Kriegsmesser Build Saga

Maxamuslead · 8 February 2024 22:14

So back in August 2022 after a long break from Beetles (the less spoken about “The Apprentice” the better) and a year break from Robots in general, Sam Price convinced me to build the stupid thing I had been working on in CAD for a little while to get me back into doing events after life stuff happened.

So, I set myself a target to build and enter a robot for the Second Battle in the Burgh, so here we go.

So, the Cad I do not have many images of V1, but I do have a few.

So this is roughly how I planned it to be, took the disc design from Sherkt lineage (I had after some silly Battlebots applications stuff) and modified it as I can’t leave well alone, so I made it more toothy and used the bolt pattern from Gus mega Destructo bar disc thing as that was going to be original weapon system with my own hubs, but I moved away from it as I was going to order some steel anyway for the armour forks etc and I figured I might as well have a proper disc as I wasn’t aiming for the highest of RPMs and having a larger MoI would very useful, It did mean the spacer was designed for a 10mm weapon and I have given it a 8mm disc but nothing some printed shims couldn’t sort out.

Speaking of the weapon it was using a HTD3 belt with both pulleys being toothed, I did think about using a more traditional tooth motor pulley with a smooth weapon one but after talking with some US builders and seeing how well TPU worked for them I changed to a tooth both sides with the weapon side being TPU.

This also allowed for a good spin-up time and a built-in tooth protector, and with the knowledge that if it was a tad undersized either from printing or design it would grip and load the needle roller bearings, with needle roller thrust bearing between the pulley/spacer and bulkheads.

The motor powering it all was an emax2205, now some of you would be thinking “Oh that’s too small it going to struggle” or something along those lines, and with the gearing it ran perfectly fine, there were issues which I will talk about later on but those where due to dumb oversites made by me (you may see one in the image about)

Onto the drive well the drive is both a strong point and a weakness, it uses some Bad Timing Billet gearboxes, of Deadules Fame, I bought this way back when I was planning a new overhead Beetleweight and Cosmin was making some experimental ones after Battle in the Burge 1 and I snapped a pair up.

Now these gearboxes are bulletproof, they took anything Daedalus threw at them with exposed wheels, a 6mm output shaft and using the Pluto drive chain which I can still get spares off (which I should order some) and them being not planetary helps with packaging.

But I cannot get new bodies for them, and they are VERY fast even with the lowest KV 18** motor I can find it still silly fast on the smallest wheels I could get and speaking of them here is another image.

The wheels were a massive pain. I wanted to use Banebots 1 3/8 as I had 8 in total, they are know thing grippy enough and low profile easy, but I couldn’t for love or (reasonable) money get a single wheel width hub, I could find duels but they where too wide and cutting them down would require making the new circlip grove which and at that point, I might as well make custom ones, so I looked at using foams, they have worked great for like bby sherkt and Daedalus but they were simply too large, plus they would need to be Latex ’ed and all there spares.

So, in the end, I simply got a pair of Actobotics Set Screw D-Hub,

and made custom wheels, as I had some Vytaflex from my Featherweight silliness that needed to be used up.

So onto the frame and armour, well as you may have noticed it is themed on a certain robot that may have been seen on TV across the globe, so with that I made the bold choice to get 3mm Hardox armour on to the front of this thing, this would allow me to shape it how wanted, make it basically invulnerable to most weapons going and if it does get slots and chunks removed I can easily patch it with some weld, but this meant I had to compact, there is a little wasted space as possible.

I also used a mixture of Carbon fibre and HDPE. The Sides and weapon uprights are 10mm, the rear is 2.5mm carbon fibre and the lids 1.5mm. I also cut down on the number of fasteners, the lids only had two with the other side tapping into the bulkheads, all the panels were attached using captive nuts which were held in place with high-strength hot glue. (this works better than it has any right to). Mounting the drive is also rather unique as gearboxes do not have any mounting points, so I have to use a clam shell design which makes things a bit harder but doable, just meant doing a heavily machined baseplate which is 10mm It is thickest and 2mm at its thinnest, with the top part being a highly machined 20mm which I had kicking around.

