New Flippant

[peterwaller]

Have had a bit of a rethink on the flipper plate.
Instead of having it mounted on the flipper arms I decided to have it as fixed slopeing armour and flip with just the arms.



The armour is a very hard 1.5mm aluminium alloy which I had to soften locally with heat to get it to bend without cracking.
I still need to shed a couple of grams to get it under weight.

[haz]

your putting armour on your robots now peter?

[peterwaller]

I like armour I just don't have a lot of spare weight normally once I have put in a weapon.

[Craig_Anto3]

whats a weapon?

[Remote-Controlled Dave]

Does it self right Peter? I bet its cool when it does!

[peterwaller]

It did self right before I added the armour as inverted it balanced on it top and the flipper had to travel about half way before it hit the arena which gave a good flip.
With the armour the inverted robot now lays on the angled armour face and the flip is so great it flips back inverted.
To overcome this I have placed a 2mm screw high on the front.
This keeps the inverted robot balanced on its top and has the added advantage of stopping robots driving over you.
Here is a video of the self right flip now, a flip of the tracked robot and an indication of how small the self flipping tendancy is with some better springs I got at the London Model Engineering Exhibition today at AllyPally.
http://youtu.be/N8TSAAJJMk4

[Remote-Controlled Dave]

Marvellous, Peter. Great to see a new way of doing things working so well.

[peterwaller]

Right I think it is finally finished.
The new springs are much smaller and give about 900 gms total on the lifter tips.

I have added some rubber to the top of the flippers to get more grip on the other robot and the front now has a thin plastic scoop edge to aid getting under the opposition.

I have added some thin polycarb armour down both sides to protect the electronics and battery and the all up weight is now 150.7 gms.


The one thing I havent decided on is the exact flipper operation.
At the moment the two flippers are completely independent mechanically but are fire simultaneously by the software.
It is possible by using the 4th channel to fire tham independntly so you flip them to one side or the other.
This would be achived as follows with the rudder channel centred flip both but with the rudder channel left or right flip left or right but in the heat of battle it could get complex.

[earthwormjim]

That is really nicely done Peter,very well developed idea.
Look forward to running away from it some time soon!
(I think you are right about not over complicating things,but it would be a good feature in case of failiure in one of the mechanisms.)

[razerdave]

Very nice work Pete . Whats the blue stuff on the arms? And is it me, or the pic, or are your motors wonky :p