Update

Just thought Id give a bit of a post-Rebel Robots update since Ive got nothing better to do (who said anything about studying?)

Firstly to Drumroll; its first fight was against Tuff Luck 2, a bit of a rematch from the UK champs last year. Managed to refrain from getting stuck on each other twice so that was good. Got a few hits in on Tuff Luck but it has a thick shell and the drum was never going to cause much damage. However, Tuff Luck broke down (I think it was a power failure?) and was in the process of being counted out when Drumroll hit it with the drum and promptly broke down itself! Drumroll still won because Tuff Luck had stopped first but the breakdown was slightly worrying.

Back in the pits, a post-mortem revealed that the two speedo plugs had popped out from the mixer, thus removing the BEC supply to the receiver and in turn losing all radio control. Quick fix with tape and cable ties however and it was all good to go again.

Next up was Pain in the Asp. A very good match that had some nice impacts. Im keen to see this fight again actually as the drums potential capability was becoming apparent. However the drive was rubbish leading to some squiffy handling. Thankfully Geoff is a better driver and kept driving towards the drum

Just when it was getting fun, I lost one side of my drive - no idea why at first. This limited any attempt to drive towards PITA so I had to hope hed come towards me. Geoff very quickly realised what had happened and altered his tactics to suit, driving round to the back of Drumroll and pushing into the rear wedge. This led to a final score of 6-2 in PITAs favour as I could not do much going round in circles. But I loved the fight so its cool

With Drumroll out of the main comp I tried to solve the problem of the bad drive. Never had much time to pull it apart though to the thorough degree that it needed, so I just kept it together and threw it in a whiteboard at the end to drive in circles.

Back home, I took it apart and the cause of the broken drive was that the pinion on the motor shaft had come off so the turning of the motor wasnt being transmitted through the gearbox. Ive replaced the motor for Newcastle and fixed the old one with some Loctite. Not sure how well thatll hold so Ill keep that as my spare.

So overall I was happy with Drumrolls weapon performance, even though I wish it could have progressed a little more in the competition. I was however, disappointed with the speed of the drive. When I take the outer chassis off and drive around the inner chassis (basically where everythings mounted) its speedy as hell. Yes there is an extra 8kg on it when the outer chassis is fixed on but I think its mostly down to the Speed 900 taking a bit of power away from the drives and also the distance between the spinning mass and the drive wheels (quite a bit for a vertical spinner). Not sure how much of an effect the steel floor had. The bike tyre would have gripped it no problem, but not sure if the HDPE front panels are generating too much friction. Might add some Nylon skids for Newcastle, its always seemed to be fine running on the Nylon.

Kaizer went out in the first round to Pillow Torque and thanks to the change from double elimination to single elimination, plus Hornet and Kishar wrecking each other, it was able to avoid a trashing. The most damage was a broken aerial and a damaged gearbox. It suffered from the torque ring slipping in the match against Pillow Torque which resulted in a lovely grinding noise in the match. Thought it was worse than that but thankfully a quick turn of an allen key and they were all good.

Ran it in a couple of whiteboard fights; I was pleased to see the speed it zooms around at at 24V (thanks again to Clive for lending us those cells - think Im going to reconfigure my remaining Vapextech cells to 24V )
Slammed into the wall a few times (cant have been good for the forks :P) and slammed/got slammed by other robots a fair bit. Damage, as mentioned above, was a jammed wheel caused by a broken gearbox plate (too much slamming!) which was easily fixed on the Saturday night.

Overall opinion: didnt get much competition time but its got potential and Ill hopefully be able to start sorting out a four-bar-lifter for it to replace the forks.

Finally got some photos of Kaizer uploaded too, for those who haven€™t seen it:

http://s31.photobucket.com/albums/c367/ayrshirerobotics/Kaizer%20Mk3%20-%20Build/http://s31.photobucket.com/albums/c3...k3%20-%20Build /

Lifting forks were plundered from Kim Davies garage during the middle of the night

Also updated Drumroll€™s build pics a little:

http://s31.photobucket.com/albums/c367/ayrshirerobotics/Drumroll%20-%20Build/?start=160http://s31.photobucket.com/albums/c3...0-%20Build/?st art=160


Wow, bloomin€™ long post. Maybe I should consider that €˜study€™ thing now

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