| 6/7/03 Dark reign |
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  After running dark Carrot at a couple of events several mods have been made. The batteries have been bulked up to 24v, to stop the relay drop out we were experiencing at 18v, and because of the increased speed at 24v the wheel size has dropped to 7cm. This removes the ability to do Dantomkia spins, but doesn't warm the motors up so much, as the wheels spin. The original ram jammed open and was replaced by a slightly heavier item, putting the whole build a bit overweight. This could be rectified simply, but to be honest I enter so few competitions that it doesn't seem worth it. The whole set up works remarkably well, and has plenty of shove, the flipper has plenty of flip throwing out all of our opponents at the Inspire event, Cutlet, catrip and Bodgeit, only sucmbing to Rampage 2, due to feeble driving on my part and a broken link in the nicad pack. In theory Dark carrot is Adams robot, but it gets shared around quite a bit. |
All of the robots I have built have failed in fights, and usually at the axles/wheels, it's like a running joke. So why should it be any different with this featherweight? Meathammer was designed back in 2005/06 when using 4 drill motors was a bit of a novelty... it was made more novel still by mounting the epicyclic gear cages directly to the chassis, which unfortunately sends all the drive shocks back through the gearbox. The original version ran for a number of fights at modelworld 2006? and even won some, especially the sumo, which favoured its very low profile. I've just rebuilt the gearboxes with all metal gears, and tested it, and it seems it should last for at least one fight… but as I put it in the car after testing, I noted one of the wheels had nearly fallen off. Mark that bolt for Lockthreading! All this got me thinking if I could make something less likely to lose a wheel, break a gearbox etc I have a huge pile of bits and bobs that were destined for heavie...
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