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 was particularly unfortunate because we didn't have any way of fixing this damage. After a couple more hits, it was clear that I had no chance of winning, and since it was the first fight, I decided to tap out. This meant that I could continue the competition, albeit without a weapon.
Fight 2: vs Little Grey Fergie
I was fairly confident about this fight, and it was going well in the first minute. However, I made an error and drove into the wall, and the forks got stuck in a gap between the wall and the floor. We later found that the forks had lifted under the robot, so we fixed this issue by shaving the corner of the robot so that the wheels would contact the ground when in this position.
Fight 3: vs Chucky
I came into this fight doubting that I could win, and this was proven to be true. Chucky pushed me around the arena for the first half of the fight before propping me against the wall of the arena.
Fight 4: vs Bby Shrekt
We decided not to do this fight, as there was no point getting absolutely destroyed when so much of the frame was perfectly okay and could still be used.
Even though the weapon was destroyed almost instantly, I really enjoyed this event. Everyone was very kind and welcoming, especially Sam Price who gave suggestions and let us look inside his robots to get inspiration for our necessary design changes. This event showed us plenty of ways in which to improve the weapon system of this robot, and I think with the upgrades it will be a lot more reliable and a lot more competitive!
Our Hardox order also arrived during the time we were in York, so we have test mounted the new forks and weapons. I am especially loving the look of the disk!
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 wea...
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 ...
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