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Thread: Team Kaizen Build Diary

  1. #361
    Ocracoke's Avatar
    Team Kaizen

    Robots Live Grantham 2023
    This event was something I was looking forwards to given I had to miss both Crawley and Colchester. Suffice to say, Grantham was a pain in the butt.

    Saturday
    I made an effort to be at Grantham early so I could get setup and tested in good time before the event. Jibril was pretty much good to go, Azriel, as ever, needed a little bit of work but nothing untowards and in time, both were tech checked and readty to go in.

    Azriel went first for the 2x FW melees. In the first fight, a wheel came off but was still mobile (loosely) on the other wheel. It did eventually cut out but this was with less than 10 seconds to go before the end so I count this as a survived. The second was miuch more disappointing where after the first lurch forwards, it cut out completely. I had also forgotten to plug back in the axe speed controller so that was a whoopise on my part.

    Because I was the only MW in the show that day and with the main HW competition in the early stages, I really had no options but to join either a HW whiteboard or the HW melee. In the end, I went for the melee. I wasn't expecting much but despite all the work I put into rebuilding the electrics, the first ram from Teconic(?) knocked out the axe. I was flipped around the arena a fair bit before becoming immbolised. At this point, Implosion landed a direct hit on the polycarbonate lid, right over the new circuit board. The polycarbonate shattered and really did cause a big mess.

    After the show, I hastily pulled out the board to see the damage and test. Mercifully, the board did light up once I recovered the XT90 removable links but there is worse to come.

    Sunday
    When I turned up after a fantastically rubbish sleep, I made the decision to focus on Jibril. Azriel had always been secondary and I kind of wanted to focus on my "big" bot for a bit. I am glad I did - a lot of soldered connections had broken either from the initial impact from Implosion or from being brought in and out of the robot. My 30W soldering iron just was not up to the task and I am very grateful to Dave Weston for loaning me his and the impromptu soldering lesson. Knowledge!

    I worked on that robot for 3 straight hours tearing the circuit board all apart to figure out just what was wrong. I don't recall the specifics but I do know the 12pm event had well started before I was finished. I had definitely missed the first FW melee. Just before the VIPs came through, I finally had it all put back together for the HW whiteboard where I would be working as a clusterbot with Backflip.

    The legend that is John Reid turned up with both Terrorhurtz and Beta and he and I chatted for 5 or so minutes about how Beta was built and why a lighter hammer works best on Pneumatic bots and heavier hammers works best on Electric bots. He also put in Terrorhurtz in the same whiteboard.

    Side note: I can now say I've been in the arena with Tornado and Terrorhurtz. Wow.

    Anyway, during the introductions, Backflip accidentally bumped into me and Jibril flat died, much to my dismay. No axe, no drive but the lights were definitely still on. The fight happened with me occassionally twitching the controls to see if it being knocked about would instill some life. Nope.

    As Jibril was being hauled out, Dave says he has seen sparking in the robot by the wheel. Politely put, I was bricking it because I really, really did not want to deal with a lithium fire, even LiFe batteries. Once again, the board came out. One of the advantages of the way built it is that it is a fully indepedent unit, I can test it on the bench without needing anything else. Sadly, nothing. No lights from the drive ESC or the receiver.

    Unwrapping the receiver revealed that it must have overloaded somehow because one of the microprocessor chips had exploded. That, on its own, isn't usually enough, in my experience, to kill a ESC but plugging a battery into the ESC revealed that was dead too. Checking around it, the heatsink had burn marks on it.

    What I think happened was when I was bumped into, the ESC pivoted upwards into the battery terminals on the board and caused a short. In my rush to get the robot running, a crucial pin to hold the board in place was missed, allowing the movement. The weapon ESC also didn't appear to be working but I am not convinced that is dead (though that could just be wishful thinking, VEX 300A controllers are golddust to find).

    Azriel as well was deeply unwell. Despite the receiver lighting up, none of the drive ESCs were driving the motor and the axe ESC went full chat as soon as the robot was powered on despite several attempts at rebinding, so I think that receiver also has died.

    So by the next show, I had no robots to run and, being honest for a moment, I was peeved. I had been looking forwards to this show for a long while and it had turned into a disaster. You could argue it was somewhat foolish of me to go into a HW battle with a "mere" MW at all but the alternative was to not go into the arena at all and that simply won't do.

    I've ordered a new ESC and receivers which should be with me by Wednesday so I can perform surgery to get Jibril running. Azriel will be going to Stoke, as will Jibril. Maidstone for Jibril is still on the cards if I can get it running.

    Watch this thread.

