Another New Antweight..

[Rapidrory]

Had a great time yesterday, with BullyDozer and (somehow) MiniTinny Cluster coming in 4th/5th. Already got a list of changes and updates planned:

First up, FlailWhale is being dropped from 3 cell to 2 cell. When I got back from the AWS yesterday I realised that the drive is limited to 40% power and I never got past half throttle, and almost every other problem I've had with that bot has stemmed from trying to cram 3 cells into it. With one of the cells removed I should have enough weight to redesign the front scoop and motor mounts. Hoping it wins a few more fights next time.

Lionel is going to be retired I think. I know I've said it before, but this time it just wasn't really pulling it's weight, and has various major design flaws which can't be fixed easily. It also got eaten by Anticyclone (again ), though it will be repaired to working order before retirement.

Lionel's spot in the team is hopefully going to be replaced by a vertical bar spinner I've vaguely been working on over the last few weeks. Could be awesome, could be terrible, but it's something that I've not seen in an ant (at least, not recently) so I thought I'd have a crack at it!

Lots to do; hopefully I can get the various tweaks and mods done before Basingstoke

Lastly, I was happy to see that every event was won by a robot with my ESCs in (bar the Nanos, though the drive servos in the Nano champion were hacked by me I guess :L). Nice bit of confirmation that they are at least as competitive as other ESCs out there

[Remote-Controlled Dave]

More people should be building ants based on the phrase "because I haven't seen one in ants before".

[Rapidrory]

Due to a rather quiet day, work on the vertical bar spinner roared ahead. Potentially a little too fast; it's mostly held together by duct-tape (much of which isn't fitted in the picture):



It's somehow pretty awesome though; drives fairly nicely, selfrights easily, and packs a fair old punch. Just need to swap the ali blade for a steel one when I go home next weekend.

Here's a vid of it running: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrhj9rq ... e=youtu.be

I don't expect it to be overly competitive due to it being fairly fragile, but we'll see how it goes at Basingstoke

[Hogi]

awesome spinner rory!

[Rapidrory]

Decided to swap BullyDozer's 50:1 motors to 30:1s... largely just because I was curious to see if it was drivable at speed, plus it should hopefully make the standard BullyDozer vs Stanley fights a little more interesting; our usual tactics will have to change a little Didn't realise what a grubby job it would be though!:



It's so much faster (obviously) but still seems to have plenty of pushing power, and I haven't driven it out of the arena much more than I usually would, so looking promising :L

Also decided to upgrade the spinner to a single tooth stainless steel 'bar' over the weekend. Will be an interesting test of my machining skills (by machining I mean 'looks about right' *attack with angle grinder*), but if it works it could be very vicious If not I'll just re-make the ali bar I currently have in stainless steel; should still be pretty effective

[daveimi]

Do you find the 30:1's still have the torque to pick up and push like the 50:1's do?

Just building Wabbajack:Black at the minute and looking at some fresh motors lol and can't decide which ratio's people were using. Remote Controlled Dave's robot that's green and sort of splits in half was rapid.

Edit...sorry to be a pain, I wondered if you're still selling the speed controllers with the built in mixing and lemon receiver? I'm not so great with reading and struggled to decipher which model that is lol.

[Rapidrory]

Yeah, still have plenty of pushing power; can push around a roll 400g roll of duct tape lying on it's side, and can throw my scales out of the arena nicely which it struggled to do before. It's still got more power than it has grip which is the important thing

With 30:1s I find you're able to out maneuver other robots more easily at the cost of fine control, so it's largely down to how well you can drive. I'm only upgrading now as I'm more confident that I can control it well enough not to drive out the arena all the time, plus with the larger arena at the AWS it was quite difficult to take out some of the faster bots as they could get away more easily. Will need to do some practice fights against Alex to see if it was an improvement or not... But both Tinny and BullyDozer were running 50:1s in the AWS, and came in around 5th and 6th, so 50:1 work pretty well

And yeah I'm still selling NanoTwo kits, though I'm gonna be outta stock probably until after the 22nd now as I'm waiting for some more parts from China; I'll let you know when I'm back in stock though..

[daveimi]

Ok no problem will give you a shout in a few weeks.

[Rapidrory]

Shiny new single tooth stainless steel 'bar' all fitted and balanced... this thing's terrifying

[Rapidrory]

Well, what can I say? Great event to finish off a great first year of Robot Wars; It's almost exactly a year now since I started, and I have since amassed 14 Robots, 3 Transmitters, and built over 60 ESCs. I've learn an awful lot about robotics, motor control, battery chemistries, material properties, 3D printing, remote control systems, embedded programming, etc. etc., all of which allowing me to build increasingly better robots for increasingly less money. It's all been a huge amount of fun and I've met many great people; I look forward to many years to come



(on a side note, for those of you wondering where the name Why Wait? comes from, this video should explain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR2iPD5V2vg )