Electronics nothing special, 2 12a afros for drive and a tattoo 52a for the weapon, all things I had from other robots all last now working so I onto the build, Which due to good timing meant i could take it to a Robodojo event before BiTB and get some testing in,

There isn’t much to say here there were a few hiccups which I will share at the end!

So those few hiccups 1 I miss ordered a Carbon Fibre plate for the rear that was too small and I wasn’t able to get one in time for the Dojo tests, so Sam being a legend was able to print an Onyx one at one of his work printers. The other hiccups were found the night before the event. I was struggling to wire it up as it was a small space i haven’t had much experience with stuff this small so the night before I stopped off at Sam’s who as also going to have him wire it up and then stuff started to go wrong. Firstly the escs which did work last time used them now didnt want to, i had done little driving tests before redoing the loom to make it fit so either it was bad luck or I cooked them, soo good start, following on from that the weapon esc wasn’t seeing a ground signal even when soldered directly to the negative. Gotta love robots….

Luckily I had a “new” Weapon esc that just needed programming and Sam in his box of bits had two afro 12s so, quick soldering sessions and we did a test in the test box and everything works yay but the weapon spins backwards boo. So quick trip back upstairs, some programming help from Gus we had the weapon spinning the right way woo but the next “hiccup” soon appeared now some of you may of noticed this already but there is an issue with the weapon belt. The weapon pulley threads onto the Emax’s prop mount, nice little packaging feature, i hadn’t loctite it for 3 reasons 1) with testing and fitting of stuff it was easier to have it removable 2) the heat from the motor is likely to soften it and break its hold 3) i forgot… soo, when it spun down the motor, slowed down faster than the disc soo it rapidly unthreaded and got punted across the box.

That feeling of dread thinking of all this effort for nothing, as it didn’t have a spare, but I got very lucky as we found it and it was fine, the flange had fallen off and that was it. So quick bit of counter boring, checking of the threads and a grub screw and we remounted the pulley and we were all good again on the weapon yay, try to drive and one side was dead boo again… I really hate robots.

So back upstairs for the last time, checking the wires, finding a broken joint resoldering much cursing at both me and the robot from Sam and at midnight we tested it again, the drive and weapon worked even at the same time.

So Dojo

The robot due to it being dense and missing the CF back plate it came in quiet under weight, it was very nearly US Legal… With a hardox wedge mental

From this image you can see the nightmare of wiring it was

So the event itself went ok, i had a ok draw in my opinion, only got two spinners bby Shrekt (oh the irony) and Endboss (oh no)

Here is a link to all its fights

Round 1 F7

Speaks for itself, it works yay

Round 2 Bby Shrekt

This is where one of the first flaws started to appear, the forks I had designed were meant to use a single screw so they are hinged but had the top section stop on the wedge not allowing it to go under the robot, well that was the plan, but due to tolerances this wasn’t the case and one fork span round and locked the weapon, so new forks are needed.

Round 3 Deja Two

This is where another flaw came to rear its head, the fork design was shown again to just be bad, but not only that the weapon motor mount had started to melt, as it was a last minute thing, it was made from a carbon fibre plate with a PLA spacer and rather it just being 3 stands off I made it into a single part trying to act as a wire guard, well motors get hot and spit out hot air, hot enough to soften PLA which slowing drooped onto the motor can and add a massive amount of friction to it acting as a break. Another thing that happened that the wheels had started to split, due there design they were two parts of HDPE and PU doesn’t bond to PE at all so it had to limit the gyro to stop side-loading it too much

Round 4 End Boss

Only thing to say here is again fork design is bad and I had good luck

Round 5 Loki

Again it forks not ideal but once it gets a hit it the weapon is fine

Round 6

this was a playoff for 2nd I believe and yeah not much to mention i haven’t already

So overall it was a good event and I learned a lot of things that needed fixing

Things to change

1 forks

2 better weapon motor mount/placement

3 Better wheels

4 more space

5 spares

Maxamuslead · 9 February 2024 10:11

Kriegmesser v2

So with all that learned I started on the improvements which required a full rebuild woo,

So step one make it larger easier enough I made it about 6mm wider, and now this isn’t much doing so allowed better routes for both wires and more space for them, meaning I didn’t need to squash it as badly as before, it still wasn’t roomy but a lot better,

Step 2 weapon motor placement, this was easy, I just flipped to the other side, that’s it, meaning it stay tight even during spin down. It also changes the weapon motor yes the Emax was fine mine had lost a phase, likely from the abuse it got with Pesdo break but still needed a new one plus they weren’t rated as well as they once were, so I got myself two xing2 2405 only a tad bigger but lower kv so I needed a new pulley, which was counter bored and tapped by Sam threaded on and nicely held on but a grub screw to. I also designed a solid HDPE mount for the motor so no more melting issues, so that was everything covered.