  2. #362
    Ocracoke's Avatar
    Team Kaizen

    ESC has arrived, as well as the new receivers. I will be feverishly trying to get this done tonight!
    Team Kaizen - Build Diary for all the robots

    AW: Amai, Ikari, Lafiel, Osu, Ramu
    BW: Shu!, The Honey Badger
    FW: Azriel
    MW: Jibril, Kaizen

  3. #363
    Ocracoke's Avatar
    Team Kaizen

    Robots Live Stoke 2023
    So this was, personally, a big one for me. I had to miss Maidstone owing to the issues with Jibril following Grantham and I wasn't able to take Azriel with me as one of the receivers I had picked up burned out on me. Safe to say, this is one of those events I'd like to forget.

    Tech check went fine, even used the free time before the event to make a link cover to try and prevent the links from being pulled out and added headweight to the axe for that punch. However, in its first fight as part of a clusterbot with Audacious, Jibril did the intro sequence and then... stopped. Axe worked but the drive? Nothing.

    Looked over the robot back in the pits, drive is fine. Put it in for a whiteboard at the end of the first show. Powered on fine, tried to drive it forwards, it twiches and dies again. It ended up with the robot having to be left in the arena dead as the fight went on. You can imagine how... disappointed... I was.

    Spent all of lunchtime working on the circuit board assuming that was the culprit, possibly a bad connection resulting in a brownout. Shane also questioned a loose motor mount so that was tightened up as well and put it in to a end of show melee. I was all pumped up for this - the event so far had been pretty tragic for me.

    Put it in the arena, turn it on, try to drive forwards... nope. It failed again. Once again, it had to be left in the arena as the fight went on. By this point, Dave Weston, Theo and a couple of members of the RL crew had tried to help it but this thing was going nowhere. After the show, we tried it again in the arena and even put out feet on the rolling wheels to introduce rolling resistance but it was fine for that. In the arena though? Dies.

    By this point, I was done with the day and I wasn't particularly in the mood with the weather. My apologies to those who I may have upset during trying to get the robot out of the pits.

    Next day (today), got it out the car and set to work. The Roboclaw ESC I run in Jibril is tiny, a 2x30 affair which has been fine but not exactly ideal owing to the lack of physical space in the robot to mount the ESC. However, it does come with a USB port to look it over, rather like a car's ECU. Upon looking it over, it looks as if one or both of the CIM motors are overdrawing on the ESC upon anything but light acceleration, causing the overcurrent protection to kick in.

    What I think has happened is that the smack from Implosion/HW battles and then possibly just the age of the CIMs in a overvolted state has caused them to expire. They are the same motors from 2019's Jibril so maybe this isn't as unexpected as it could have been but it still sucks. I have one spare CIM in storage so will be digging that out on Monday to replace at least one motor to see if it will play ball in time for Cheltenham.

    That all being said, the axe motor is working fine and with the side arm changes, the question had to be asked about wherever the robot can now self right. Turns out that yes, it finally can but only with the axe in the fired position. In the non-fired position, the side rhombus things I put on aren't helping as much as I would like but adding some HDPE "horns" on the axe gearbox mount should help.
    Team Kaizen - Build Diary for all the robots

    AW: Amai, Ikari, Lafiel, Osu, Ramu
    BW: Shu!, The Honey Badger
    FW: Azriel
    MW: Jibril, Kaizen

  4. #364
    Ocracoke's Avatar
    Team Kaizen

    Extreme Robots Cheltenham 2023
    The final MW/HW event of year and four of us arrived for what was effectively the finals of the MW championship 2023 (an informal thing ran between us). Jibril had ears fitted to make selfrighting easier and I had spent sometime working out the ESC issues to the point where it should have been good to go. I had narrowed the issue down to a overcurrent issue as per my previous post and had tested it.

    Should. First fight, it packed up again just before it went into the arena. Boy was I unimpressed. I immediately took the robot back to the pits and reconfigured the ESC again. Turns out that there is a neat sync motors feature in the RoboClaw ESC to act as a kinda-but-not-really gyro.

    Second fight, the robot did go into the arena and make several nice impressions in both Backflip and Jackpotbut once again overloaded and shutdown. At least it went in the arena. ^^; Sadly, after that fight, I needed to leave. At the time, I wasn't happy with the ESC still (and is still the case) but there was a phone call from home that also factored in. Had I not got the call, I would have likely stayed overnight and participated on Sunday.

    I will do the big year end writeup later in the week. Lots of changes incoming
    Team Kaizen - Build Diary for all the robots

    AW: Amai, Ikari, Lafiel, Osu, Ramu
    BW: Shu!, The Honey Badger
    FW: Azriel
    MW: Jibril, Kaizen

  5. #365
    Ocracoke's Avatar
    Team Kaizen

    So here we are, the end of the "big events" for 2023 and despite all the calamities and mishaps, Jibril ended up 3rd in the UK for Middleweights, which is nothing to be displeased about. I would have liked to have done better but those are the breaks. Anyway, I said there would be big changes, so here we go.

