RogueTwo Robots

[RogueTwoRobots]

Re: RogueTwo Robots

Update

Well it's been a bit quiet here since the last progress report. Been struggling to make significant headway over the past couple of weeks, and been lacking motivation. But one of my Technobots orders arrived at the weekend which solved my most important parts shortage - ring connectors! Used frequently to distribute power throughout the robot's systems, I only had two left, which were only good enough to connect the main power leads from the batteries. But with the arrival of more, I managed to get all the systems connected tonight and it's humming nicely - literally. Got a small PC cooling fan blowing air over the XL and, next to the LED, it's the best indicator of the robot being active, so that's all good.

The most major remaining part to sort out is of course the weapon. I was going to go for a pro-job custom one again, similar to before but shorter, but both Kenny and Grant couldn't fit it in at short notice, which is fair enough but actually also worked out quite well since I've spent more on robot bits than planned
So it's going to be a bit of a home-made jobby with simple bar teeth for now - like the first drum I made but, on a more inspirational note, also like Helios, Solaris, Sir Alos, and especially, Touro Feather. I'll then sort out getting my ideal drum made afterwards as an upgrade (along with A123s, hardox armour, hardox wedge, every other design feature I intended but which got put on the backburner..........)
In the meantime, the home-brew drum will hopefully benefit from some loving at Hornet Headquarters - or, err, Boner Bothold? - at the end of the week so that should allow a few days for testing/avoiding catastrophic self-inflicted failure and then it will be good to roll.

No pics at the moment as there's nothing much new worth photographing. I'm also rambling a bit so I'll leave it at that.




(You just lost the game)

[psychostorm]

Re: RogueTwo Robots

Well, if it's any consolation - you're not the only one not entirely happy with the state of your machine for the competition.

I've focused mainly on upgrading the electrical/control side - tightening down the power connectors replacing all the relays with Fets etc.

Which slightly neglects the other upgrades I had planned - new armour, finishing the NiMH pack, hopefully change the actuator for something that is a bit beefier, a Speedo that fits properly, etc.

I mean its fightable but its really not the best representation of my efforts, y'know?

Ah I'm sure we'll be fine. See you in the final :wink:

[razerdave]

Re: RogueTwo Robots

I am rather thankful that all mine needed was some glue to the connectors, a lick of paint and decoration and my lid milling out. I bought some 12mm Nylon 6, and found out its [i]too[i] light. I was trying to take 500g off the robot; the steel lid was 2.225kg, the nylon 6 one was 553g :P. That puts me roughly 1.6kg UNDERWEIGHT, but I wanted to be up to the limit, and I found out that, despite me asking for my lid to be 6mm steel, my fabricators made it 8mm. So its currently getting 2mm milled out of most of it to take 500g out of it and bring me back up to near the limit.

[RogueTwoRobots]

Re: RogueTwo Robots

Don't worry Ceri, it'll all be fine on the day. Plenty of people will be willing to lend a hand I'm sure
When are you arriving/where are you staying?

At least you'll still have a pretty decent steel lid then Dave. What decorative work have you done to it? Or is it just an all-black paint-job?

[razerdave]

Re: RogueTwo Robots

I'm currently drawing some logos for it and then setting some stickers done, the should last a little longer than those stupid paper cut-outs :P

[psychostorm]

Re: RogueTwo Robots

Don't worry Ceri, it'll all be fine on the day. Plenty of people will be willing to lend a hand I'm sure
When are you arriving/where are you staying?

Yeah, it'll be fine. If possible, I would like to be at the campsite by Thursday night , to be fresh for Friday. Mind you, it might be worth mentioning this to Grant...

[RogueTwoRobots]

Re: RogueTwo Robots

Update

Two-and-a-half days to go, but with us leaving on Thursday morning, I'm now down to my final build day tomorrow; still got quite a bit to do so a mild panic is now starting to set in!

Anyway, here's the progress so far. Visited Gary's workshop at the weekend with the intention of getting the drum completely done and mounted and getting the armour on. But these things always take longer than planned so only managed to get the drum done, but it's much better than it was going to be. For example, temporary HDPE endcaps were overthrown by some nice titanium ones that used to be bearing housings for Hornet 2's disc, and Gary kindly let me have them for the drum. This also meant that I could do away with some bolt-on bearing housings that I bought and let me just have ones integrated into the titanium endcaps:



Have also fashioned some bar teeth from the old drum so it's got some bite now:



This drum was originally going to be a temporary one for the competition but it's pretty sturdy and weighs in at 2.6kg so providing it holds up (which it should) it could be a keeper. I'm still going to go for a drum with ring teeth since Dave donated me a nice drum he had made but rather than that replacing this one once it's built, I'll probably have them as interchangeable drums.

