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