| 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 | ||
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...
Comments