So that's fitted in the robot now; it's a bit offset so I'll need to make some spacers for it to stop sideways movement. May actually bolt on one of the bearing units I've now got spare, it can act as a spacer but can also provide extra bearing-y goodness



Current state of the machine. Needed to move the shaft forward a bit as the drum was hitting the bulkhead when it rotated. At the bottom of its spin, it is a mere few millimetres off the ground so just as well the Robo Challenge floor is nice and flat
Gave the drum a few spin-ups today (no videos sorry) and it's taking a bit of work getting the setup reliable. A combination of the tensioner not being great, belts warping themselves from heat and general new-ness means that they haven't been the most successful of spin-ups but I'll hopefully get it fine-tuned in time for the comp. Doesn't help that the belt is a bit long and gets in the road of itself. I've ordered some shorter belts from RS but they wouldn't arrive in time therefore I'm picking them up at a trade counter on the way down on Thursday so will have to fall back on the good old 'work on the robot in the Travelodge the night before' practice - haven't done that in ages!

So tomorrow, I've got to:

- Cut and fit the outer armour (layers of HDPE) and fit a piece of steel box section at the back to stop it getting beached there.
- Fit the bolt-on bearing to one side of the drum and make a spacer for the remaining gap.
- Take the angle grinder to the teeth to remove some sharp edges that could catch and rip the belt
- Cut a clearance hole for the LED and mount it (may just hot glue it)
- Fit the receiver switch (may just hot glue it)
- Make a carry cradle (might not hot glue that)
- Paint!

Might not sound too much, but it's several little jobs that may end up taking longer than planned. Add to that getting the car washed, printing off directions, packing tools and clothes, charging batteries, getting the tent and accessories ready etc and it's going to be a busy day. Oh well, full steam ahead!

[Mouldy]

Re: RogueTwo Robots

Looks really nice Jamie

[typhoon_driver]

Re: RogueTwo Robots

Heres hoping that the new one gets to fight the old one eh?

[RogueTwoRobots]

Re: RogueTwo Robots

I'm worried I might get my ass kicked by Boner judging by how it seems to perform with a lipo

Update

Well I had a list of things to get done today but got roped into doing other stuff like washing cars (because I was getting paid for it) so my whole to-do list didn't quite get completed. Not so much things not getting done, more so having to make compromises here and there to get as much as possible done in as little time as possible.

Long rambling short, here's how it's looking:



The teeth and top panel are off getting painted in this pic, but it's got layered HDPE armour now, a couple of spacers for the drum, and various bolts sticking out here and there to stop it getting stuck on its side or back. With all the bolt heads sticking out here and there, it reminds me of some kind of torture device that Jigsaw would use (as in the Saw movies, not the 150g creation from Mr. McConnell )

Still need to mount the LED and rx switch and drill a hole so we can actually see the LED, plug in the failsafe for the weapon and bodge together a cradle. After that, it'll just be a case of installing the new shorter belt once I get it from RS, and hoping that it doesn't present any issues. All of that will have to wait until we get to the Travelodge though.

Oh and Carcinus is good to go. Still sucks but hey

We're leaving at about 9.30am tomorrow so will see all you cool cats on Friday (if we don't pop down to the campsite tomorrow night)

Let the wars begin!

[RogueTwoRobots]

Re: RogueTwo Robots

Event Report

So another championship has come and gone and this year's wasn't quite as successful as the previous one. But despite that I had an absolute belter of a weekend, thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it (with the slight exception of a rubbish tent and sub-zero temperatures when camping).

As for the robots:

Drumroll 2 got off to a good start, winning its first fight by knockout. But when doing a victory spin, the gyro effects put the robot on its side for a few seconds before landing upside down close to the arena wall. I then forgot to activate the Scorpion XL flip function and moved the stick backward to pull away from the wall but ended up driving into it. The collision caused the bolts that were holding on one of the teeth to shear and the tooth flew off. Upon inspection in the pits, the shaft of the brushless motor was also bent as was the mount.

Some frantic repairs were effected and the robot went into its next battle with 4 4 Toon and Asgard but not at 100%. To make matters worse, when I armed up I discovered one wheel wasn't working so things weren't looking good. Asgard was suffering ground clearance issues and the battle turned out to be a rather damp squib, with 4 4 Toon winning by knockout after roughly ten seconds and very little movement.