Step 3 wheels, this was very simple, I asked Euan if he could print me some wheel cores from TPU, and he did, I recast them this time in 60a Vyta flex (I forgot to mention the others were 45a) which I had, they are much harder but again people had told me it was all ok. So wheels sorted

Step 4 Forks now this was the most important part better ground game, I moved away from the single screw idea as it was dumb. I designed two much more standard forks a short set and a longer set, doing this meant I needed to make new bulkheads to allow the extra bolt hole and as I needed to make it larger as well I redesigned the whole thing. A few things I changed is I made the baseplate thicker in place, as the bottom of the machine to the top of the drive holders was 30mm it made sense to change both to be 15mm apiece, this allowed the base front and wheel well guards to be the taller, which made it less likely for things to fall out or get caught, I also made the wheel clamp use 4 bolts rather than 3 as it loaded it more evenly.

As I needed new Forks I also got a proper bar cut at the same time as part of a group order, so I did and it themed correctly, however, it did have a slight issue being fairly soft.

So with everything I could think of done all I had to do was to build it so here are some images of the build process

So while I was waiting for things to arrive or be made I had a little idea, how nice would it be to have a magnetic wedge, as the robot it is styled off had one and the bot it was designed off did too so, it felt right soo after a quick session in CAD, little order of eBay for some 2mm titanium, digging out some 1.2mm grade 5 I got for another thing, and a whole load of stress on my poor little CNC router and me, I had the parts for a little flappy

Isn’t it cute, the downside is that I can’t weld titanium, and it needed bending, luckly for me I knew one person who could weld titanium and another who could bend too off it went on a little tour of the UK firstly to Shane to get welded then to Sam to get bent where it stayed until I collected both it, the pulley and Sam for our trip up to Queensferry for Battle in the Burge 2.

This was it, everything all my hard work had been going to be towards, the event I was planning everything for.

Day 1 how it worked so each robot had three guaranteed fights, which got you points I believe it was 4 for a K/O 3 for a win JD 1 for a loss, and 0 for a no-show.

So my draw and I was again fairly happy,

Round 1 Sprocket Raccoon, Dubbed the Battle of the Mark Smith’s

Basically, the perfect draw for me. it is a Sewer snake-style lifter with a nice wide wedge with little wedglets, as long as I could get under it should work well.

Which it did, and mein gott! Kriegmesser was fast and hit fairly hard and due to the reduced speed of the weapon I could simply pin it to full power (which also helped with spin-up) and just think about driving, it gyros nicely not too much but enough to be useful.

But yes everything worked as I hoped the ground game was much better sliding nicely under and punting it across the arena when I got a good run up breaking the linkages in the lift so when I nibbled it again and flipped it not allowing to self-right so fight 1 done with a clean KO

Round 2 Dolos

Now Dolos, Dolos is a silly thing being 80% fork by length my only hope I saw was either getting around to the sides which isn’t easy as Morgen is a very good driver and the amount of Dolos that wasn’t fork is quite small, then there was the weapon an overhead saw, yeah I don’t like them, my lids are thin and brittle with electronics right below them…

This fight went as well as I thought it would, although there were some interesting results. So yes Dolos Box rushed me but I did hit a fork directly and Kriegmesser did the freakout which puts a lot of stress on the weapon and frames it, so when it landed on the back I thought it was done at that point and then low, and behold the weapon span up and kick itself back onto its wheels, now I didn’t expect this to work, I didn’t think the motor could do it from a stop plus the point it to not get flipped but this was wonderful news but it didn’t help me for the rest of the match, after a bit of trying to get round or to attack the forks from the sides, all the plans went out the windows and I hoped to try and throw myself at the forks to either hit the body or the forks like the first engagements but no luck and down the pit I was put.

