Dill With It - my first spinner

[HBantweightrobots (Hollis)]

I present to you…

Dill with it!

It’s my first spinner build. The base design I got off thingiverse but needed quite a bit of changing, for example the original was designed to fit a fingertech screw power switch thing and I changed it to fit the bbb one (much cheaper!). I designed my own tpu forks, made it look cooler (the most important bit) and thickened the lid a tiny bit. The main body, wheels and right weapon motor mount (everything that’s not white) is printed in overture super pla+ and all the white bits are printed in overture standard tpu. The left weapon motor mount was printed in tpu simply because it made the weapon motor easier to get out in case I needed to remove it. The two rear wheels are driven by 1000rpm n10s. They drive the front wheels too using a simple rubber band.

March GRoCS:

Took this to march GRoCS to try it out, see if it would perform…

It went 6-0 in groups. The only robot to go undefeated.

Wow! I definately did not expect that. There was 1 close judge’s decision but other than that no huge worries! While it wasn’t a huge destroyer like vanquish:

NBD pictured after a quick fight with vanquish, lifter arm got destroyed.

It made up for that in decent pushing power, and okay control??? I did have one good fight with a (repainted?) warlord

Are intros a thing?

Hello! I’m Omer, from Colchester, and after 27 years, 9 months and 4 days (points if that means anything) of saying I would do it, I just made and test drove my first (antweight) combat robot! I recently attended a MITE event over in Norwich and decided I’d finally take the plunge after almost-starting a few times over the years. The have a tournament on Jan 18th, so I’m hoping to enter! Anyway, I’ve made a flippy wedge thing tentatively either called “Battle Metal” or “Warlord” using mostly …

Who made the mistake of being mostly pla and having what he called ‘armour that’s meant to come off’ (sorry if I remembered that wrong) where I completely destroyed him only for him to tap out when his motors where outside the bot (sorry about that).

So yeah total surprise, got through to the quarters! Quarter final fight was against a suplexer called huntsman who made a driving error, falling in the pit, early in the match leading to a quick win for me semi finals was against a durable pusher named Telekom:

It was a long fight, a lot of locking forks and spinning in circles together but near the end I managed to rip both his forks off. This gave me a few free roof shots at the end which ultimately pulled the JD my way.

A lot of this

Finals time! My first ever! This was against Harry T’s robot called oooh aaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. He got a couple flips on me early and I struggled to recover this eventually led to a OOTA on me.

Oh well. I am still really happy with the performance of this guy! It got me my best result yet, best ever group stage run and it looks pretty flippin cool.

Unfortunately though it weighs 149g. This means ugrades will have to be limited. I could reduce walls and infill as I suffered absolutely no damage at all through the entire event. I think the next upgrade will be to spring load the forks. Because I ran 100% weapon speed the whole time (and I don’t plan to stop doing that) the forks vibrated up and down a lot, making for terrible ground game. My plan is to snatch some of those springs you find in the clicky pens and super glue them between the top of the forks and the body. Also there is quite a bit of gyro but I’m not sure there is a lot I can easily do about that.

Hoping to bring it to the June BBB and July GRoCS.

Thanks for reading,

Hollis

[HBantweightrobots (Hollis)]

Ok. I did some work on the sprung forks. I changed the design to have a little printed spring on the back of the fork but it isn’t really responsive / strong enough. I think I will next try a solid bit on the back of the fork, my only worry with that is it could lift the front wheels if I over do it. Will update tommorow.

[Dylan_Furniss]

A small spring from the back of a clicker pen should do the trick, I’ve just made the top hole on MULCH’s forks big enough to where it has abit of play up and down and letting gravity do its thing

[HBantweightrobots (Hollis)]

Printed new forks and they are working well. I struggled to test though because when I spin up it makes a pretty loud noise, and when I spin it with my hand it makes a sort of quiet, muffled clicking. Please help, I have this signed up for bbb this Saturday

[Dylan_Furniss]

Sounds a little like your bearings have clapped out if you’ve been testing it or perhaps from GROCS, if it was fine after then most likely cause would be debris in your motor. Perhaps worth taking off the c-clip and having a little dust of the inside of the motor cam and stator.

If all goes terribly wrong I have an 1806 that should fit fine, shouldnt be bad to do at BBB

[IrregularJoe (Joe Earlam)]

Agreed, sounds like it’s picked up a little piece of magnetic grit or a piece of someone else’s magnet and it’s stuck inside the motor.

@Dylan_Furniss

taking off the c-clip

Little tip for taking off C/E clips (especially on a motor when they’re tiny and weird and you might not have a spare), do it inside a clear ziplock bag and over a towel, so that if it pings off the bag catches it, and the towel stops it bouncing away onto the floor. You can also put a magnet on the end of your screwdriver so that it sticks to that rather than flying away never to be seen again.

[HBantweightrobots (Hollis)]

thank you so much for the advice. Im not too familiar with the properties of the bbb 1806 motor yet. could someone please advise me on how to troubleshoot

@IrregularJoe

it’s picked up a little piece of magnetic grit or a piece of someone else’s magnet and it’s stuck inside the motor.

thanks

[Dylan_Furniss]

Not quite sure what you mean by advise sorry. Should just be able to remove the retaining clip on the mounting end of the motor to separate the bell and the stator. Large debris should be pretty easy to spot from there. Would definitely recommend Joe’s method, as I’ve lost clips before and its proper annoying

Also quick note if you stored your bot Eclipse in a similar fashion, the strange spinup could be debris inside that motor too, bridging the phases to eachother within the stator and causing unusual behaviour. I would still think it’s the power wires from the esc though unless you have checked those.