    Middleweights *
    Jibril is now retired from the MW category and is being replaced, finally, with Kaizen 2.0. For me, this is a long awaited return as Kaizen will be showing off the latest and greatest Team Kaizen has to offer. Expect more updates over the winter period. I've not heard any mention that the MWs won't be running next year but even if they don't, I am going to stick with the class anyway - moving a MW is faarrrr easier than a HW.

    Featherweights
    Azriel 1.0 is done and is getting a 2.0. I've decided that this iteration will be a thwackbot and is more "just for fun" than anything else since I don't usually get to Dojo. I don't think I'll be talking aboiut this one over the winter period but if the chance comes up, I might.

    Beetleweights *
    Shu! 3.0 is greenlit so that'll be making a return. The Honey Badger 4.x will be sticking aronud for the time being but will be getting some upgrades to the armour and power delivery. Jibril 3.0 will also be appearing in this category as well. I know full well axe robots in this class aren't the most effective but just you wait and see :P

    Antweights
    Osu and Amai are now fully retired. Ramu 1.0, Lafiel 2.0 and Ikari 3.1 are sticking around with Ramu and Ikari pretty much unchanged since their last appearences. Lafiel needs a new body from what I recall but otherwise will remain a diagnonal spinner.

    Events
    Obviously BotFest 5 is happening on the 2nd of December with 6 planned for Aprilish next year. For those not n the Discord channel I put together, the arena has been significantly overhauled to address some of the concerns people have had about it and just to improve it. Note, if there are concerns about the arena, please just talk to me, I won't bite!

    I've been judging at Scouse events and am going to AWS70 as a judge as well next year. If you need me to come and judge an event or need a AW arena, just drop me a message.

    * = Will be competiting in championships
    ----

    So there we are, a busy 2023 and a plan for 2024. Oh, I will also finally get new team shirts and what not for Team Kaizen since the banner I display is from 2018ish and is the old logo. Yikes...
    Team Kaizen - Build Diary for all the robots

    AW: Amai, Ikari, Lafiel, Osu, Ramu
    BW: Shu!, The Honey Badger
    FW: Azriel
    MW: Jibril, Kaizen

  6. #366
    Ocracoke's Avatar
    Team Kaizen

    For those who have not been keeping up with the recent events, I've picked up a FW arena for BotFest - specificially this is the pay to drive arena Robots Live had, which in turn was Ed Hoppit's old arena from XFM, so this has got some history to it.

    The accquistion means I may have to re-evaluate my plains for 2024 since there is a fair bit of work needing to it to make it safe for combat. BotFest is getting increasingly popular and I feel I am at the point where I am considering going even part time EO throughout the year. I'll work this out during the week.
    Team Kaizen - Build Diary for all the robots

    AW: Amai, Ikari, Lafiel, Osu, Ramu
    BW: Shu!, The Honey Badger
    FW: Azriel
    MW: Jibril, Kaizen

  7. #367
    Ocracoke's Avatar
    Team Kaizen

    Jibril
    Ah yes, the problem robot. I built a new trolley for it, tried testing it and it failed with the electrics going haywire so on New Year's eve, I tore the entire robot down to overhaul it. This means a repaint, rewire and regearing the axe for more torque to make self righting faster.

    Ikari
    I found the jar that I put it into prior to the house move so all that needs is a reassembly with new screws and if there is weight, some titanium for the front and top.
    Team Kaizen - Build Diary for all the robots

    AW: Amai, Ikari, Lafiel, Osu, Ramu
    BW: Shu!, The Honey Badger
    FW: Azriel
    MW: Jibril, Kaizen

  8. #368
    Ocracoke's Avatar
    Team Kaizen

    Scouse Showdown 3
    I was a judge for this event and it was a wild ride though quite straightforwards for us three judges, we only had one split decision all day. Despite an utter lack of sleep from the previous days, the event was entertaining as always, so thanks to the MRF for organising it.

    I managed to get 2 whiteboards in with The Honey Badger where although no clear winner was declared in either (to my knowledge), the Badger flinally flipped a robot over with the arm! However, in both fights, the Badger had electrical gremlins that meant the ESC crashed and the robot went out of control.

    I've been meaning to retire the v4 version of the Badger for sometime now but for one reason or another, I've never had a chance to do so. However, after seeing the peformance of the Badger today. it is definitely time. I was hit by inspiration during the event to build something quite petite and dense for a v5. More details to come.
    Team Kaizen - Build Diary for all the robots

    AW: Amai, Ikari, Lafiel, Osu, Ramu
    BW: Shu!, The Honey Badger
    FW: Azriel
    MW: Jibril, Kaizen

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