Round 3 Uplift

Hi, Euan thanks for the wheels now let me break your robot, please. So i wasn’t that worried about Uplift knew if I hit the frame I could hurt it, in weapon-on-weapon engagements I had the reach and if he did come to hit me on the amour the wedge would hit the weapon before his forks. But still, these are combat robots, anything could happen and it normally does, so I knew still had to drive well and take the openings given

The damned floor stopped my attacks, as the first day worn on the floor was getting damaged and people were caught at the seams which happened to me enough times to be annoying, but after getting over them and brawling a little with Uplift I was a little hit on one of the sides of drive which locked it up which allowed me free movement and to allow bigger runs ups, the first one was blocked by the floor (shakes fist at seams) we went weapon to weapon in a big full engagement hit and bounced Uplift of the roof, those the hits I wanted to see this knocked him over the pit and after little bit of dueling I decided to give the crowd what they wanted and pitted Euan. Now I could have gone in for another hit but this would have risked damage to myself and Euan was also likely to get into the top 16 with me as this would result in both of us going 2-1 with 2 K/O each and not bending the frame beyond repair.

(where I hit, not quite weapon to weapon but close enough)

So like I hinted this got me into the round of 16 which was the following day so we all packed off to the hotel, ate, and were merry until I found out my draw the next day….

Top 16 Bby Sherkt

Well……Darn, this was likely to happen at some point as to win you will need to fight the best bots but it would be nice if it wasn’t round 1 of knockouts.

So Bby Sherkt simply outclassed me, Sam has longer forks, same size weapon that was more exposed, and span faster and he is probably the second-best driver of Verts in the UK so a tall tall order but there was still a chance if it could get him unsettled and control the fight there is a chance as Bby Sherkt cant alway selfright if it lands badly or I a snipe a wheel or punt him into the OOTA zone soo never say never.

(Pre match faceoff)

But this went as well as I hoped, I hit a seam and almost pirouetted a weapon on weapon hit, Sam took this chance and got under and pushed me into the wall to get some engagement I broke away trying to either hit the armour on the side or to one side of the forks but Sam wouldn’t let me and one BIG hit later and I bounced myself into the OOTA zone and out of the competition.

I had some annoying damage after this, the weapon motor pulley the flanged had popped off resulting in the belt coming off but as I had spares this time (see I had learned) I quickly swapped it, but I was a little stunned at how well everything had taken the loads everything looked fine but it was added up as I was to learn later.

So out of the main competition sign up for the side even, a bounty tournament again with Saw Loser, Attitude Adjuster, or Endboss. As the first two have nasty overhead things and I don’t like them I signed up for the Endboss Bounty.

Round 1 Bounties Sweg Demon and Procrastination

This was a much nastier fight than anything so far Sam had brought along Sweg Demon too and it had gone undefeated so far but was asked to enter either Bby Sherkt or Sweg into the top 16 to allow more unique teams to be gent same agreed so tho into the Bounties it went and where I drew it, and there is Procrastination, the hateful Seagul, a monster weapon on wheels, and this is a 3 way so bedlam is likely.

And it went okay with a little driving duel with Sweg, nearly got sandwiched between Sweg and the Seagul that hate, got out of the way they clashed, and Procrastination hit the floor and threw itself into the OOTA zone, simples then Sweg hits me in the back which is less from ideal,

This damaged the carbon fiber but it looked ok, this is something I kinda regret looking back on it, I taped up the rear even though I had a replacement with me and if I had looked over it better I would of notice that the bottom screws that held the bulkheads where starting to pull out, now I can’t be sure of this but from what happened later on I believe this to be the case. But anywho.

Bounties Semi Final Zephyrus

Why it’s our old pal Morgen again but with his face spinner, Zephyrus like Sweg had gone undefeated, and like Sam, Morgen was asked the same thing as was gent about it too, so onto Zephyrus, it is a weird thing, was a little worried it could hit in places i wasn’t planning but due to the plane of the gyro it doesn’t turn quickly and likes to rear up so something to use in my favor

And my old nemesis comes to rear its head again floor seams now with a friend, pit seams.

