So yesterday I finally worked up the stupidity to try soldering some wires together. A combination of inexperience and some weird coating on one wire from last time led to me melting 2 motor-ESC connectors, blackening (charring?) a wire and giving my thumb (or was it my pinkie? It was on the right hand) a boo boo! After 7 months in intensive care recovering, I played whack-a-wire until it drove straight. I screwed on a switch and it’s pretty much at combat readiness!
You’ll also need a locking bar for your weapon that stops it rotating
“Craig”
Uh oh-
You should not use anything that could slip off - like a clamp
“Also Craig”
Huh. Oops. I guess it’s time to use that jet engine powered drill to blast a hole in the front armour! Since everything else is finished, you can rest easy that I’d bestow a photo of TSA upon you if I had one.
Guess who’s finished! After Ollie made his first contribution to the forum by reminding me about locking bars, I found a pin and drilled a hole through the top. But (there’s always a but) the motors are yet again wired up wrong! I’ll have to go poking around again to see what needs switching. I’ll admit, it isn’t the best locking bar, it’s just a needle with a red ziptie, but it should work long enough to drop it on the floor, and will allow for a half rotation at worst.
Edit: Consider the wires poked! During testing, it delivered some mean scratches and yeets to the testing targets, launching one out the test arena (Don’t worry, the arena itself may not have walls but I was behind a thick glass panel) and taking a chunk out the other!
ORCS 9 is approaching, and I’ve pretty much finished work. I’ve added a bigger pin for the locking bar, and ironed out all the wrinkles. It turns out that although it can barely drive straight on plastic, it’s fine on wood like I think their arena is. I still need to make a cradle and pay them on Rampage, but I’ll slap together some lego and ask my dad for help with what all the big scary numbers mean.
ORCS 9 has approachinged, and it went not horribly. Granted, I went 0-5, but I came 5th in the rumble (maybe 4th if one of the others was immobile but not pitted). I took a few scrapes from a nasty horizontal and drum (or was it a vert and drum?), but they only did small dents, except for one hit that made a medium-ish dent. The other 3 were all flippers. Pretty good considering it’s a PLA brick. Upgrades have already commenced, with the purchase of a new spinner. I used it in the rumble and it either made a bigol gash in the winner (maybe 2nd place) or the far more impressive bigol hole that exposed the battery charging cable. The battery itself was safely on the other side of the robot. I was also the last spinner in that rumble.
Current issues are the poor traction and the fact that vibrations caused the weapon bolts to come loose. 2 of them came off in the rumble. So long as I tighten them after each spin up, my ventral stickers ought to be fine.
Protip: Add BBB/Monsoon robotics/Fingertech/whatever branded stickers to give yourself the psychological edge of pretending you’re being sponsored!
So yeah the seal went bang. At least it was an excuse for some new parts… which made it massively overweight. Now it’s the same as it left ORCS but with resoldered motors, little screws to hold the weapon off the floor and a switch that won’t stay in (screws are too big for screw holes, will deal with later). It also only drives one way, but I’ve worked on it for 2 hours or so and my school had nothing to eat in the cafeteria for lunch so I’m not doing anything until the day. With the size of the weapon so long as it spins and point towards the opponent (or even exactly opposite to it) something should happen.
ORCS 10 went better than the 9th. First up was Ermini, and the Netherlandian contraption ripped the face off the seal. It nearly got through to the wires, but came just short. After using electrical tape to cover up all the fleshy bits hanging off the front, Rotato came next and got pitted after a big weapon-on-weapon hit. Then came Polyphemus, who was suffering from drive issues. At this point the weapon motor desoldered, leading to a long pushing match I lost on the judges. After that came Bone Bender (or was it blender?). I poked some holes in the bottom of the wedge, but got flung into the pit before long. Finally came Marie Antoinette, another Dutch-o-tron which won ORCS 9 and did so again at ORCS 10, despite being 80g. I don’t need to tell you that Guido but even lower to the ground, bigger forks, practically spinnerproof and easy as well as cheap to repair might be a tough fight. I’m fairly sure I made it 13 seconds. I did do decently in the boss fight and rumble. All those university degrees have gotten to the Oxford roboteers heads; they call rumbles “gladiators“. Weird!
I’m going to have to make a new chassis or two and improve the flippery skids that are currently 2 loose screws before next time, but overall a good event and a decent first win.
Work has begun on a new version of The Seal Avenger, being a remix of the older one that I stole (downloaded) from someone else. It should offer interchangeable sides and front wedge. The ability to print these separably means aside from on test I’m printing now (planned to be replaceable parts), these parts can be made not of PLA (to keep the chassis rigid and not floppy) but instead magical TPU from Santa. This should prevent degloving in the facial regions (not being banned from gloving, but the removal of the skin from hands), and allow for better interchangeability. Instead of multiple spare chassis, only one is needed but with more wedges for the dangerous world of full combat.
The new design has just begun printing. If Vlad, Eli or Phoenix need someone to tighten some bolts at Capital Punishment, I’m hoping to come along and watch. Until then, I’ll get back to scheming.
All systems are online for ORCS 11. I’ve run the numbers and so long as you only bring 1 robot (6 people including me), there’s a 19/49 chance you fight a spinner, or 2/5 fights.
But yes the new upgrades are very snazzy. Weirdly the robot seems to drive better with the weapon spun up than with it off. If it means I can acquire the fabled “zoomies“ it should be fine. Other than that, I predict at least 1 win this event, and that I’ll get around to adding a kill count to TSA.
ORCS 11 happened. I showed up 13g overweight, but after taking off the side panels and borrowing a smaller battery I was 3 over and the event organiser let it slide. First came up Grey Fox 2. After some minor ascetic changes the seal was sunk!
Ahooa was another loss after a short pushing match. Vanquish was vanquished after punching out part of my TPU wedge, chassis and weapon mount. I got pretty lucky with it getting launched over the side wall, and it not having enough reach to hit the weapon motor. The Ultimate Ninja was a robot I went in inverted for in hopes of hitting it’s weapon side-on. In the end I got whacked into a pit. Anticyclone was a swift victory, as I punched a few holes in the side and ripped off one of the two wires that made up it’s roll cage before pitting it.
Overall, TSA stands at 3:12, or a 1/5 chance of victory
Next time I’ll reduce the infill of the main chassis to save on weight, and look into buying 180mah batteries and a lighter weapon bar. Without these he’s blind (too heavy for googly eyes) and morbidly obese!
