| 23-8-03... we're in... | |||
| Ok we made it. A horrifically long wait to get in, and then the usual hours of sitting around. We weighed in at 97.7 kg so I added a couple of lexan flaps over the tyres, and some bendy plating in front to stop us getting stuck by something spikey. Our fight was against scorpion, our chums from Nutley postoffice, Sir Chromalot, and a machine from some new chaps, which sadly got trashed by scorpions spinner. We had trouble with the pressure from the reg, and this stressed the flipper a bit, but it coped ok... though gave up a bit later into the fight. The Hawkers really gave us some zip, and we flew around the arena, not bad for a cellar floor special, the ncc 70's were nore than enough, though we could have used a bit more grunt for shoving the others. we drove out fine, which I consider a success, and were joint winners with scorpion, and through to Round F 10.30 am on Tuesday 26th... I nipped to work today and after hours of poncing about trying to straighten the bends in the flipper arm, Richard came in with Ben and told me to stop pratting about, and cut out the rot, and weld in some fresh metal, which I did... |  | ||
 | The new flipper has bracing in an "L" section, as I thought that might cope with the sideways stress from spinners better. If we have any weight left at weigh in (and I think we might have lost a kilo on the flipper), I'm going to experiment with bolting kart tyre to the edges to slow the impact force. I still have to bolt on the face, though I'm tempted to spray over it and give the beastie a long evil carroty nose...Not that that has any effect on anything. | ||
 | Last pic is a shot of the steel that scorpion cut through, thats a piece of 2mm steel at the front, edged with 1.5mm ERW inside another bit of 1.5mm ERW. Ouch! However we took it and survived. More later | ||
For two years in a row I've missed out joining in with Ian Watts robot bash at the Uni. So I'm making sure I've got something running before it swings around again. So I welded a couple of new gearbox cages into the 4 wheel push bot, and dug out a set of Electronize speed controllers. I fitted the titanium plate that has been cluttering the basement for a decade and have been doing some testing with a set of LiON batteries that used to belong to a cordless strimmer, which fell apart from overuse. I've run it up and the battery doesn't really have enough life to power 4 motors, but is useful for testing. I've stuck some old NiMH units on a charge cycle to see if they have enough life for a bout or two. The only things I actually need to "buy" are a 2.4GHz radio set, as the old 40MHz stuff is against the rules these days, so I've ordered a Hobby King 4 channel set for £20 off ebay. Strangely yesterday Mentorn emailed a bunch of robot folk to
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