Sussex Robot Rumble

20/4/02 Sussex Robot Rumble

This was an Excellent day out. 2 shows to a thousand excited children. We had bouts of 4 in a ring, and suprisingly drew both of ours with Gooroo. The best fun was to be had later in the grand melee though... 10 robots in a ring the size of a postage stamp!

And we survived, only loosing our aerial! In fact only Axe Awe ceased to function by the end, and lay upside down in the ring. I really must get round to fitting our big regulator! We now have our prototype control board built by the Dominator 2 boys, and it's fitted and working well. Report ASAP! These shots show the afternoons grand finale... Clearest from the second shot, thats Killer Carrot 2, Tornado, Bulldog Breed, Dantomkia, Axe Awe, Hells Teeth, Gooroo, and Humphrey, not forgetting Comengetorix and Bigger Brother... Phew what a ring full.

We took full power axe blows from Axe Awe, which dented our 6mm ally plate armour, but didn't go through! Just need to make sure were underweight and We have a winner!

Comments

Fake Plastic Trees...

So, for a bit of light relief I bought a few of Justin's LED Christmas tree kits. I think the original idea was to have a relatively easy kit to put together on Saturday workshops in the run up to Christmas, but they seem to have become quite popular with all manner of folk. Anyway, the kit is based around a couple of well made pcbs, a bag full of components, and the simple instruction that +ve is UP. It took about 10 mins to solder all the bits together, and with a huge amount of satisfaction over the end result. Justin and his Christmas tree kits can be found here: http://cyber-lane.com/ The Build Brighton Christmas workshops will be running each Saturday from 30th November to 21st December from 10am – 2pm. Entrance is completely free. Kits are priced between £2 and £5. #BuildBrighton can be found here: http://www.buildbrighton.com/blog/

The weakness of machines

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...

Jansen Arduino

I bought two Gakken walker kits from ebay last Christmas, and finally got round to doing something with them. I disconnected the propellors, and the reduction gears and fixed the couplings to a couple of rotation hacked servos. I laser cut some servo mounts and hung them on some brass tubing to join the two sets together.

killercarrot

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