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Thread: Ensign Wedgeley Crusher (FW Sportsman)

  1. #71
    Ocracoke's Avatar
    Team Kaizen

    Well done, nice write up, looks like you had a great time at the event! I am intrigued by what the next machine is going to be, I'll be sure to keep an eye out for that.
    Team Kaizen - Build Diary for all the robots

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

  2. #72
    McMullet
    Guest
    Prior to Robodojo on Sunday we made a few very minor tweaks to Wedgeley.

    The first was to add a strip of spring steel to the front of the lower jaw, (in theory) allowing us to get under things better. Because spring steel is a pain to drill, this was clamped down with a piece of ally:


    We have a perennial problem with wheelying, one that we always come up with a different solution for and that never really works. Often, we lose a fight because the latest anti-wheely solution gets us beached on the arena. Here's this time's attempt, another bit of spring steel:


    Finally, I tried putting a resistor in parallel with the linac motor, to give it a bit of braking. Witness my beautiful wiring!


    After a pretty successful showing in December, we were hoping to just get into the groove a bit and practice driving. I don't see any major changes happening to Wedgeley from now on, I just want to find the time to start work on something new...

    So, onto The Haps from January 2020.

    Fight 1: Exabyte
    This is a low, speedy machine but isn't too wedgey and is prime nomming height. Becky was up to drive.


    The fight went well until the Ensign got caught up on the arena with his own spangly new scoopy wedge thing. I don't mind being beaten but this was an annoying loss, we were having a good scrap up to this point and to lose that way was a bit frustrating. Other than that it drove well though I'm not sure if the "skid" helped much.

    Fight 2: Mattock
    I won't dwell on this. Simon had some bad luck and got lodged on the edge of the push-out zone about 2 seconds into the fight... As he pointed out, this was probably for the best given the nastiness of Mattock (one of EWC's first opponents, and destroyer of his original "weapon").

    Fight 3: Danger UXB
    It was now my turn to drive. It wouldn't be a Robodojo event without facing at least one Team Death machine. I had a plan for this fight (shocking I know): Danger UXB is far too big to grab, is quite smashy when spinning and high off the ground, so I deliberately went in with the jaw down to use the front "nose" armour as a wedge of sorts. This worked pretty well and I was able to take the hits and push DUXB around, and eventually out of the arena. Sadly, no video for this fight, but hopefully someone else got one...

    Fight 4: Bread Dead Redemption
    Time for a rematch here! Last time, Wedgeley was held to a judge's decision and lost to newcomer BDR so we were out for toasty vengeance.

    (apologies for my sarcastic commentary in that video...)

    Sadly, Simon's inexorable attraction to the push out zone was too great once more! Again, this was a good fight for as long as it lasted, but I would rather we'd been beaten than to lose. We nearly got some good bites in so that was good.

    All in all, it was slightly disappointing to come out 1-3 from the day, but also it's nice to think that we've come in a year from being utterly ecstatic at even having a working robot to being a bit droopy that we only managed one win. Not sure what updates EWC will get for next time, other than a new and probably equally unsuccessful way to prevent wheelies.

    Alongside that, I've started CAD for the new robot. It will be similar to EWC, with a linac crushing weapon driven by drill motors. However, it will also be 4WD (single motor per side) and have both jaws of the crusher articulated. It should also be going into full combat at some point.

    Name is decided but currently secret; rest assured it is a terrible pun.

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