Hi,

Thank you for this information, glad to have someone reply swiftly so I can look into parts. I expect I will go with a beetleweight since at the moment, competitions aren't happening thanks to everything going on, so I wanted to use this time to learn how to build and drive to at least a decent standard where everything doesn't just break down instantly.

In my experience, a lifter is perhaps one of the simplist while teaching the basics of active weaponry with axes next. You might imagine a saw or something would be easy but I wouldn't ever recommend these to a beginner because of the capacity for things to go diasterously wrong.
I was thinking that a lifter would probably be one of the most simple mechanisms, but for some reason the idea of an axebot completely flew over the top of my head, so thank you for reminding me that they exist. Two of my favourite heavyweights are axe machines so no idea how I forgot.

I was considering a spinner later on down the line since that would be my end goal for a bot, but I do know some horror stories about them going wrong and how they are generally fairly dangerous.

I will take a look at the site that you sent, it looks as if they're located very close to where I live as well so it's good to know that Bristol is a location that at least has some competitors.

I'll leave an update here when I have a plan of action initially.