So this was a short long fight, I won the first and only engagement, snping a wheel and bending the guard into the weapon hope while missing everything else and being missed, not sure how that happened but it did, but then I got stuck on the pit, I found a gap and my fork when down it and i was very worried, i was trying to back out desperately wiggling back and forth while Zephyrus was trying to turn round and get a good hit with the back drop of the Shane (arena Marshal and Ref) was warning me he was going to have to count me out. When I finally got free, it may have only been a second or two but then it felt like an eon, once free I ran away to get some space and planned to go for that other wheel, I made a token attempt and it then the pit came available, well Zephyrus was over it, it can still really hurt me why risk it, so to the pit release and some of worse driving I have ever done. Not only did I miss the pit button three times I got stuck under the wall there too, so things to improve me getting good a driving is top of the list.

After the pit opened Zephyrus’s wheelless side fell and left the other with no traction so quick little dance and that was it.

Bounties Final Sweg Demon

So we meet again but with a twist, at this time Sam was working on BBy Sherkt getting it ready for the main competition final Vs Bby DeadBod and was getting crunched for time so me being a good dude and wanted a fight went and asked Jamie McHarg a friend to both me and Sam who is a extremely experienced driver and the builder of the robot Sweg was based off, Jamie was happy to do this as he had not had the best of events with his bot and Sam was happy to let him do it as he knew how to use it. So onto the match

Very much not a matchup in my favor, drums are good vs Verts as they spin so much faster, and Sweg is a spite-filled tank which maybe been driven by someone who has never driven it but knows how to drive drums and drives them well. So I toyed about if I should swap my forks and picked a set of worn shorter ones as the drum would just eat them up i figured I might as well invite contact this was either gonna be my last or second-to-last fight let’s have some fun.

And boy did we, this was a slugging match and Kriegmesser was getting tired, the drive was dragging on one side, and Jamie driving was all over me, and with lots of little nibbles and two big hits he wore me down to the judges and won, but man it was an enjoyable fight and seeing how well krieg took them hits too. But there was some real damage, as I hinted earlier two of the weapon’s bulk screws had pulled through the base resulting in it dragging and being high-centered a little, and with the very last hit I am sure the backplate snapped if I had replaced it this might not have happened but then I wouldn’t get two lovely little trophies to give to both Sam and Jamie, who is still waiting on theirs, should find it again and post it.

But all in all a very successful event I wish I could have gotten further but losing to eventual second place in Bby Sherkt, fourth place in Dolos, and an undefeated Sweg and the hands of Jamie went to beat Endboss in another amazing fight, is nothing to feel bad about

But there is still much left to report, but as it is 1145pm on a Friday I need sleep so I shall fill in parts 3 and 4 at a later date

Maxamuslead · 10 February 2024 18:08

Kriegmesser v2.5

So on the way down from Queensferry, I talked with Sam about possible Improvements to Kriegmesser and he mentioned one thing I should move the weapon forward, this would make it more exposed, thus making it more likely to engage and not need the opponent to go up the wedge as far, this all made sense and with the fact the baseplate was flexing away from uprights, I needed to make new bulkheads with another fastener in it all made sense to them both. However, commitments meant that I wasn’t going to be able to do a major competition until the back half of the year so it left me plenty of time to refine the design for a possible Battle in the Burge 3.

Only two other things were done, I ordered two redesigned weapon bars which were a harder material (450 this time) and that titanium wedge, now you may have noticed I didn’t use it during BitB2, well that is because it wasn’t ready and it felt a waste to use it when it not ready, I needed to give it an edge and glue on some magnets, so that was another thing to do.

so onto the build.

So the build went rather smoothly but I did one thing, I made a 5mm HDPE back, i did this due to how much pain it is to machine 2.5mm CF and it could have more material for the same mass and I could make more spares for less so it was another no brainer.

And as it turned out there was another Robodojo around the corner so might as well sign up for that and get some data in.

`So onto to Dojo,

Going in was fairly confident, Krieg had done very well at the previous event, better than it had any right to for being a new build. So onto the draw

Round 1 Boom Zoom.

