RogueTwo Robots

[RogueTwoRobots]

Re: Team Terminal Damage

Update

What a waste of a day
Was working on Carcinus today, trying to make progress getting it complete as its quite far off. Spent the whole day making the claw mechanism which consists of a drill motor coupled to a threaded rod from a scissor jack. This then runs through the threaded nut and scissor arms from the jack to push the claws back and forward. So lots of drilling, tapping and trying to figure out how best to mount one thing to another.

End of the day, got it all finished and tested it only to discover that the travel is not sufficient and the claws would either not close far enough or they wouldn't be capable of opening very wide. Plus, due to a little bit of a miscalculation on my behalf there was no way of extending the travel. So now the whole mechanism is useless and has been removed from the robot. Normally wouldn't too fussed about a wasted day, but not four days before leaving for an event *sigh*

On a more positive note, I was able to get Drumroll all finished off yesterday. Its currently running with a brushless motor and controller powering the drum:



Its had a spin-up test on one battery pack so far and that was promising so fingers crossed it works well. The second battery pack for Drumroll has still to be built (waiting on a 100W soldering iron from eBay to arrive - ordered it last Monday, hoped it would be here by now but no Keeping hopes up for Wednesday at the latest, otherwise I could be in trouble) so once that's done I can calibrate everything and hopefully get a test run down at the industrial estate to source any problems.

Along with the new weapon setup, there are new drill motors coupled to the gearboxes and new treads on the tyres. The motors/gearboxes are the same type that were in Kaizer Mk3 and see a revolution increase from 550rpm to roughly 1000rpm. This should ideally see Drumroll be a bit more nippy in the arena. The old bike tread had worn down quite a bit so its been replaced with some nice new grippy stuff. This does mean however, that the rear ground clearance is 20mm :shock:
Flippers stay away!



Roll hoops are back *shudder* as I didn't have the weight/space/time to fit a self-righting mechanism. They failed against Aftershock and despite a little bit of reinforcing, they're still susceptible to not working properly, but they'll have to do and are better than nothing. This will probably be the last outing for this version of Drumroll as I hope to get to work on the new version at the beginning of the new year. This one will still remain as back-up though if I don't get it completed in time.

So that's that for now, will hopefully have some Carcinus pics tomorrow when its more photogenic. Gonna just bung in a commercial actuator for now (Linak LA-22) which sticks out at the back...a lot!! It also makes the robot look even more similar to Kan-Opener; its quite similar already. Could always turn it into a FW replica

[RogueTwoRobots]

Re: Team Terminal Damage

I swear I'm not trying to make it look like Kan-Opener

[attachment=0:2fyfakk3]DSCN4463.JPG[/attachment:2fyfakk3]

[calumco]

Re: Team Terminal Damage

i can't believe you've stolen kan opener and stripped its paint off

but seriously drumroll is looking awesome, film the video of you chewing stuff up and post it on here, wana see how it does

[kodster]

Re: Team Terminal Damage

Yeah, tear some junk up, let's see parts fly.

[RogueTwoRobots]

Re: Team Terminal Damage

Update

Brushless test was below par - spun up rather well to begin with and drove quite nicely but running the two together during the test was too much for the batteries. Thankfully they're still intact, didn't blow any cells this time (hurrah!) but its clear that the brushless is pulling too much power out of the batteries to last any length of time. I think this is an upgrade that will have to wait until it can be accompanied with lithium batteries.

So in the meantime, the Speed 900 will be getting put back in as it's tried and tested and gives a longer run time. Off to sharpen the drum teeth now then start work on the Carcinus claws.

[Kenny]

Re: Team Terminal Damage

stick a lipo in drumroll then it will be able to provide the power for both going

[RogueTwoRobots]

Re: Team Terminal Damage

Yeah lipos are on the cards, but it needs to wait till I can afford both the battery packs and associated charging equipment. The Speed 900 will do till then

[RogueTwoRobots]

Re: Team Terminal Damage

Thank you muchly Kane

[typhoon_driver]

Re: Team Terminal Damage

Looking good mate.

