we finally figured out Explosion was marginally lower :P
And yeah it bounced off the wall and landed back in the arena! Unfortunately for me as soon as you hit the outer wall you're eliminated so I didn't get a second shot but it was pretty incredible all the same! Oh and I left a nice great gash in the wall:

So, out at the quarter finals, which for a brand new robot at its first event is pretty damn good! Finished 5th overall which I'm extremely happy with! Some modifications to make before next time, mostly just small things though as I'm very happy with the overall shape, design and performance.
So then:

THE GOOD
- Contact wheels: tons of grip and they show no sign of wear at all, really impressed with the quality
- Cheap HK carbon fiber: Been through all that without so much as a small crack, incredibly strong stuff for the weight
- NTM heli motor: Absolutely buckets of power, disc was reaching full in just over 2 seconds and no issues with it breaking bar the shaft getting hit by my own disc!
- Shock mounted drive: Zero gearbox issues at all, none of the shock went through them and they just kept going
- Shoulder bolt shaft: Didn't get a chance to cut and tap the titanium shaft so went with a Â£12 M16 shoulder bolt instead, no problems with it at all, not bent in the slightest.

THE BAD
- Rear drive shafts: Mounting them using the thinner threaded end of the shoulder bolt was not a good idea. One sheared and the other was bent, will be doing them differently moving forward.
- Hardox 500 disc: While 500 survived ok, the tooth has worn very quickly. I think with how hard it hits it needs to be 650 next time.
- 2.2ah battery: Nooooope. Not big enough. Not enough capacity, gonna get a 4ah for next time to be safe
- Ground clearance: The big wide wedge was VERY low towards the end of the comp, but it wasn't enough for Explosion or Shard so for next time there will be some new front attachments to counter them better
- Straddle: How tf do you fight that?? Well I have a few ideas I'll be putting into CAD to try out for next time

Had a great time at the event, really happy with the robot
Shrapnel will be back next time with improvements!