killercarrot

This is our sumo bot which runs 2 wheel drive, but is a 4 wheeled bot. The spare corners just have a simple axle running through the wheel .. in this case to stay under 3 kg for sumo rules it's just a bit of 12 mm nylon pneumatic tubing

well it's taken a long time.. but I've finally got round to fixing things. I dallied briefly with the old heavyweight carrot, and ran it in the FRA championship, and remembered why I enjoyed playing with feathers so much. They are small and easy to carry, don't hurt your back or your wallet so much. So my big problem was getting the time to visit Plumpton, my old college to machine up some new bushes.. so I asked the FRA forum, and Trev Wright came up trumps, and has machined me some lovely little bushes. In the mean time, I've looked at the power problem and procured some slightly meatier batteries Sayno RC2400, 24v... and squeezed a set of curtis 70 amp controllers into the frame.. which to be honest is a lot less messy than the old electronise with all the relay cabling. So I have to fit the bushes now and reassemble the drive trains, and then go for a bit of a test.

The gearbox repairs went ok, and even with desperate amounts of slack in the system, Metahammer ran ok.. well sort of.. The new batteries mad ea big difference, giving us plenty of zip, and powering along enough to push scorpion jnr and pillow torque.. though they faded after a few minutes and that was that.. I need to add another pack to bump up the Ah rating, I could work out what the motors are using but can't be bothered at the minute. AN investment in another battery, and 4 bearing blocks is called for.. not sure when the next outing will be.

Here's Meathammer with its scoop sitting on the bench charging quietly before some "football" and here we are in the air after being shunted by KR3. We failed the assualt course miserably, too much slide and spin.. cutting in the dual rate helped.. but too late. Did better on the sumo table, won the first 3 bouts, but when we were up again against scorpion we were out shoved. Playing football has broken a set of plastic gears in one of the gearboxes, which I can fix... but one of the pinions has come loose too. not sure If I can fix that in situ. The driveshafts are desperatly in need of more support, and I think I'll have to add some bearing blocks.

Just put the finishing touches to Meathammer The whole setup works quite well.. I'm off to modelworld to run it through it's paces a couple of times. The weak bits look to be the drive shafts, which I'd like to bulk up to at least 20mm and have some better bearnings for. The battery packs are also a bit weedy, but we'll see how they last, and may invest in a few high output packs. Of course it could also really do with running the 4QD 35's or 60's instead of the electronise speedies.. but we'll see how it performs and make amends. Since I took this phot I've added a hinged scoop, so we can get under other feathers... it's a popular design in the states, should work over here. I only need to wire in an LED to show power and then we are ok to roll.

The electronise speedos fit quite nicely, and there's plenty of room for the 4QD's if I choose to swap over. I've run it up at 12v and 24v, and it sounds a helluva lot better at 24v. The motors are cheap 12v jobbies, so overvolting them to 24v may get them warm. The other decision is what batteries to run them on. I have a couple of 12v NiCad packs i made about 3 years ago... but they are only around 1400mAh. I am tempted to buy a couple of 8.4v sub C 1900mAh battery packs from technobots, and see how it performs at about 16v. It's just a cse of how h=long the packs last really. There's enough room in there for 4 packs, so that would be 3800mAh. The big bot used to get by on 15Ah, so just 12kg shoukld be ok on 3Ah? We'll see. I've drilled the hubs, and just need to weld them up now.

Ok I went the easy route and trimmed down the plastic housings and araldited them to the cages. the motors mount up ok, and I've given each of them a test run and they all seem to run smoothly. The next step is to wire in the speed controllers. I have the electronise to hand for starters, as I only need to stick a couple of crimp fit connectors onto the wire to get things happening. Then I need to make the wheel hubs.. Might get some of it done this week, but I really am in no rush at all.

This is the new chassis for our next featherweight project. It's 50x25 2mm ERW . The lumps on the inside are the gearbox cages from 4 cordless drill motors, there's a copper bush through the chassis and the shaft is circlipped on the wheel side. If I can be bothered I'll gas weld some tiny nuts to the cages to mount the motors.. if not then I'll araldite the cut down plastic cases. I have 4x12v motors to run this, and it's a bit of a toss up whether I run them at 24v using a pair of NCC 35 24v's OR the simpler, but maybe less brutal electronise option. I like the idea of the electronise, as we could then run trhe whole thing at say 16v, whilst still keeping all the components inside the central box... all under 80mm high. However the ncc's would certainly make the wheels squeal better, and I have some 100mm wheel options that would make it caper about at an alarming rate. The whole idea of this build is to be as simple and robust as can be.. if a motor burns...

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!