Team Gas Diary's

[Gaseraki]

Sorry PJ, I did respond to this on my phone but clearly nothing is here! I have a handy little balcony which my wife has assigned me to do metalworking and did none of it in my tiny apartment.
I cut and tac welded the front scoop together then final welded it.

Also got loads of interest on the LED matrix at the back of Trojan and as promised here is a link to the company that developed the kit.

http://ledpixelart.com/

Yep, I did pay quite a bit and was going to enquire if they could do an even more bare bones kit with just the board but I suppose that kit also includes costs of developing the code for the hardware and the app.
There is much cheaper options with just a board to cycle through gifs

[PJ-27]

Welding on the balcony? Your neighbours must love you!

[Gaseraki]

Haha, well the only neighbors it affects are the ones above us. They have a 2 year old and a 3 year old. So we seem to have an unspoken contract of we'll put up with kids screaming and chasing each other at 6am and I can use my power tools

[PJ-27]

Haha, sounds like a deal!

[Gaseraki]

Righty roundup of last event as it was a bit more eventfull. In bullet point form as its easier to read!


Pop a mixer in Trojan as I was having trouble going forward!

Day before RW maidstone decided to test drive trojan in the local park
Get loads of attention and let many youngsters drive it around, robots batteries gets a bit flat
Take Trojan home and spent a long while making new graphics for the rear LED panel forgot about batteries.
Get to maidstone only needing to charge the batteries.
Battery error
Panic and get some advice to check battery voltage
Its very low and have two bricked batteries less than 2 hours before the show starts.
Panic some more
Call up a local model shop only a mile away and they have 3 amp 3cell lipos!
Drive there to find shop has moved 10 miles away
Panic some more
Some how drive there with no sat nav and pick up the batteries
Get back to the event less than an hour before show starts
change connectors and charge the batteries as much as I can before the first FW fight
It goes well, lots of people love the LED panel
Charge and fight in second fight
Goes very well. Last two robots (Cerefin and myself)
Managed to kind of get Explosion OOTA with a combination of him attempting to self right and me attempting to wall slam him
Sleep, return, charge, third featherweight fight
Arena is looking hazardous with another pit created by Ripper a fight earlier. Plus lots of areas to get stuck.
Doesnt stop me being bold and attempting to ram a featherweight flipper early on (sorry dont know name)
Didnt notice pit was down. Featherweight flips (aka jumps) over the pit, I drive straight in
Face palm
Gets stuck under arena pit and crushed when it was attempted to be raised
Crying smiley suits robot
fourth fight
Bit better then last but upside down for most and not very eventful
Stuck on top of small cheese for a while
Last 30 seconds left drive gets reduced to about 10% speed
Open up, see no obvious faults
Starts working fine again a bit later
Strange


Maidstone was great fun. Wasn't as much of a success robot performance wise as Newport but robot upgrades did the job. Much more visable, added a lot of character.


Jobs before next event ‘Gloucester’

Isolate reason for left side drive failure
Put in improved lifting prongs
Possibly try and get more ground clearance

Main job
Start planning out heavy and even start on a bit of construction!

[razerdave]

Nice little review Marco

Btw, it's 'Seraphim'

[Gaseraki]

Spartans first Version

Decided not to do a build diary on this as work was a little quiet and I was allowed to do occasional maintenance work from home and so didn't have time to slack and update a build diary.
Been planning spartan for a while and it started as a clone of Trojan. I was at the final stages of design where I had a change of heart and thought I could try something new.

Went to the gym to clear my head and in between sets I sketches this up. I liked the idea and developed its design in a practical sense
Eventually I ended up with spartans shape and spent a long time designing the construction. Which would be similar to Trojans. But less construction fastenings as I hate taking Trojan apart.


Going to skim over how I built it but basically I got back my old combo lathe/mill. So made my own wheels and milled most of the aluminium.

The drive motors are Ampflow E30’s and are amazing motors. They are about half the weight of Trojans MYB 300 watt scooter motors and about the same stats.
I had to reduce the motor shaft size as it was 13mm which is a hairy operation



Weapon drill is a cheap standard argos one as I have about 4 in a box, but will probably upgrade for the UK champs. The lifting prongs are also interchangeable.

The chassis is 8mm bulkheads with 3mm steel in places and 10mm nylon.

It was coming in very light at about 11kg so I started using more steel which increased its weight significantly to over 14kg. Though I am not worried as there is tons of weight reduction that can be done.

My next months plan is
see what goes wrong at Whitwick and fix it
Get it in weight
Build an anti spinner weapon
Possibly upgrade the weapon system.

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[daveimi]

God that's spectacular! The renders are pretty.

[ChrisKazoo]

Looking great Marco, it sounds like it's screaming when you use the forks lol

[Eventorizon]

I really like the look of that! Has that 'get out of my way or else' look about it. Now you just need to play the 300 Soundtrack when you fight and the illusion will be complete!

[Flag Captured]

Now you just need to play the 300 Soundtrack when you fight and the illusion will be complete!

2 Ampflow E30s? This is Madness! (Madness? This. Is. Spartan!, etc)

But seriously though, this looks really, really nice. Looks like it's pretty nippy too, should have no bother pushing everything about! You mentioned about upgrading the weapon too, have you considered something like replacing the motor in the drill for the lifter with a sensored brushless? Nothing huge, but you could probably get something faster and maybe a little lighter too than the equivalent 550 (I'd assume) motor...

[Gaseraki]

Cheers guys.
Brushless weapon motor is actually something I didn't consider and I think its a great idea. Going to look into it after the champs.

Brief summery of Whitwick was that it started bad and performed better as the event progressed. The RX slid out of its mount twice so caked it in hot glue and that seems to have kept it still.
The drive had a moment fault but it was to do with the tensioner so planning something better
Its solid enough. Was flipped by the arena flipper twice which had the power to launch it up to the ceiling and land on the other side of the arena 5ft up on the polycarb wall.
On one of its arena flipper voyages the weapon motor cracked which isn't a surprise. So planning a more resilient weapon motor.

Currently it needs to shave weight and it has completely been stripped down and all parts weighed. Very confident it will be in weight.

[daveimi]

It's a bit low tech but sticky backed velcro works well for receivers and has proven arena flipper proof for me in the past.

[shakesc]

Looked good a Whitwick

Interested in the anti-spinner weapon (I was working on run and hide!)

[Flag Captured]

Out of interest, what speed controllers are you using to control the drive? Are they Botbitz 85As?