Attitude Adjuster (Beetleweight)

[Zenith]

So cool to meet you (and fight you) at UWE, Scott! Glad to know my ramblings can be inspiring

Any upgrades planned for the future?

[scott]

So cool to meet you (and fight you) at UWE, Scott! Glad to know my ramblings can be inspiring

Any upgrades planned for the future?

Likewise Greg! Your diary was one of my most read bookmarks. The interlocking method definitely adds strength and rigidity.

At UWE bot brawl I was happy with some parts of the bot and less happy with others. Due to time constraints before the event I focused on fixing the things that went wrong at the Euros - the drive and the top armour mounting.

I reverted back to the standard 25mm brushed gearmotors to replace the brushless drive, as I had problems in both fights with pinions coming off at the euros and leaving the drive incapacitated one one side, and I increased the diameter of the Fingertech tyres to give a bit more ground clearance, which prevented the bot from bottoming out on the arena. I also rounded off the corners of the wedge to make it less likely to catch on the floor, which was also helped by work done on the arena before the event.

IMG_0528.jpgIMG_0564.jpg

I also used washers on the screws in the polycarb of the top panel, to repeat the incident where Drizzle ripped the top panel off and pulled the polycarb through the screw. I also replaced the 3d printed mount that shattered with a bit of homemade aluminium nutstrip. I extended the wheelguard to protect the screws that attach the sides to the front, as they were another victim of Drizzle. That paid off, as that area suffered a hit by Wee that would've done hit the same screw that Drizzle hit

IMG_0586.jpgIMG_0580.jpg

Areas for improvement are the weapon, the front armour and the drive. The axe stopped working in all fights This caused it to lose to Sir Lance-A-Frog when I was unable to self-right, and to Crabsolutely Clawful when I lost the judge's decision

It's currently using a DYS brushless motor attached to a 25mm gearbox, and the axe strips the gears. Probably not helped by me turning the power up to 100% instead of 80% on the transmitter, and by using a drive ESC which has braking enabled. It's a design flaw as I also stripped my spare.

I'm going to work on both increasing the power of the weapon and improving the reliability. I have a Propdrive outrunner which I'm looking at gearing options for, and a drill motor on order. I'll try and do some sort of v1.5 of the current chassis, but I also need to lose a lot of weight from it. The chassis is designed around a long battery and Sabertooth, so there's scope to make it a bit smaller.

The front armour did its job by taking a hit from a dying Rev 3 in the gladiator, but it's only 1.2mm grade 5, and after I saw what some of the spinners did to the 2mm of others' bots, I feel it needs beefed up. The bot as it is is pretty wide, so I could probably cut it down or optimise it.

The drive was reliable this time, as it was mobile at the end of all fights unlike last time, however there was no pushing power. The wheels are narrow Fingertech hubs, and would spin as soon as I got under an opponent. Mark Leigh from K2 gave me a tip of using liquid latex on the wheels to give a little more grip. The ideal would be to go 4wd by printing some hubs and casting my own tyres like Saw Loser and Flick, but I'll see how the liquid latex goes first.

Speaking of Flick, Tom kindly ran a giveaway on his build video for Flick, and I won the draw, so it is currently sitting in my spare room waiting for some attention! My plans are to get it running by fixing the side of the drive that isn't working, and putting some form of titanium on the front so that it can run in a non-spinner whiteboard.

IMG_0247.jpg

In terms of the actual event - it started badly when I didn't read the details properly and went to the wrong students' union in Bristol, going to Bristol University instead of UWE, doh! Luckily for once in my life I was early, so I had enough time to get to UWE. I was sharing a table with Tweedy, who I knew from the famous Battlebots fight with IceWave. He was really nice, and helped me when I had radio interference issues just after safety.

My first fight was against Sir Lance-A-Frog and Koffin. Unfortunately Koffin were having issues with being front-heavy so were unable to drive properly, so Lance-A-Frog and I battled between ourselves. I got a few good hits on Lance-A-Frog with the axe, and we used Koffin's spinner as an arena hazard. The axe then stopped working, so when Lance-A-Frog outdrove me and flipped Attitude Adjuster over against the wall I was unable to self right. However, it was a very good fight and Nick is a great guy and driver.

IMG_0580.jpg

The redemption battle was against Crabsolutely Clawful, a bot with giant crab claws. The fight started well for me, with a few bonks being delivered to the top of Crab, but due to the awkward shape of Crab and Joe's superior driving, I was unable to get around to the side of it. Then I saw as the hammer started to slowly die as it stripped the gears in the gearbox. The fight went to the judges, who ruled in favour of Crabsolutely Clawful as it controlled the fight and my axe died. However, I did manage to pop off one of the googly eyes, so I count that as a small victory.

IMG_0586.jpg

I was then out of the main competition, but Joe helped me by setting up a whiteboard tag team battle with Attitude Adjuster and Anxt vs WeeWoo and Rest in Pieces, two axebots vs two clusterbots! Greg and Cosmin used this opportunity to test out the new WeeWoo, which looked very potent. I was really looking forward to teaming up with Anxt, it was one of my favourites from Bugglebots and I picked Ralf's brain about almost every aspect of it. As expected, the match was chaotic and fun, with robots everywhere! Even though I replaced the axe motor with a spare, it stopped working again quickly. Wee got a couple of good hits in, which went through the wheelguard and took a chunk out of the baseplate, but no major damage, and then both Anxt and Attitude Adjuster were dispatched in the pit.

Finally there was the Gladiator battle, where every robot that was still running was put in the arena for a total of about 22! I knew the axe was unreliable, so my strategy was to stay out of the way of the scary spinners, use other robots as a shield and to not use the axe. I achieved the first two but couldn't resist trying the axe, which failed after a single hit and was left sticking out of the front of the bot. It took a hit from a drum spinner, I think, which reset it so I could use the wedge, but also took a chunk out of the 2mm titanium axe head. The other parts of my strategy worked well, and I was in the final three against Rev 3 and WideBoi. However, the lack of traction meant I was unable to push WideBoi into the bit, and then I drove in myself! Wideboi was the winner, and Shakey got a prize on his birthday!

So to sum up - the drive was in a place where I was happy with it, and now I need to sort out traction and making the axe more scary and reliable!

IMG_0608.jpg