Update

Well Drumrolls drum arrived on Wednesday, but I had to hold off until Friday to get my hands on it. Firstly, its a superb piece of engineering from ALK Engineering a.k.a Mr. Kenny
Its very rugged and much better than the old version (which isnt hard!). Its got bearings fitted this time, so it runs very smoothly on the shaft. It also weighs in at 4.2kg, 1.7kg more than the old drum. This, however, puts the robot in at 13.8kg without the self-righting hoops so Ill probably have to go for a thinner top panel as Ive removed almost all the weight I can from the chassis.

The single biggest weight now (excluding the drum) is the rear armour which is 2kg. Might have to swap that for some ti after Rebel Robots to lighten things up. The other option is to remove a Speed 900 but after todays tests Im loathed to do that :P

Got the drum spinning after tensioning some rather loose belts. Its looking deadly and could cause some lovely damage
However when testing it (which resulted in the old drum getting thrown right across the garden and the old chassis about halfway) one of the battery packs, which were sitting loosely on top as Id been using them in Kaizer, jumped up with the impact of the drum and fell into the path of one of the teeth! It fell out the robot but I didnt notice the impact and thought it was just shock from the hit that made it fly out. Nope - two minutes later, hiss hiss smoke smoke, Id wrecked one of my cells. So I now need to get a replacement pack (dont have an iron suitable for the job, plus I can keep the duffed pack as spare cells) before I can test Drumroll out again.

But all is looking well so far

I was gonna say a bit more but Im tired so Im off to bed!

Jamie

http://www.ayrshirerobotics.vze.comwww.ayrshirerobotics.vze.com