Team Jeopardy: Endeavour

[SamO]

Hi Guys

So, after its first outing at Portsmouth, I thought it was about time that I introduced you all to Endeavour properly. So......

Endeavour is my first ever combat robot and after studying rules and techniques, desiging and building for the past 2 or 3 years, I finaly made it into the arena. Here are the specs:

Name: Endeavour
Weght: Around 10Kg
Weapon: Rammer
Motors: Makita 14.4v drill motors
Batteries: 14.4v 5000 mAH
Size: 450mm x 330mm x 100mm
ESC: Bot Botz 85 amp

And some pics







Run down of Robot Wars Portsmouth 2013: We considered this event as a test run for the FW champs. In the first two fights, the robot felt abit sluggish campared to the night before when we were testing. We later found out that this was due to the transmitter being in low rate mode. A school boy mistake, but at least we made it at Portsmouth, not Birmingham when we are fighting 720 . The main problem we had at this event was the scoop bending. This happened in almost every fight which caused us to lose drive. The reason it bent was because it was made out of 2mm mild steel. In the next few weeks we are going to get another one made in 4mm steel with support on the side flaps. All in all, i think that it was a great shake down for the bot and it was a great experince.

Will put some photos up of the build process adn the really bent scoop when I get a chance.

[daveimi]

Re: Team Jeopardy: Endeavour

This is ace. Is it plastic bulkheads with steel on the front and back?

[maddox10]

Re: Team Jeopardy: Endeavour

Pity I had other things on my mind at Portsmouth (Freezing Bullfrogs and bend bottle-shutters).

And yes, it looks to me that those pictures are from a pristine HDPE machine with spraypainted steel parts.

SamO, if you have the weight left for 4mm mild steel, you could go for 4mm Hardox. Enough of that stuff going around to make a scoop from. And it's a worthwile investment.

[SamO]

Re: Team Jeopardy: Endeavour

The scoop at the front is steel, and it has thick aluminum right angle on the corners at the back.

The problem with getting the scoop made of hardox is that we have no way of acquiring it and getting it made before the champs. It is an aim to use hardox in the future though.

[ChrisKazoo]

Re: Team Jeopardy: Endeavour

Was nice meeting you at Portsmouth, and the robot looks great, you've inspired some modifications to mine

Good luck at the champs!

[daveimi]

Re: Team Jeopardy: Endeavour

How did you get the HDPE so clean cut lol.

[Eventorizon]

Re: Team Jeopardy: Endeavour

I want to know that to! Table saw? Band Saw?

[Liftoff]

Re: Team Jeopardy: Endeavour

I did mine with a table planer, you get an excellent finish with it...but its a bit messy, hdpe swarf sticks to everything!! A hand plane is good as well for finishing off (it gets some getting used to though as hdpe is so soft!)

[SamO]

Re: Team Jeopardy: Endeavour

Yep, we just used a table saw to cut and then a file to polish up some rough bits. The diffirculty we had with cutting HDPE is that it leaves a skin like layer on the edge. This is nothing a stanley knife won't sort out though!

[SamO]

Re: Team Jeopardy: Endeavour

Progress has been made!

Over the last week, I have been trying to get a Hardox scoop made.


We should now have slightly higher chance of surviving against 720 :P
Thanks to Mario for all his hard work on this!

[SamO]

So, with 9:30 hour left until the competition starts, we have arrived in Birmingham with a working robot!
Had a busy day getting it ready though, spent 1 hour grinding and bending the new hardox scoop so that it would actually fit.
We then had to sort some other nigily problems, but it's all fine now.
Pics to follow.
See you all at 8am tomorrow!

[SamO]

Well... what a great weekend, and in relative terms succsessful
Endeavour performed pretty well at the champs and came 19 out of 48 (I think) and was 1 point and position away from getting into the knock outs. To be honest, it peformed much better than we ever thought it could.

I'll go through each fight in as much detail as I can remember.

720 V Endeavour V Rabid:

This is the one fight that i thought we may have a small chance of doing OK in. Untill the link came out we were doing good, I managed to keep the Hardox scoop facing 720 most of the time and pushed Rabid around... slightly. But then, our link got knocked out by 720. We were really rather suprised by this to be honest, we didn't know whether it was down to human error (i.e the link not being put in properly, bad place to put the link or the link being too long) or whether it was down to pure bad luck. We had a look after the fight and it turns out it was both. The insulation on the wire had been ripped which suggests it had been hit by 720. We also found out that deans connectors become much looser over time. Over all then, it was a pretty dissappointing first competition fight for us .

[SamO]

Tiny Toon V Beauty 2 V Endeavour:

In this one we somehow managed to scavenge 2 points. We always knew it was going to be a short fight. There isn't really much to say about this, probaly could have driven better, but we were always gonna go flying.

[SamO]

Endeavour V LF3:

We thought this was going to be much the same as the last fight but we managed to beat the 2011 champion !For some reason LF3 couldn't get under our scoop so we were at an advantage there. They did get 1 flip on us though by getting under the sides. After that we were very vulnerable to more flips, but maneged to avoid most of them. LF3 misfired and then landed with its flipper open .

Also competed in a few whiteboards.

Pics to follow of damage and other cool stuff!

PS: Thanks to Jarvis for the great videos

[SamO]

Right, some of those pics I promised:

Endeavour on its pit table at the champs:


Damge to the side:


Eliss ripped our name sticker:


In other news, we have signed up to Burgess Hill, we also bought some ubber cool LEDs at GSL!