Seems like this might be the last event for a good few machines.

[RogueTwoRobots]

Re: Team Terminal Damage

Update

A brief report of the event last weekend.

Drumroll and Hornet 2 were paired up in the tag team championships. We got through the first two battles against Tiny Toon (on its own, The Toonimator wasn't running in time) and Surprise/Killer Bee. We didn't come away without problems though. Drumroll had power problems in the first fight and kept cutting out. Couldn't fully locate the source of the problem but it was attributed to a loose connection somewhere in one of the battery packs, so it got pulled apart and fully resoldered. Second fight, the drum stopped (simply the ESC wire unplugging itself from the failsafe) and Hornet 2's disc gave up the ghost after causing a bit of damage to Surprise and immobilising Killer Bee.
In the third round 3-way melee against Beauty 2/Rip Evo and Aftershock/Heatwave, Drumroll was working okay but Hornet was sporting a very lethal cordless drill weapon in place of its disc setup (from which the Mag burnt out). Unfortunately after helping to partly immobilise Beauty 2/Rip Evo, Hornet became stuck on the side wall and Aftershock flipped Drumroll over and into the pit when I came to try and knock Hornet 2 down.
The loser's melee was made up of us, Beauty 2/Rip Evo, LH2/LS2 and Alpha/Tiny Toon. Hornet only had drive on one side and Drumroll soon got flipped over by Beauty 2 and promptly got stuck on those ghastly roll-hoops.
So we crashed out of the competition at that point.

Carcinus was teamed up with Relentless and they only had Whirlpool to contend with in their first fight because Crumple Zone had battery problems. But Whirlpool managed to come out victorious as Relentless broke down and Carcinus drove into the pit! (even though Whirlpool was teetering on the edge; my dad needs some driving practice! )
Can't actually remember who were the second fight opponents - old age eh? :blush:
But whoever they were, they were the winning team and Carcinus and Relentless failed to progress to the next round.
We managed to get Carcinus in a good few whiteboards over the weekend. This let us see that the claws weren't strong enough with just aluminium brackets holding it all together so I'll need to track down a welder to get them welded up nice and strong. In more positive news, the drive is nice and nippy and the bike tyre armour worked well against spinners (although it only came up against Drumroll, but survived well)
A Spektrum is on the agenda though as this is the first time one of my 'invertible' bots has actually worked well upside down and having an aerial taped to the chassis doesn't provide a strong enough reception so in order to get better radio signal and still run upside down, 2.4GHz it will be.

Drumroll ran its Speed 900 motor on the Saturday but for some reason it just wasn't as effective as it was in March. The batteries were the same, the ratio was the same but it just seemed to stop a lot more when hitting an opponent. Going back to the UK champs in Newcastle, the main thing about the drum was that despite what it hit, it never seemed to want to stop. Always going on and on regardless, so I was quite disappointed. Sunday was taken up mostly by the drag racing so for whatever whiteboards there would be I just threw the brushless motor back in. Despite the batteries not lasting long with it, there is enough charge to do a 3-minute battle. And the performance was much improved! Did a bit of damage to Little Spinner's front armour, knocked a section of the arena sidewall up and got it jammed after piggy-backing on Tiny Toon, managed to make some gouges in TTs armour, and mangled the front wedge of Crumple Zone a bit (sorry again Alex!)
In short the brushless worked really well and resulted in some gyroscopic moves when running at full-tilt, although compared to 360's they weren't anywhere near as spectacular

The kilt-wearing, haggis-bearing, drag-racing belt sander ran perfectly fine but was about half the speed of all the other belt sanders there and so didn't claim a podium place but it still looks good. I might get a better, faster sander for next year and keep the current one for sanding jobs around the house.