This is an interesting one, Rob Weston is a fairly new face on the scene but had at this point developed and driven Boom Zoom for a while now and had many fights under his belt, he wouldn’t be able to hurt me directly but with the great ground game and good little lifter, it wouldn’t be a cake walk. It would be a nice time to try my magnet wedge, or so you would think…

Well that went poorly and as you would have noted no mini wedge, well turns out it couldn’t drive with it on at Dojo, I had tested it at home on my welding bench and it drove all fine but Dojo Arena is old, it has pits and dents as it it’s for the Featherweights but half of it cordoned off and being now over 15 years old it had a hard life soo off came to the wedge and on went the forks.

At the start, something felt a bit off, it wasnt driving as cleanly as it did at Burge which Rob capitalized on with a lovely suplex but that left me behind him with his rear showing unlike Rob I couldn’t make the best of this opportunity, and allowed him to quickly whip round and go head on, now with the more exposed weapon i was able to get a few little hits on the lifter but he pushed my across the arena lifted me and I either hit the floor or wall and I went wild, but I landed on my wheels and as I did I saw a small yellow thing fly off and hit the wall… that was the link. Well damn. Up until I hadn’t lost a link on the beetleweight scale normally I keep them in a more protected area and due to low mass I hadn’t had one eject but that had now changed.

So things to improve 1 link cover

Round 2 Screaming Banshee

This should be a simple fight, Screaming Banshee is a push bot built by Colin Scott of Team Death.

It is a fabulous robot built from things he has found here there and everywhere, this could be a messy fight as the materials aren’t always ideal, and with that, I went in with confidence expecting a messy fight

What is the phrase pride before a fall? So yeah I lost due to getting stuck on my back, and not getting large run ups but it wasnt driving how I wanted, it felt slow with little traction meaning I couldn’t get the weapon into it nicely, and with the moving the weapon forward we believe the motor now could push it back over but we weren’t sure, it could have been due to the bar and requiring more leverage so I swapped it back to the Disc for the next fight. Now there were a few whiffs of smoke out of the bot at the end with the failed selfright, this didnt effect the motor it didn’t burn it out it was likely just starting to burn off the enamel but the motor still worked fine for the rest of the day.

Round 3 Ice Breaker

Not something I want to be fighting with a robot who isn’t behaving, Ice Breaker is a very nasty vert Spinner built by father and son team Dylan and Adam Stanley, but if I could break up the front wedge as it is only TPU I could have a chance here

Well, that didn’t go as badly as I feared, I was still having major issues with the robot pulling right meaning I couldn’t make the most of the time they were upside down their rear exposed, but yeah this was a very violate fight with a meek sorta ending where Ice breaker sniped the link. So I need to redesign that to protect it and make it sturdier

Round 4 Chucky

The second robot made and run by Dylan and Adam, is a simple front lifter made with the same techniques and build style as their vert and nice wide TPU plow two-wheel drive nice and blue. This should be in my favor as I had already gotten under Ice Breaker but with Kriegmesser being a sod it was anyone’s game

Well, that was short, a culmination of issues I have been having this event right-hand side didn’t want to move, poor exploitation of opportunities by me, and self-righting problems, if I had the link broken loose then it would had the royal flush of issues.

Well that was it for that event, next event I had planned was Battle in the Burge so I had a lot of issues that needed sorting and no other events I could go to (damn cousins’ weddings) but I had plans big plans

Maxamuslead · 19 February 2024 13:37

So it has been a bit so plan for BitB 3

At this time I felt a full rebuild was in order, I needed to change some things and rather than bodging them onto the bot I did them correctly and I had a plan.

So a few things were a given, link door, losing to that a couple of times is a couple times too many and if I was doing that I would need to improve its mounting method, by making one so the drive top clamshell made a easy pick and a little Carbon fibre door and it was done.

The other big change was the attempt to get in an inrunner, this was in the hope to improve two things, self-righting, I got a powerful Leopard 2850 2870kv motor, plenty of speed to allow a good reduction and would mean I could go 250 tip speed in a match if I wanted down side it was 150g so some major weight saving was in order, step one make the uprights 8mm saved some mass there, I also reprofiled the front wedge, it was shaped to protect the lids a bit better and angled to make the body little shorter, I also changed the mounting style to remove any chance of getting stuck on screws when being fed into the weapon, reprofiled the lids too to hide them more and make it less likely to be flexed into.

