killercarrot

Here's a photo of K3, the undocumented and underappreciated replacement for Killercarrot2. The 25mmx3mm box chassis was designed around a 100x125 16bar ram, T type axles, a pair of CIM2 motors balanced at 36v, and Pro 120 speed controllers. The regulator was a very nice Kenmac high flow unit, and all the plumbing was custom built in the Hydraquip workshops at Crawley. The body is armoured at the front by heat treated steel, and the end of the flipper plate is cut from a laminated steel plough body.

Well, looks like Simon didn't want to paint over the carrot on K3's flipper arm, so we may have a new Northern outpost for Team Dangerous Vegetables and the Killercarrot Crew. Simon will be running K3 with the T type axles powered by a pair of Littons at 24v from the standard Hawker SBS 15's and Curtis speedies. There's a new 160x100 10 bar ram to fill the hole left when I broke the 16 bar jobbie.. should make a nice little run around. I reckon it'll need a gyro as the 16" wheels made it a bit flighty when I ran it, but that could be my poor driving skills.

Well it's been about 2 years since I updated the killer carrot website, and whilst I did try to run a blog from it, it never quite worked. I've just sold the chassis of K3 to Simon of team Mongrel, so the decks are clear to revitalise old KC2, and get it ready for a bit of a laugh in 2006. I've also made a start of a new featherwight chassis, a rammer, 4 drill motors, with the gear cages welded direct to the chassis.

24-12-03 Well we've been on air now, so there's no harm in a little write up. We were in heat F, against a variety of nasty machines, including fluffy, and Xterminator. I'll leave the in depth blow by blow write ups to other sites, as it doesn't really interst me that much. Strange that, hours of work, and I don't really care too much about the telly side of things, though it was a plus for the boys. I was impressed by the power of exterminator. We've never had much luck with spinners, they do lots of damage, but then again we usually drive away from it. In fact we took more damage from Scorpion in the qualifiers, but that's another story. Anyway, Richard came and gave a hand and after a 3 hour blast everything was back to the way it should be on carrot. It was drivable straight out of the xterminator fight, only a Rx wire coming loose The next event was at Worthing and I took Dom and Adam, we won our first fight outright, and of course had a good day out....

27-8-03...can't tell you I can't go into any details about what happened at this years RW7, suffice to say we had a good time, the boys enjoyed themselves, and I was pleased to finally see the new House Robot I drew for Chris Reynolds alive and punching... well shuffling amusingly. Lots of help from everyone as always, special thanks this year to Dominic of Constrictor, Team UKRobotics, who found us a couple of connectors just the right size, George Francis for taking the trouble to let me test some bits and bobs, Alan Gribble for ransacking Dereks stores ... etc etc. This is what the boys spent a lot of their time doing instead of helping their poor old dad fix the robot... signing autographs, talking about themselves... and playing on Lee's PS2 (thankyou for entertaining the children this year team roobarb) And below we have some of the development sketches for the new house robot. [UPDATE - I designed the robot that was to become Cassius Chrome for Chris Reynold...

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 s...

19/8/03... ready to go RW7 qualifiers... Well here we go again. KC has been more or less "finished" for a while now. Tests prove it self rights, there's plenty of gas to go round, and it drives much better than before. The Hawkers really give the old fella a bit of zip, wheelspin and wheelies even. Unfortunately, there's no room for any armour, just a bit of cheesey ali plate... I'm sure we'll be Mullered, but to be quite honest it doesn't matter, it's only cost the steel for the chassis this year, a pair of Rogers wheels and a couple of cans of orange glow, all else is salvaged from various other builds. I guess the build cost this time is around £60. plus £90 for the second hand Hawkers .Of course I don't want to get all the internals smashed up, but they have all served their purposes for 3 years now

