So after the great success and the single event lifespan of mk2 I designed Luchador mk3. Well actually I started designing mk3 long before even running mk2 in an event. Such was my appetite for iteration at the time 
I went into this design with a bunch of goals, including:
- stronger drive,
- the ability to reliably drive mid-lift,
- better geometry for dealing with verts
- outriggers/longer forks to counter lever my lifts and avoid faceplanting
The end result was this:
The chassis construction shifted to full CNC routed - thanks to now having access to such facilities.
The core chassis is held together with barrel nuts and the wheel guards are attached primarily via 6mm aluminium stand offs.
The U-shaped chassis and use of timing belts, let me get some small wheels (35mm diameter) right up front to help with lifting and driving. It also - in combination with my fork set up - made it easier to engage with verts without them getting engagement.
Unfortunately, it couldn’t self right with the double grabber arms, so I quickly revised it back to just the single grabber like on previous iterations.
The internals at this point were made up of 2 diy rotalink 1806 conversions and the same 37mm brushed motor from previous versions. It was a right squeeze internally and my initial build had too much slack on the drive belts so I used one of the stand offs as a temp/bodged belt tensioner:
I ran it in this basic configuration for a number of events - Rapture 2022, subterranean 2022 - then in the run up to Champs 2022 I made some further tweaks…
For a long time I’d been looking for a viable replacement to the Pololu 37D weapon motor - while having tones of torque and being relatively cheap they’re also slow and very heavy. Grab and Lift is a tricky beast and the torque requirements are significantly higher than on regular lifters. I had been eyeing up some of the hefty high torque (but incredibly expensive) 4S compatible servos from the world of RC crawlers for a long time - but was reluctant due to the cost and unproven (in combat) nature of these parts. However after a cheeky bonus at work and learning that Ratfish over in the NHRL was running one of the models I had been eyeing up - I took the plunge and converted Luchador’s weapon over to a SHV800 Servo - running directly off 4S and rated to 93kgcm the thing is a monster.
I did some testing with the SHV800 servo prior to designing the needed changes, and oh boy was I impressed. It’ll easily lift and hold a 1.5kg mass on the end of a 20cm lever no problems. During these initial tests of slamming a 1.5kg weight around - I did have a brief scare when it seemed like I killed it - however on closer inspection the servo had stripped out the teeth in the aluminium servo horn! Discovering that the servo horn was a known weak link was a huge relief - having a cheap disposable point of failure could/should serve as a great way to protect that expensive servo.
When it came to implementing the new servo I decided to drop the gears and instead move to a linkage system similar to my antweight Luchador jnr. And this was the result:
Luchador mk3 had a tough draw at Champs 2022 and was drawn against End boss round 1! - a rematch of the previous year’s rnd 1 murdering of mk1!
Mk3 faired much better - lasting the full length of the match and miraculously even managed a lucky clutch win in the final seconds. Just going the full length of the match felt cathartic and really gave a sense of closure to the evolution of Luchador and it becoming a far more robust and capable machine compared to mk1!
Luchador’s next match was against Fang. I tried out a wedge anti-horizontal config for this but fang was running some serious forks either side of their spinner and I simply didn’t have an answer to that set up combination. I did my best to stay on top of Fang, but eventually they got a hit in that managed to sheer one of my motor shafts. Crab walking and with no way to win the ground game - fang eventually pitted Luchador with ease.
So whats next for Luchador? - I’m making very few changes for Champs 2023. I’m making a batch of fresh wheels and I’m going to be running slightly longer tips on the lifter in the hope that will let me use my weapon a bit more frequently. Thats it really.