Update

Just thought I'd post a quick update following on from Robots Live in Edinburgh last weekend. Despite fighting against the clock, I managed to get Onyx ​repaired from the UK Champs and did a bit of work to get MoBot running again as Carcinus is still in a sorry state. Haven't really had time to give Drumroll a proper post-champs assessment so when pilfering the TZ-85s out of it for Onyx, I noticed just how out of shape everything is:





For the record, those teeth are 15mm chunks of Hardox 500. Along with the cracked endcap welds and generally goosed state of the tube, a new drum is a must. So is a new chassis by the looks of things.

Onyx had a new axe made up, which just involved lopping the duff length of box section off the existing arm and welding a new piece on, then adding a new axe head out of 4mm Hardox 450 (or 400, not sure). Stays sharper for longer but gets stuck in wooden floor panels more easily.

So prior to any fights last weekend it was looking pretty good:



But I pretty much spent the whole day doing this:



which is replacing the drive motor as I smoked one each and every fight (with exception of the third fight where I wasn't in the arena long enough to burn anything out). I was even running on reduced rates from the start as Onyx has previous when it comes to smoking drill motors.

There's obviously some underlying issue as I run the exact same setup in Carcinus and those motors have lasted for months (well, until I put them into Onyx last weekend). So that, coupled with the cracked baseplate, holey chassis, stripped bolt holes and general obesity, means that Onyx is up for a complete rebuild as well. Going to try and make it more compact so that I can armour it better and make it suitable for full combat, which will be tricky as it's already pretty tight for space inside, despite being a large(ish) robot.

So in conclusion, all three robots are in need of complete, or as near as, rebuilds in order to get them into respectable states. Except MoBot, which needed no maintenance all weekend and is still in a perfect working state.

And in terms of events, that's us done for the year I reckon. My training's almost finished so will be focusing on my job for a while and trying to save a bit of money, plus just need a bit of a break from the robots, so won't be much happening on here. But they'll all be back in due course to kick robutt.