8/7/03 Carrot Cubed - The "quick" chassis rebuild of KC2 We worked KC2 hard at Modelworld 2003, and after about 6 fights, there were signs of the real damge we'd taken from Disco and Mr Psyches. the chassis had hairline cracks, as well as whole members bent beyond repair, so we decide it was time for another robot. I already had a new ram, care of STORM, a 50x135, that I intended to run at full pressure. I had new gearboxes and a pair of CIM2 motors,I had a set of Hawker SBS15 batteries, I even had a cellar full of new ERW steel for the chassis, and money set aside for a set of Robots-R-us Speed controllers.... but as with all things Robot wars it doesn't go tthat smoothly. I came to scrap the chassis on KC2, and looked at the components and thought it was probably worth spending a "couple of days", rebuilding the chassis, so we had a fun live event machine. This was fuelled by Noel Poncelets flipper spreadsheet, which occupied hours of my time, fiddling ...

6/7/03 Dark reign 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.

RW6 Fight report Well after we got back from Qualifiers we went straight to a school fete. and gave a tyre flipping demo, drove around a bit and generally entertained the crowd. The fete was for new Team members Richard and Ben Killners school, and by coincidence was also the school that Guy of Barberous's sister teaches at. Barberous were supposed to show, but didn't becuase they were repairing damage from the qualifiers. As we unloaded from the fete, Neil charlwood rang to say we had a discretionary place, Adam was delighted. We were placed in heat L, a tough one with 2 very tough robots, Bigger Brother and Behomoth. Our first fight was against Bigger Bro, Riptillion and Major Tom. Iwas pleased with the way carrot worked, we managed a running flip that rolled Major Tom around the arena, and evn had Bigger bro over and pinned at one point, but I felt bad about pinning them as they had put us back on our feet so to speak. We experienced problems when we were inverted, as th...

16/8/02- Birth of a monster. Here he is, built in a week, though still in need of "refining", much of the build is "Duck taped" in place so I can do some test runs, but The basics are in place. 12kg's of brutality. Power comes from 2 power devil 18v cordless drill motord that I bought in 1999 to build our first robot wars entry... back before I realised they weren't big enough. The speed controllers are from KC1, a pair of ncc 35 24's, again purchase in 1999 before I realised they weren't big enough. Having said that the 35's have powered KC1, and 2 , so they work ok. Wheels are screwed onto the drill gearbox outlet and R clipped in place. The flipper is a Festo 40x100, that was in KC1, but broke, when we smashed the lifting arm. It should have a tip lift of 128kg at 10bar, which results in the ability to lift about 20kgs at the tip through a height of 60cm. The system is powered by illegal sodastream technology that was in KC1, with s...

RW Qualifiers 2002 - Life's hard when your 9. We went to the RW qualifiers and what happened? We lost to a team that did no damage to us whatsoever. The man said we might get a discretionary place, but I don't think so somehow. We got there and had to wait for ages in queue, while while we waited for all the other cars to unload. Then we got weighed. We registered and did our transmitter check and sat down and waited. We didn't do much apart from reading books and going to the loo and eating. Then we found we'd been shifted so we had to wait another load of hours. Then when we were about to go on we had to go in with another bunch of robots, Night raider and Derek2, Derek 2 won, and it's was bloomin unfair too!

RW Qualifiers 2002 - Retraction Yes! Yes! And Yes! Again!   You know in my previous piece I said we might get a discetionary place? Well we have! We're all happy, but Dom (see "meet the team") was a bit grumpy at first because he wasn't going. But now we're all happy and :-)) Well We had some good fights, I can't say much more than that, but the main thing was ,it was fair. We had a laugh and it was fun... I can't say much more than that for now!

