Update

Drumroll's rebuild isn't quite underway yet so nothing much to report pre-champs yet, but I've got itchy keyboard fingers and realised I hadn't posted anything about Reaver's build and how it did at Robots Live MCM. So time for a bit of a retrospective.

So, I'd tentatively planned to join Tony in going to the RL Comic Con event at the NEC, but with Drumroll, Carcinus and Onyx all in a poor condition, the only robot I had to compete with was MoBot, which I thought would be a bit boring. So I started looking at what I could do with MoBot to make it more interesting, with the main point being, could I fit a weapon in it?

Initial plans were to fit it with a lifting mechanism, the lifting mechanism I built a couple of years previously for the MDF bot but which never got going and had been sitting on a shelf doing nothing. To get the module to fit, I needed to move all of MoBot's components, which were located in the middle of the robot, to either side to make way for the lifter. The module itself was a perfect fit once the components were rearranged, so things started progressing in that direction.

To make it a decent lifter, I opted to fit a couple more drill motors and make the robot 4WD. This was needed to stop the robot rocking when accelerating, allowing the lifting blade to stay flat to the floor and straight. It was also the first time I used the mill for cutting out the drill mount holes, and safe to say it made a difference!



Rather than making a front scoop for the lifter from scratch, I noticed that Onyx's front wedge was the perfect width and size to fit onto MoBot's chassis, so it was temporarily pilfered. But, and to cut a long story short, the wedge made the robot look a bit like a mini Tornado so I thought about just running as a rambot, and then I just happened to pick up one of Carcinus's claws which were lying nearby and positioned it as a vertical grabber, and it just was meant to be.

I removed the threaded rod from the lifting module and fitted a GLA-S actuator instead, for speed and ease of build. A couple of drill holes later and the claws had a pivot point. This was the rough shape in the early stages, pretty close to the final version:



Next step was to get the claw and actuator properly mounted and join the claws into a single point, a little Razer-esque. A bit of cutting and grinding was required as well as some more crude hammering to get things to line up, but by the end, it all joined up quite nicely:





Also needed a small wedge on the front so that when the claw came down, it would clamp the opponent in place rather than just pushing my robot up. The welding on this was utter rubbish and there was so much heat it distorted the wedge slightly. I was able to sort it out with the grinder, but any chance of reusing it on Onyx is now out of the question :P

The small wedge later was trimmed down to allow a larger bite gap. The green LEDs in this picture were part of the old MoBot theme, but by now the name was being changed to Reaver and red LEDs would be fitted. But I just thought it looked incredibly cool in this photo



With the red LEDs fitted. Gives a bit of a look at the components inside. The actuator was controlled by a spare Victor 883 I had lying around, and the drives were controlled with modified TZ-85s. The battery was the same as in Onyx, so 18.5V and 2.2Ah.



All finished and ready to go to Birmingham. The small wedge has been cut by this point for the aforementioned bite gap increase, but I think it kinda kills the style a bit. Think I'll redo it to make it curvy. The name Reaver comes from the Firefly TV series and had a few decals on it to fit in with the theme.



So, to the event. Reaver took part in all the featherweight battles over the weekend. Positives were that the drive was very nippy and I didn't burn out a motor all event. Less positives were that the claw got jammed in the fully open position in a couple of battles as I hadn't got round to fitting limit switches, but it was easy enough to fix. The claw wasn't particularly good at crushing, it was clearly channeling its inner Carcinus and only really worked as a grabber (although Calum's ali flight box might contest that :P)

By the end of the event, the chassis was starting to come apart as the brass inserts, which have been in there for a few years and have seen a lot of arena time, were beginning to wear out of the plastic. The top panels came off in a couple of fights after hits from Little Hitter and Killer-Joule as a result and the actuator got chopped by LH too:



More surprisingly, even though the floor was just MDF, the tyres are shredded. Don't know if it was just doing lots of driving with it, but it was power-sliding across the arena at times so not sure if that's just worn them out. The wheels were used on Drumroll at last year's champs but were still in good condition prior to the MCM as the earlier photos show, but it was just pulling off easily in my hands:



So one wheel is now completely bald and I'm going to take the tread off the others and fit bike tyre to them as the wheel bodies and hubs are all still fine.

In terms of progress or upgrades for Reaver, it's on the reserve list for the world champs and will be doing a few whiteboards at least, so it'll need to be beefed up a little. I've bought a bag of barrel nuts that I'll be using to replace all the brass inserts, so that will mean I can keep the same chassis (which is generally in a good condition) but not have parts fall off it anymore. The linear actuator will be getting mended and given a bit of protection, limit switches will be fitted and I'll make up some side armour in the event that it ends up meeting a spinner or two. Weight was quite close prior to MCM so may have to shed a few g's. The front scoop is a bit overkill so I might remake that from braced 3mm steel instead, which would help facilitate additional side armour. It also doesn't run upside down at the moment; I might look into roll hoops for when facing flippers but that's not high on the priority list quite yet.