Having somewhat stalled (quite literally, in the case of wpn motor) on the beetle version of Recycler, I decided to procrastinate creatively by building something completely different first. Starting point for “Big-H” (working title) is a scaled-up version of the disk from my ant, ‘Gargantua’ (which, with a tip radius of 55mm, had about the biggest disk you’ll ever get to fit in the 4" cube). Disk aside, the rest of the design will be very different from the ant, with belt-drive for the wpn and a shorter/wider body, keeping as much weight as possible over the wheels in the hope that driveability won’t be quite as dismal as on the original.
Anyway, seeking further inspiration & encouragement I started watching/re-watching the footage of various recent beetle events - and it suddenly struck me that nobody seems to be building big horizontal spinners at the mo. There’s lots of very impressive verts, -but with the notable exception of ‘Chilli Daddy’, there seems to be a definite shortage of undercutters or else of Carbide/Tombstone clones. Have I missed a load - or is there a genuine gap in the ecosystem?
I may be overthinking this but it almost looks like one of those evolutionary predator/prey relationships; H-spinners weren’t that effective for a while, so everyone started making verts instead, which in turn led to increased elaboration of features like forks/wedgelets that work great against other verts… but which are just begging to be taken out by a big horizontal…
Check out Battle in the Burgh from a few weeks back - 4 big horizontals spring to mind - Wee Slice of Life, Messy Nessie, New York Slice and Baby Dead Bod
Woah! Pure fluke - but I’m extremely glad I checked the BBB tip-speed calculator before ordering up a new LiPO. I had been planning to use 4S LiHV for this one. As it is, I guess I’ll be sticking to good old-fashioned 4.2v cells.
I think it’s because verts rule the waves across the board really. The energy transfer is better, the flinging is advantageous and the lower diameters generally means you can go harder on RPM while maintaining tip speed.
A good horizontal requires a lot more care and thought from an engineering standpoint I feel. I toy with the idea from time to time as I do feel a well planted horiz can inject a bit of chaos to tournaments.
OK - that did look like a lot of fun, with an impressive diversity of bot designs. Definitely on for a trip up to the Burgh next year (Caledonian Sleeper bookings permitting).
Totally agree about the advantages of vert spinners/drums - especially given that the “equal and opposite reaction” on the weapon is downwards, rather than sideways. That’s particularly true in the pit-heavy ant world, where Recycler has won far more fights by launching opponents out of the arena than by incapacitating them (I imagine also true of Hobgoblet), whereas Gargantua seems to throw itself sideways into a pit after a hit, far more often than it does the opponent.
Big horizontals are quite good for weakening egg-beater bulkheads though…
I would flag that The Chilli Daddy isnt a “big” horizontal by any means. The effective diameter is pretty medium at 165mm and the weapon mass is actually fairly light at just 220g.
Others have mentioned most of these ones already, but some horizontals currently active on the UK scene worth a look at are:
Traditional midcutters:
Bby Deadbod,
Slice of Life,
Angel slice
Night Fury
Big undercutters:
New York Slice,
Mini Spinny
Blood Shot (big wheeler tho)
And of course, its also worth looking at what is going on over the pond at NHRL for KE bots at least:
