The weapon was slow, certainly slower than what Doom can do, though this was more a limitation of what options were available for me at this weight class. The next most common lifter setup at BW level would have been a 37mm motor, but those are much bigger, longer and heavier, and with space already at a premium it was no dice. The servo was a risky choice, and certainly not a fast one, but it could lift an opponent without killing itself which was the main goal, and being able to hold an opponent suspended in place is its own advantage.

The fragility was mostly due to 3D printed components, everything short of the grabber arms was PLA+. I didn't really expect the lifter forks to take much abuse since they were recessed into the bot, but I've had to reconsider that approach after the damage I took at BBB. I'm hoping to bring a lot more HDPE back into the mechanism going forward for the event later this month.

The final issue with self-righting was more due to the fact that the weapon was powered by a servo, not a motor. This meant that I had to finish a self-right within a limited range of motion, and while I had been able to tinker around with the geometry of the grabbers and the gearing just enough to get it to self-right semi-consistently, it wasn't as reliable during the fight. I have plans to bring much more motion into the mechanism so that this should be a non-issue going forward, which should give me a self-righting time of a little over a second; not ideal, but certainly an improvement.