Third match was against Tiny Toon and Asgard and the wheel was fixed (smoking drill motor was the problem) but the weapon was poor and gave up the ghost early on which left me in a pushing match with Tiny Toon (Asgard had earlier been pitted). The Toony one then pitted me and claimed a knockout.

With eight points from the league, Drumroll 2 fell short of a guaranteed place in the top ten and had to go into a five-way melee with other robots tied on eight points to claim one of the three remaining places. But that was a bit of a fail as Drumroll was in the pit within 30 seconds and out of the main competition.

It then went into the Annihilator with Captain Scarlet, Seraphim, Aftershock (dressed as Whirlwind), DB5 and Nasty Spinny Thing and made it all the way to the final. It was a close match with Seraphim driving in and out of the open pit several times and Drumroll losing its weapon halfway through. Eventually it was awarded 2-1 in favour of Seraphim, mainly due to the failure of the drum on my part. Having rewatched the match on video though, I feel Drumroll had the stronger case for winning, even with the weapon failure, but the loss will be a good motivator for when it comes to improving the machine and eliminating reliability issues.

So that was that for Drumroll 2's first outing. It went in a whiteboard at the end and promptly got humped by Boner and OOTA-ed by Beauty 4. But despite coming (I think) 12th in the main competition, I'm overall pretty happy with the robot. The drive is lovely, fast and controllable and while it seemed to be lacking a bit of pushing power, that might improve when it has got more weight pressing down (currently got almost 4kg spare).
The main area for improvement is the drum. The M5 bolts securing the teeth just weren't strong enough for the impacts involved. If I'm to keep that drum, it'll need to have channels milled in the ali so the teeth can be recessed and supported, and the bolts will have to be enlarged to - probably - high tensile M8s. With no competition lined up, and therefore no rush, the most likely scenario is a return to the welded ring-teeth setup on the original drum. That gave and took a bashing in a lot of Boner's fights but it's still holding up well from what I saw. The ring-teeth are also more deadly than the bars so would be a definite improvement. After that, some hardox armour and a rear wedge (although I did like its shape without the wedge) and some lithium batteries. I've also been fortunate enough to have been given the old gearbox and a motor from 360s disc setup as well as a reversible speed controller so that will be getting incorporated into the robot as the Align model is a bit damaged and sounding a bit rough. Many thanks to Dave Moulds for that.

On to Carcinus. It was just signed up for whiteboard fights but entered most fights that had spinners :P
In one fight it got flipped out the arena. In another fight, it got humped by Boner and some of its innards fell out into the arena. And in the subsequent fight, after having the claws removed and being patched up, it got completely ripped open by NST and spilled its guts everywhere. Chassis was a write-off (thankfully, disliked it for a while) but all the internal components have survived minus the receiver which needs a little bit of soldering, or just substituted for a £10 replacement if my soldering skills aren't up to it.
So for that, there is a complete rebuild on the way. I'm going to change to the same RG1000 material I used on Drumroll 2 and make it a little more compact. The linear actuator is going out (and probably for sale shortly) and incoming will be a homemade threaded rod/motor setup. The claws will also have a little length taken out of them as the current fully-open position is unnecessarily large and they don't fully close so they'll be made a little shorter. All in all it should become a slightly more effective robot.

With regards to other robot developments, I would ideally like to get Drumroll 2 and Carcinus up to full running spec and then take a break from featherweight building to move onto the lighter weight classes (mainly kilobots and possibly an ant) but I've still got a Bosch 400 kicking about that I would love to try and put into an electric axe featherweight so there may be one more feather to come. We shall see.

[RogueTwoRobots]

Re: RogueTwo Robots

[jonny]

Re: RogueTwo Robots

wow nice! and merry christmas to you to

[calumco]

Re: RogueTwo Robots

fixed it all then jamie?

[Mouldy]

Re: RogueTwo Robots

I've also been fortunate enough to have been given the old gearbox and a motor from 360s disc setup as well as a reversible speed controller so that will be getting incorporated into the robot as the Align model is a bit damaged and sounding a bit rough. Many thanks to Dave Moulds for that.

Note;

The titanium output shaft will need securing at the back for your application- Easiest way is to drill and tap an M4 bolt with a washer in to keep it captive onto the rear bearing- you should then be able to slide your small pulley over the output shaft thread and butt it up against the flat, If you file a recess into the rear of the pulley boss it would make a real secure connection. then you can just bolt it down with an M8 nylock...That should make sense to you if your looking at it.

I think it was a 1.2:1 reduction.

also if you choose to use a different motor- there are other holes drilled on the correct PCD to accept most brushless motors.