Vertical or Horizontal?

[malivoirec]

True. Going back to the original question, I believe that the horis. spinnners are better. although they cannot flip people over like verticle ones. they leave less of your body exposed to attack (FBS. ect.) and they also can prevent you from being fliped over due to the inertia it creates when spinning. Compared to a verticle that the slightest incline can send you flying (eg the nightmere vs S.O.W match)also if you are going to build a successful verti. spinner you will need it to be a very big disk, thus making a large body to handle steering (eg. nightmere) and thus having weak armour and no defence when the disk breaks.

[leorcc]

It doesnt need to be as big as Nightmare to be effective. Look at Hornet 2 for example, compared to the rost of the robot it is actualy quite small.

[ady]

the only down side to some vertical spinners is the exposed wheels. thats what i would go for if i came up against hornet. apart from that i really like them and i want a vertical in a future project.. i would love to see what would happen if i came disk to disk with hornet, not that i would be looking forward to it mind!



(Message edited by ady on January 25, 200

[typhoon_driver]

everyone says the same, look at those exposed wheels etc. Funny thing is that generally people then forget about the spinning mass at the front of the machine

[leorcc]

Plofbox 2, that also made it into the semi-finals had major problems with his wheel guards. Next time we will leave them exposed, because it is not worth protecting. The worst another robot can do to it is bend the axle or take a gash out of the plastic. wit will wobble, but it will still work.

Plofbox 2 is going to 18V instead of the 12V it ran in the euro champs last year. That will improve its spin up time what was the big bottleneck last time. It did perform very well though, I was impressed how far Ridouan came with his vertical spinner.

[leorcc]

Well Gary, I never go for the wheels, I aim for 10 cm away from the disk to get my flipper under.

[RogueTwoRobots]

What about drums then?

*waves in support of the drums*

Like Leo said, drums can be quite successful. Particularly in the States where Helios from http://www.teamcosmos.comwww.teamcosmos.com ruled the roost for a while, drums are incredibly popular, espically in feathers and 6kg machines. (see also http://www.teammadcow.comwww.teammadcow.com)

Yes they can be heavy - mine is 3.2kg - but if you concentrate most of that weight on the outer periphery (general spinner logic) and power it off a decent motor theres no reason for it to be ineffective. Again as Leo pointed out, if it breaks youve got a bumper - thats 3.2kg of stainless steel and a little bit of Hardox that Ive got protecting the front end of my bot if the drum transmission breaks. If it doesnt break them thats a nice bit of spinning metal Ive got at the front

But really, its all down to personal preference - I chose a drum because theyre relatively untried here and I wanted to try and raise their profile by demonstrating their levels of effectiveness. Sure, any videos you may have seen of Drumroll so far arent particulary impressive (down to poor battery conditioning) but very recently its performance has improved greatly and thats without making any of the mods Ive got in mind to increase its destructive capability.

Just need to wait till May to test it in battle again :sad:

[leorcc]

quote:

Just need to wait till May to test it in battle again

You could come over to holland, we are setting up the demo arena with lexan to test with spinners this saturday in Bergen op Zoom and in 2 weeks in Schiedam. Just get your rowboat and and come to holland.

[malivoirec]

I might as well say (Despite the section title) that I am in the building stage of a antweight roller (yes Leo, more Bling Bling wheels) called Uppercutter, armed with a drum. Ill like to see how it does at RRC.

[wayne_trilibium]

My favorite type would have to be Horizontals for the same reason as above: larger area to hit, more stable, bigger disc, etc.
Im not a great fan of drums but ed wallaces DB5 (or 6 or whatever it is now) has got to be the best drum ive seen (if he can just stop his astro getting smashed lol).
Of course the ultimate spinners are the FBS as you have all the benefits of the horizontals plus you always hit and have great armour.