Event Report BEVS + Robonerd
Another fantastic BEVS event, the sun was shining and I wasn’t driving this time so i got to sample some of the brewery’s work!
I know BEVS is never about wining, its about putting on a fun show, but I would be lying if I didn’t say I was proud of the fact Flipperpool came top of the unofficial leaderboard this time around after it won all three of its singles fights, its best showing yet!
The robot is heading in the right direction, the drive was rock steady and easy to control and we got lots and lots of flips in. The compressor idea working well with no air leaks.
We did still have a few issues with the robot, frying pans seemed to be the main one this weekend… But when I may previously have been dishearten by the problems, I know look forward to implementing changes and improvements.
We got to fight some really cool robots at this event including HoverBova that hits like a train when it rams you full speed! And we got to have a very silly fight where Flipperpool got to play with a beetle weight robot after dumping its heavier main bot in the ball pit, video below:
Back to the issues though, frying pans!
In our first fight we lost compression half way through the fight and had to resort to ramming. This was because the frying pan smacking Hells Angel hit Flipperpool’s dump valve mounted at the rear of the robot and opened it!
I believe I may be the first person ever to say the words “His frying pan opened my dump valve”.
This was the first time we had a doubles event at BEVS after the main fights, we were paired with the big frying pan thwack bot Easy Over.
We made a good team for most of the fights and were both getting the hits in against the other bots. However friendly fire from the frying pan in the first fight knocked our link out… and in the second fight friendly fire from the pan again bent the link disconnecting it…
The issue is clearly the link and dump valve are not protected well enough, they need to be hidden under a flap or deeper in the robot to protect from over head attacks.
Front forks!
During our second fight HoverBova rammed us so hard up the arse Flipperpool got its forks stuck under the arena wall, in order to free them the flipper was fired, this freed the robot but completely sheared a fork off!
The forks have a barbed design to trap robots on them and mostly to look cool. However this makes them very hard to remove when stuck under the wall, perhaps a smooth fork is the way forward.
After a few more fight the other fork sheard as well meaning we were left flipping with tiny little stumps (somehow still worked). Looking at what is left though they snapped at the same point on both sides, clearly showing where the stress has built up, more meat needs adding to this area when the forks are redesigned.
This was the 4th event with these forks, perhaps not a bad innings for a first design.
Fuse!?
Finally after striping the robot down after the event we noticed the 100A fuse had gone all melty… It still works, hasn’t blown but looked like someone had attacked it with a soldering iron. This doesn’t sit anywhere particularly hot in the robot, anyone got any idea how it got like this or if it needs replacing?
Next event is Crawley! new forks have been ordered, bring on the full pressure robots.