First event out for Overclocked at Summer Showdown this past weekend. As always, the BBB crew put on a great event.
In the days before the event, I was focused on getting all the configs into weight. This meant pocketing walls where possible, reducing the wall count on the TPU prints, and event taking an angle grinder to the weapon gearbox!
First up is the standard config:
Nothing special here. My usual fare of HDPE/TPU armour and re-using the forks and axe head from PMXL.
The weight savings let me just about squeeze the anti-drum config in weight, dead on 2kg.
The anti-hammersaw config sadly had to ditch the planned shuffle pod top armour as well as the side armour to get it in weight.
The anti-horizontal armour was luckily in weight with the planned 10 walls however.
I feel the first event for a new bot is always a case of data gathering more than seriously attempting to win, especially with something like Overclocked where I had a lot of questions about how it would actually hold up in combat. It ended up going 1:2, with all fights going to a judges decision (though the seond was due to a double K.O.!), and the battery did not drain as much as I thought it would after my tests at home, so that was encouraging!
Fight photos courtesy of Ellie Harrington.
Fight 1 was against the 4WD eggbeater of Bulbaroar and the 2WD vert Dynamite. Despite my tests at home pointing to no real power increase in the weapon, it did manage to punch some holes through the 3mm HDPE lids of dynamite! It also started mulching the 14mm wide MOD3 HDPE gears on the axe, something that PMXL doesn’t do! I did lose one side of drive in this fight though, a hit from one of the others dislodged the bearings in the drive pod bulkhead, causing the gears to come out of alignment and jam. Luckily, none of the electronics were damaged, so it was just a matter of putting the drive pod back together.
Fight 2 was against Jackhammer, a hammersaw. We both went very aggressive, going head on and swinging at each other. Eventually, we managed a weapon-on-weapon hit with inverted both of us. I managed to self-right but another swing seemed to kill the bot while Jackhammer was stranded on its back, leading to a double K.O. Not really sure why Overclocked stopped, as re-inserting the link seemed to resolve the issue.
Fight 3 was against Ugly Duckling, a 2WD lifter all the way from the US. I lost one side of drive in this fight again, though this time it was because the ESC blew a chip. This makes 2 ESCs this bot has killed, both on the left where the weapon motor sits. I suspect that the recommended 20A for the drive motors is being exceeded, and I’m overtaxing the 25A BBB ESCs. The axe did get some good hits in though.
I also entered a whiteboard fight, again against Ugly Ducklign and a new Lilith. However, the same connection issue from fight 2 appeared again, so I was not too active in this fight.
Generally, I managed to get a lot of data on how to improve Overclocked. I need to fix the issue of the bearings popping out - adding some flanges to the spacer prints might help with that. To solve the weapon gears mulching themselves, I’m going to try stacking 3mm aluminium gear profiles and relying on the ratchet clutch to save the motor. For the ESCs, I’ve ordered a couple of the Repeat Dual AM32s, which are 2 channel 35A ESCs, which should hopefully not blow up! For the connection problems, I’m not entirely sure what causes them, but I think it’s occurring when the weapon fires. I’ll add a capacitor over the power lines and see if that helps.
Thanks to the BBB crew for hosting, a good day out and worth the long trip!