I also changed the battery to a LiHV which allowed it to get to the 250 limit and allowed better packaging due to being a tad smaller physically and capacity but similar watt hours.

This was all looking very promising and I had nearly got it into weight I was just looking at the last few things and I was going through the CAD checking weights and I was horror-struck…. All the screws and forks were grams…… Oh, oh no, after fixing that it was a good 100g over and I couldn’t get much more, I had lost a mounting bracket for the front, everything had been pocketed, and doing much more would be silly so I ditched the inrunner which hurt, I was proper bummed out by this and took a little break from the CAD, but I had already ordered the motor so i will need to do something with it at some point

Hmmm, future bot maybe?

So with that, I started working on changes, I swapped the motor to an Xing2 2506 1850 in the hope of improving the self-righting , and with that, I also tweaked the motor holder (this will come back to haunt me later), and few other little tweaks it was done but one thing,

I still had that lovely little Ti wedge and I couldn’t let it go to waste but I had different mounting spacing so I had to make goofy slots, I did toy with making a slot in anti horizontal spinner plate but the likes of Sam, Shane Andy told me not to an idiot and get a solid wedge as it would be better and still cheap (got to love group orders)

So with that done Assembly time

With the parts made, I went and did a little building session with Sam as I wanted to get some other bits done for a larger bot and drop off some stuff for him to get sorted too which would save on postage

The gang hanging out

I might be making things too small

And that’s it, everything was more or less ready bar one thing, I swapped the motor again, i know I know but I wanted the extra tip speed and after much searching, I found Farouk VROOM 2505.5 2000kv so in it went and off to Queensferry with Sam again.

So like last time each robot had three guaranteed fights, which got you points i believe it was 4 for a K/O 3 for a win JD 1 for a loss and 0 for a no-show.

Round 1 Bakugo

So first match was against Chris Sowry Drum bot, it was there last year and it worked well so this wasn’t gonna be an easy fight Chris is a good driver, but can get rattled and wasn’t running any wheel guards due to issues that happened last year, so plan was to try and get a good hit in then keep on top of him and get a wheel.

Well, that didn’t go well, this was the first time I had driven in Dave’s arena and I was struggling to keep a good view of my robot, which Chris was able to make the most of and kick my butt, and I landed on my back and was stuck, well damn looks like I still can self right. He also ruined my forks, they were too thin at the bolt holes and just bent at the point… this was about to become a theme.

Round 2 Boom Zoom

Oh no, it’s Rob again, and he kicked my ass last time and im already not in a good mindset, so the plan. Try and damage the forks a little, maybe try for a side hit, and survive? Yeah, im not confident going into this.

This went more or less how I expected, but I did survive, well sort of. The weapon died due to the weapon motor flexing in the mount and jamming against it and burnt out, I also learned that the weapon it drives like trash, but I took Rob the full 2 minutes so i take that

Round 3 Just a Wee Slice

Oh Hello Euan, fancy meeting you here, now this fight I wasn’t looking forward to but I wasn’t that worried, I knew I could take him head-on as well that’s what the armour is designed for but Euan had been ripping people apart with the massive weapon and it could drive annoying well for such a massive weapon, but his frame was cheese, like 2mm hardox, a good hit on the Frame and it would be very upset. So the plan was to invite weapon on weapon and keep on top of him and aim for a frame hit

Well, that was a big bang, but the weapon motor mount came back to grief me, it flexed causing the belt to jump off without a weapon, it just hurt me without much chance to break anything weapon-related, as it was a well-built and designed hub motor with each hit a take risking be being flipped or damaging the weapon bulkheads and with the options of whiteboards i might as well take the L and tap out, I wasn’t getting into top 16 so why do it.

But the robot took the hit very well, with no real damage, popped the belt back on and was ready for the whiteboards

Whiteboards

Tag Team

This was my first whiteboard and I teamed up With Sean McGee of Team Vortex, with his little Vert, our first match was against Yam and Downwards Spiral, Yam is a big scary hub drum and Downwards is a control bot with a drill bit, both are well driven and proven bots soo this wasn’t gonna be an easy match, at the Start me and Sean agreed that he would go for Yam as he had more reach them me leaving me Downwards Spiral.

