Hi all,
With Leviathan ready to complete next week at War in the Wirral next week, I figured I’d take the time to write up some of the changes I introduced to this version to address critical issues that it faced at it’s August outing.
Clearance
Was single handedly the most frustrating issue at the event, a super simple fix which was just to take the shoulder bolt down more on the belt sander.
The weapon also got some clearance from the belt guard up to 5mm, just to help with the whole “Eating yourself” problem it has. Swapping out the 2mm Carbon Fibre to a 1mm Titanium lid helped this, along with additional changes in the weapon stackup.
Hopefully the image somewhat showcases that, it’s a bit hard to show 2mm clearance.
Weapon slop
Another take away from the event that the flex could also be a result of some weapon stack issues, creating slop which would allow the weapon to move. After a bunch of a fucking no nothing answers from OOTA, Jack kindly provided some documentation for TCD’s weapon stack. So doing what any self-respecting roboteer would do… I copied it.
Here’s it in the CAD
Here’s it in the real
Fitting a hardox plate in there to not only maintain ridgitiy, but also to act as a flange in order to stop the whole thing ripping itself out.
Dynamic Instability
So resulting from the slop and the long thin weapon blade results in the robot wanted to twist and flip itself. With the idea of countering this to create a weapon with a larger footprint to introduce more balance to the weapon. After binging a few of the BnS weapon design videos, fins crept their way into the equation.
1mm Titanium felt like it did the trick, light enough but also structurally sound to not just crumple completely on image. However, they definitely need some sharp edge protection.
Battery
650Mah was barely enough for a 2 minute fight, if this wanted to complete at a Robodojo, which was originally the plan for the robot. It would need more battery life. The goal of cramming in an 850Mah lipo into the robot began.
The weapon was moved forward about 10mm, giving more reach to an already overly large weapon. This would clear space behind the robot for the lipo, whilst having all the electronics move to the right side of the robot, behind the drive motor.
Rough plan for lipo, sitting behind the weapon stuff.
Here was the wiring situation, ended up just hard soldering the drive ESCs into the robot.
Mid final assembly photo. Thats how the guts are laid out.
Chassis
With the major change of the chassis being to fit the lipo in, there were some other minor changes made.
Psuedo chassis, fresh off the router.
A reduction in the flair on the wheelguards. Last fight at Sub, I was able to rip my own wheelguard off, this was why.
Belt Guard was adjusted to remove the flat side for the weapon to hit and then ride under, hopefully.
Generally redid the frame on my own router. Just removing some mounting points which weren’t needed.
And here he is, ready to go
Here’s some additional photos which didn’t really fit any of the catergories, but wanted to include.
New weapon bar, won’t be on the robot for Wirral, but hoping to have it done for future events, the goal being to have high rake in order to tackled TPU front armour
Random mid build photo
More robots on the way, Ares 3 and new robot Greg. So very much looking forward to posting them.
~Siôn
(Work is very slow today)