5-7-02 All over Well, that's RW over for another year. I feel relieved, but I can imagine how dissapointing the process must be if you have a spinner or something that can only be used at RW. Anyway, we drove up to Leicester to stay at my Sisters on Wednesday night, (thanks Lisa), and then strolled up the remaining 27 miles after a leisurely breakfast and laze about. the place is a bit of a warren, and very poorly signed inside, it's very much guess the route in... aha a queue of cars in an abandoned airforce base... must be Robot Wars. In fact we pulled up behind Si, Guy and Chris, fellow stout Southerners of team Barberous. We then spent half an hour walking up and down a line of robots peeking at this and that. Once we had a space for unloading, there was the usual rush to get everything out, so we could stand around for hours... bizarre. The scales were weighing under by some 3 kg I reckon... then inside, Photo, Tx check with Val, Drop of a cylinder with fireman Pet...

29-6-02-The Final Countdown.... Ok, it's all done, bar the last minute fiddles that we always only notice need fiddling with in the minutes before a fight. KC2 evo, is all there, and has a fighting weight of 97kg if the bathroom scales are to be believed, and on Monday, I'll be putting the robot in the calf weigher down the farm to check. The revised layout reminds me of Thermidor, and were both orange, except he's got a good flipper. This is definately the last revision to KillerCarrot, and once we've been battered at the qualifiers, and limped through this years technogames, it's going to be time for a new start. Anyway, spec stays much the same, 2 Littons @24volts through 16.75:1 gearboxes, giving about 7mph, at the 10" Kart rears. Power comes from a pair of 4QD NCC70 speedies mixed in the new Quazar-design prototype interface board, weapon is an SMC 100x125 ram running at 10bar through an O2 cutting regulator and a pair of 3 port solenoids, quick exh...

21-6-02- Something Nasty in the woodshed Well here's the results of our grinder fest... we removed about 15kgs of unsightly fat,(steel and lexan), and then welded back in about 3kgs of extra bracing, wheelie bars and support struts. this should mean that the flipper now has something to flip against instead of merely lifting the front end. You can also see the delightful conditions which I usually work in... ie a 4 ft wide leanto. The snails are very fond of this carrot! Here's the revised face of KC2, the flipper is basically U and Box section 2.5 mm steel that I blagged from some engine stands that were being lobbed from the college workshops. The surface is covered in a dual layer of 3mm lexan, which won't stop the axes, but does give a nice shiney canvas for my artistry. The new interface has been relocated. Pete Hollaway phoned to say he'd looked at the site and noticed that I had the interface in a box with the speed controllers. Apparently this makes a nice...

26-5-02  The Angle Grinder diet Well here we are the bare frame of KC2 from the front, or what was the front. Weight had to be shed in abundance, and sadly I had to loose the big spike (that fared so well, putting holes in Lightning, Mulsanne Monster, Panic attack, and so many others). I should have simply ditched the chequer plate ally armour, but I can't afford to keep replacing axed motors and speed controllers, so the armour stays and I loose a weapon. Next step is to get out the plasma cutter and slice off any other unnecessary bits, and grind excess stuff away. A couple of members need to welded into the front and the frame is going to have all the rust wire brushed off, and a coat of rust convertor, then a thin coat of hammerite. I also need to fix up a couple of outriggers to provide a leverage point for the flipper. So much work, so little time. I'm picking up the steel tommorow lunchtime, castor wheels arriving from screwfix tommorow (and a nice new trolley t...

20-5-02 Rebuild for the Wars This is the new Speed control set up. The entire system is now housed in these die cast boxes, and links to the real world via 3 anderson connectors , and 2 RC leads to the Rx. The new interface sits centrally in the case mounted on rubber diablo mounts to damp out vibration. The 4QD speed controllers are mounted directly to the lids with brass screws and heat sink compound. I have plans to add a fan/ filter set up, but to quite honest the ncc70's don't get hot enough. (Need bigger controllers, or more volts at the very least) The same connectors that ran to the DCI, now connect the speedies to the new board, one for the left motor, one for the right. The pink and black wire take power directly from the battery, (so no need for Rx batteries), and convert it to a useable Rx voltage. The other two connectors run to the Rx. There are 5 input connectors, 2 drive channels and 3 weapons. And this is what that tiny 4"x4" board replac...