[HBantweightrobots (Hollis)]

the motor bell is too stubborn to take off the base, even though I have taken off c clip and the tiny washer.

[Dylan_Furniss]

They can be decently strong, would recommend threading a few screws into the holes and pulling from them for a better grip. If it’s seriously not coming out at all under any circumstances you may have a bent shaft.

[HBantweightrobots (Hollis)]

could a bent shaft be the cause to the vibration?

[Phoenix (Phoenix Will)]

My vaguely sketchy method is to hold the motor in a vice or 3d printed jig, then use a combination of a hammer and a screwdriver to knock the bell off. Alternatively, if you can get a flathead screwdriver between the bell and base of the motor, you can try to lever it off - Do be careful, this can damage the motor if done wrong, so I don’t recommend it.

As for the bent shaft causing vibration, this is likely not the cause, a bent shaft is more likely to bind up the motor as the magnets and coils may come into contact

[HBantweightrobots (Hollis)]

And, as usual, it’s finished the afternoon before the event. I decided it would be a lot easier and less stressful to troubleshoot the 1806 that had possible debris inside to just attach a new weapon assembly. Anyway, enjoy some beauty shots before it gets beaten up tommorow lol.

[TSU (Joshua Bloxham)]

if it helps i just finished getting mine ready this morning…

looks wonderful though, love the disc. looking forward to seeing it today!

[HBantweightrobots (Hollis)]

Sooooo… stuff happened…

First of all let’s just say, it did not really go to plan.

DWI went 2-2 in the groups (compared to a 6-0 last GRoCS with some unlucky loses.

Won’t do huge event report, but I will share a few pics.

1st fight was a chaotic win against vanquish with a lot of this:

I eventually pitted him after some pretty huge hits.

Somehow, the damage I sustained in that fight was DWI first ever damage?

2nd fight was against Hercules was a pretty slam dunk win for Ben, he picked me up and threw me out in the first 15 seconds.

Oh no!

3rd fight was against Omer’s new grim ripper style undercutter, ummm, I forgot the name (sorry). I dominated early on, winning most of the coming togethers until disaster struck, my fork got stuck in the side of the arena, I couldn’t escape despite spinning up and down really quickly, reversing like crazy and since Omer was upside down, his blade couldn’t contact my body to set me free

4th and last fight was against Birdemic, joes spicy grabber which was mostly dominated by joe in the first 20 seconds, getting some pretty good snaps at my wheels, and, pulling of my drive belt?!? After from what I heard Birdemics first ever damage I got a lucky hit on him and he fell into the pit

Birdemics nips on my wheels.

So here we go. The play in rumble.

I started with immediately yeeting flintknock over the pit wall, before hitting reactor over the flip out wall. I then turned to get-got and after some massive hits he tumbled into the pit. A few seconds later it was just me and grey fox 2 remaining. After around 5 minutes of me grinding away at his flipper arm and a few big hits, he got a good push on me. I saw I was heading towards the pit so I tried to back out, but it was too late and I tumbled into the pit. I was gutted. Oh well.

So overall, compared to last GRoCS the end result was relatively disappointing. I have updates planned and will update soon. Bye,

Hollis

[Dylan_Furniss]

Any plans to solve your forks getting stuck in the wall? Quite a tragic loss that one.

[IrregularJoe (Joe Earlam)]

@HBantweightrobots

4th and last fight was against Birdemic, joes spicy grabber which was mostly dominated by joe in the first 20 seconds, getting some pretty good snaps at my wheels, and, pulling of my drive belt?!? After from what I heard Birdemics first ever damage I got a lucky hit on him and he fell into the pit

That was a great fight! I really enjoyed carefully removing the drive belt, but I’m sad it ended so soon, that was a really weird hit that sent me down the pit, somehow it popped Birdemic round in a perfect 180 as I was coming in at full speed and I was down the pit before I even know what happend. I’m not sure I can take credit for that wheel damage though, unless you changed them out for fresh ones after the Vanquish fight!

I think it has done some damage previously, I closed the weapon on a drum spinner (Falcon 2?) in a rumble at at ORCS and stalled it out, apparently burning out something inside the bot as it stopped dead soon after, but I didn’t speak to the driver and only heard that second hand.

[HBantweightrobots (Hollis)]

Yeah I too wish that fight could’ve gone on a bit longer. I believe I only took damage to one of my wheels during the vanquish fight so it’s quite possible you did do something as I have damage on all my wheels pretty much right now!

[HBantweightrobots (Hollis)]

I don’t know what I could do to change that other than possibly redesign the forks, sacrificing ground game for a less sharp end on the forks. Yeah I was pretty disappointed, I thought I had that one in the bag.

[Phoenix (Phoenix Will)]

I guess one of the main ways to solve that could be to improve grip, if that is even possible. Other than that, if your forks were less wide, it would take less force to pull them out of the wall, although that would also make them weaker vs spinners. You could also keep the same fork width, and make the slope on the end of the fork less gentle, which would reduce the depth of fork which would get stuck in the wall, at the cost of making it harder to get an opponent on the forks. It’s mostly just tradeoffs unfortunately