Team Fission Combat Robotics

 We took all three of our robots to York for our second RoboDojo event.  Exposure Exposure's first fight was against Percussive Maintenance XL. As the fight started, I got a good hit and flipped him over, however the belt once again snapped. This left me to be bullied around the arena for the rest of the match and the judges decision obviously went to PMXL. We rejoined the belt for hopefully the last time, and waited for the second fight. The second fight was a rematch against Little Grey Fergie. The fight started with me getting a good hit, then another, the another! The belt stayed on for the entire fight! I did have a bit of a scare when one of my wheel guard screws came loose and high-centred me, but I just managed to wiggle free and give a few more big hits before my opponent tapped out. The third fight was another rematch against Chucky, and like last time, I was bullied around the arena and pitted. However I was very happy that the robot managed to self right on the weapon,

 Here is the full event video, I will write the timestamps for each fight. BBB x LHG Summer Showdown 2024- All Fights - Bristol Bot Builders Beetleweight Combat Robots The venue for this event was lovely, however the constant rain was a bit annoying, especially when it dripped off the marquees down the back of my neck! We arrived at the venue and went into the tech check with the heaviest setup we could run, and passed safety with no issues.  Fight 1: (06:46) My first fight was against Om Nom and Carbon Copy. I was happy with this match up as I would be the only spinner against a grabber (?) and a cluster bot. The fight began and I quickly engaged with one of the halves of Carbon Copy, using my full weight to push it into the wall and slice some material off the front wedge. I then reversed to give myself a bit of a run up and hit the cluster again, this time ripping the wedge off and slamming it into the ceiling. Whilst this was happening, Om Nom had somehow gotten stuck with mouth op

 This weekend we traveled down to Newcastle so my dad and I could help out at the Extreme Robots shows. This was such an amazing chance to meet the builders and learn how events like this work. My job for the three shows over the weekend was to help Dave Weston run the antweight arena, which was a lot of fun, and I was driving one of robots for a lot of time, so it was great to practice my driving skills with more control-based robots in the antweight class. We met lots of very nice people who were more than happy to talk about their robots, and give advice for our own robots. I was also interviewed for Extreme Robots TV!  It was amazing to see all three shows and be able to go backstage and see damage up close. Special thanks to John Findlay for allowing us to come and help out!

Because the Robodojo events have an antweight competition along with the beetleweights, we decided to make a couple of ants to take to the next event. These follow the same theme and colours as Exposure, but are a little less competitive and more of a chance to try new things and make robots that are fun to fight.  However, I still wanted to make a spinner. So I thought for a long time about how I could make a spinner that would be entertaining, but not too serious, and I eventually settled on a 4WD large undercutter design. The plan was to make the chassis as small as possible but make the weapon as LARGE as possible. The actual chassis footprint is only about 80 x 65mm! This was printed in PLA+ with 2 walls and 30% infill, which feels nice and strong. It also runs on 3S LiPo because why not, and uses a 2700KV 1806 motor to power the weapon. This gives a theoretical tip speed of 319mph, or 34,000 rpm with the largest weapon. Also, due to the battery voltage, we couldn't use the ty

 Our trip to Robodojo earlier this month highlighted a few issues that needed to be resolved. Most of these problems were to do with the weapon assembly, which had way too much flex and caused us to lose the weapon in our first fight. Also, the 3D printed parts were PLA at the event (uh oh) so they needed to be re-printed in TPU with a slight redesign for some parts. The fork mounts needed a way to stop the forks rotating under the robot like they did in York, and the weapon spacing needed to be increased. After looking at different companies that could print what we needed, we decided that it would be easier (and probably more cost efficient) if we bought our own 3D printer and TPU filament. This also opens up a lot of opportunities for printed antweight and beetleweight chassises.  The first step for improving the weapon was to move the weapon bulkheads outwards and extend them backwards to the piece that separates the drive motors from the rest of the robot. We changed the mounting

We took a trip to York at the weekend to compete in our first official event as a full competitor. Upon arriving at the venue, we realised we would have had no chance of finding it if we didn't have Thomas Yau there to point us into the right building! We were among the first to arrive, so we had time to set up and grab some space before the rest of the competitors, and spectators, arrived. With a total of 31 antweights and 12 beetleweights, there was barely enough space for everyone to work on their robots. The competition format was a sort of group stage format so everyone got 4 guaranteed fights but could have more in the form of playoffs. Fight 1: vs Baby Dead Bod This was an absolutely terrifying first fight to have, Baby Dead Bod is an immensely powerful horizontal spinner so I was not happy to face it this early on. That was quick! A single hit on the weapon was all it took to flex the weapon into the pulley, sending it flying and completely shearing the motor shaft. This wa