Well that didn’t go as planned, Sean’s weapon didn’t want to spin up. Yam got a nice hit on him flipping him and leaving me 2 on 1, not the odds I wanted but what I got dealt I tried to turn my front towards Yam. Still, Spiral was not allowing me so a direct side hit which hurt, and my drive stopped working that was worrying as I had never lost drive before but cant do out about that now so I tried to keep my front towards them. Still, the lack of gryo and I couldn’t do much more than that, I got lucky and Yam came right at me and landed on my weapon which bent his frame and knocked something loose and killed it 1 on 0.5 soo still not in my favour and after misplacement of the arm Spiral crowded and pushed me to the pit.

Sean felt bad for his quick elimination but it happens robots are dumb (link to Sean’s Build log Vortex BW - Build Log/Diary

So I took apart everything fearing the worst for the drive it was completely locked up so I broke the robot down and got to the gearbox and low and behold it was simply just the pinion and motor shaft forced forward and jammed. The motor shaft and Pinion are more or less fused with the bearing retainer and tight fit so I had to line it up back up with the motor can Press it back in, tighten and Loctite the Grub screw, doubt it would do much as it didn’t have much time cure plus lots of heat from the air starved motor but hope is a nice thing. But after that I was fixed and ready for the next fight, Yam had taken a nice bit out of the side and bottom but I had gotten off lucky.

Kill Cormoran and the following melee

Well, this was my last match and it was a fun one, 4 spinners with instructions to kill it vs one sit and spinner. So I threw on my Ti wedge as A all my forks had gotten bent and they were bad B it was going end up a big fight as of cause it will and it might as well get used, so my fellow spinners were Arcticfurno, New York Slice and a late entrance of Just a Wee Slice ( apparently you could hear me exclaim this fact on the stream) so yeah we had a task to kill it.

And I did hurt it,

Soo we all span up and all spinners just sat there haha all too nice but as no one moved I sent it first and oh it was nice when it worked, one hit removed the ring and bounced it off the roof then my fellows went in for there hit I waited then went for another run-up and missed and glanced Slice (whoops) and tried to move around and nearly hit New York (whoops again) at this point Cormoran had lost its link but no one had noticed, Arcticfurno hit it got it stuck on them and pulled it back into the top corner and with that I took another shot, it bounces up and I hit it on backspin and ripped off the bottom/top panel and out tumbled the battery and our fun was over (just as Slice pinged of Arcticfurno.

So with that, Cormoran reminded me where moved then it became a 4-way spinner fight and my target was Euan as he beat me and was the biggest spinner I wasn’t that worried about New York as i had put on the ti wedge partly for him partly for some sort of ground game, and Arcticfurno didn’t have that powerful of a weapon and there drive wasnt happy either.

So part two

Well I had a short match i came in hurt Euan then left haha, i was very impressed with how well the wedgelet worked vs Slice and the disc looks to be toothy enough to not be a risk versus horizontal spinners too so I learned a lot in the short exchange but yeah is funky physics made me eject myself from the arena and out of the fight but i got my trophy

But yeah that was my event done, I was disappointed with Krieg’s run It was purely oversights I had made during their design could I have foreseen and sorted

So things to improve

1 ground game, god I need to make some forks that don’t suck but I will also get some more mini wedges as they work well versus horizontal spinners and might be useful vs other things like drums and undercutters

2 improve Weapon motor mounting. This cost me at least 2 fights or at least chances in two fights, this should be a very easy fix as I have a chunk of weight to spend

3 improve maintainable This is a longer time fix but make it easier to work on, I took it apart a few times and some bits were a massive pain due to how it was put together so I need to improve this

4 Fix self-righting I think I have now figured out the problem and more the angle it lands at when on its back and the length of the leave it got to self-right also the Disc works a lotta better as it keeps energy and with how well the toothy disc against Slice the second time I will get two more Shrekt disc (with the blessing of Sam)

5 update the weapon stack, it was noticed towards the end the stackup was getting loser and teeth were starting to strip off the pulley, I can’t print TPU and get done sourced it makes it harder to iterate which I key in my honest opinion for TPU parts

So until next time which will likely be towards April as life gets in the way