Future developments

I'm pretty happy with its first performance in the sense that everything worked! Once we get the jaws welded up, a Spektrum fitted and a nice paint-job done it should be running nicely. An upgraded actuator system to provide more speed and grip is an option but for now the current Linac actuator will do.

Drumroll (the current version) is done for competitions I think. It needs a self-righter but with as much material removed as possible its still only 100g underweight. So I plan to ditch the self-righting hoops, put the Speed 900 back in and run it as a whiteboard machine/back-up to Drumroll II and if it gets flipped it gets flipped. Drumroll II started taking shape in the form of a polypro chassis back in June but I'm not happy with the looks, design, size etc so its going back to the drawing board. In order to step up a level, the plans are thus: welded titanium chassis to provide a strong platform from which to fight, one that will stand up to the impacts given out as well as received; brushless motor powered drum, perhaps a new one that is shorter in length to keep things compact but losing none of its deadliness; lithiums, either in the form of A123s or lipo's as they will be needed to meet the demands of the brushless and allow it to perform; and most importantly it will be able to run both ways up and be a lot more agile, allowing for quick attacking moves and more elaborate gyro dancing
A Sabretooth may be purchased for the drive motors if funds allow.

Until then, its back to uni, back to the CAD software and onwards and upwards for the team and its robots

[team_orr]

Re: Team Terminal Damage

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJyjZ5tHbjo

[RogueTwoRobots]

Re: Team Terminal Damage

Five months since my last update, maaaan that's too long :P
What developments have there been?

Well, looking back at my last post I said Carcinus was in need of getting its claws welded, a 2.4GHz unit installed and a bit of a paint job. It's had all of those things and had its second outing at Roaming Robots Barnsley two weeks ago. With exception of the radio not connecting in one fight and then driving into the pit numerous other times, it worked rather well. There is very little gripping power in the claws though so I am now looking at making a couple of attachments to fit over the claw tips with pads of bicycle tyre attached so that there is more friction between claws and opponent, hopefully allowing us to drag and push them around.

I also said in my last post that I reckoned Drumroll was done for competitions; well it definetly is now. Blew up a battery pack at Barnsley from over-charging (stoopid chargers ) and that, coupled with the purchase of a Scorpion XL has given me fresh motivation to get cracking with Drumroll II. I've got most of the chassis design and part-fitting done in CAD, have finally settled on an outer armour shape/design and just need to work out how to CAD it (it involves angled bits of metal and I've never really drawn them before). I was going to post a picture tonight but realised I could save some space and weight by changing the orientation of the batteries so will do that and post it later without the complex armour bits, they'll just get super-imposed in Paint

So what of Drumroll? I'm going to put both Speed 900s back in it, buy a replacement Nimh pack and save it for whiteboards. No self-righting hoops or srimech, did well enough without them at Barnsley. There are no full combat events lined up until September that I am aware of so that should be enough time to get the new machine running. Most of the cost for that will be in making the new drum and getting A123s/associated charging equipment so that'll wait till late summer when I'll hopefully have a job and some money. While I'm waiting on that I can get most of the chassis constructed and parts installed.

And finally, what drumbot owner's life would be complete without a greatest hits video of the year?
Finally found a decent file converter for my camcorder files so have been able to get some video editing in:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaQXz9okOHM

[xtreme]

Re: Team Terminal Damage

Watched the video earlier. Definitely the best performing robot from last years UK Champs. I cant wait to see Drumroll II vs Savage HD.
Might have to do a bodge job on savage evo and try get it working, Have one last fight with it, Savage Evo vs Drumroll. But if Evo becomes immobilized you will have to finish it off properly, Like they would do in the old robot wars days, Smash it until theres nothing left.
You up for that?

[team_orr]

Re: Team Terminal Damage

at the ending :P

[George_TeamZog]

Re: Team Terminal Damage

Drumroll reminds me of Rampage 2... Same colour, nearly same shape :shock: