Boring Brick

[mrsam]

Cheers for the advice guys, still not sure how to play it at the moment though. The adaptor plates for the brushless motors is tempting but possibly just to keep things simple for now i could buy a few of the Caldercraft motors and upgrade to brushless at a later date.

[Ellis]

It's likely the caldercraft motors will work better than low speed sensorless brushless. Possibly by quite a lot in terms of control finesse. Nobody has fully cracked sensorless brushless drive, and those who are getting there have high (2 stage) reductions and faster motors. Also, you can probably heavily overvolt the caldercrafts, being such big cans they should dissipate heat quite well.

[mrsam]

Caldercrafts it is then for now, i can't see them being massively underpowered as a drive system especially seeing as i'll be running them on 6s. Thanks again to everyone for their input.

[mrsam]

So i was watching Series 6 of RW back through and after seeing Supernova again i've decided i really like the design, so i'm putting it to the vote as to which spinner i build. If you like the vertical design i posted then vote for that, if you like the following design then vote for it. Imagine it with bigger wheels and a lipo, design would be a lot like this.

[daveimi]

I like this design better, easier to make invertible etc.

[Andy]

I also say the supernova design, because it looks cool and would be invertible

[overkill]

Where is the vertical design, can't see it in the last few pages? For equal weapon weight, vertical spinners have a huge advantage although they always seem harder to build. Horizontal disks are an outdated design; they don't have the efficiency of vertical disks or drums and they don't have the reach of horizontal bar spinners. IMHO, if you are going to do a horizontal spinner, you need a weapon with a wider diameter than NST to have any chance of a podium position.

[mrsam]

It's a couple of pages back, less of a design and more of a load of stacked together parts. This probably won't be a competition machine just for whiteboards and demos for now as i don't think it would be competitive i just like the design. In terms of having the energy i'm going to try and get the disc around the 4kg mark and get the speed around 5000rpm, the disc in the picture is only 6mm thick whereas the finished one will be 12mm.

[Eventorizon]

The problem NST has was it would launch itself out of the arena as the weapon acted like a lifting arm the moment it went on its side. A NST style machine with a disc wouldn't have the same problems as it would be slightly harder for it to lever itself over the wall... I think. I doubt it would need a larger diameter weapon than NST but your weight management would be an issue with a large disc rather than a bar, not to mention the cost of making the weapon in the first place.

Another issue was that NST had bludgeoning heads on its weapon. It was superb at energy transfer but because it was horizontal it would waste 50% of the force and go flying. A disc with a cutting tooth would give you the ability to slice into a machine in the same place repeatedly without sending yourself out of the arena.

I say the Supernova style machine is a good option if built right. With the right balance, weight distribution, cutting teeth rather than bludgeoning heads and a lot of magnets I bet you could make a very potent machine.

[Mega Masher]

I vote for the horizontal one

[overkill]

I beg to differ! Its been proven time & again in the US that when horizontal spinners meet, the one with the larger diameter weapon almost always wins. Let's say NST goes head to head with another spinner with a longer bar that's also positioned higher (what I always tried to do with Scissorhands). The opponent smashes NST's hub & chain sprocket and its all over before NST makes any contact. Unless the bot with more weapon reach is much lower powered or poorly constructed, only bad luck will stop it winning. If horizontal spinners hit weapon to weapon, its mostly down to the construction and luck as to who wins. That's just one style of opponent, a horizontal disk will be pretty effective against other types of bot, particularly if the disk is positioned as low as possible.

For whiteboard only matches, I would just try to make the frame extremely tough so you can take some hits before your bot makes contact. A 5Kg disk doing 5K rpm has some serious energy and will do plenty of damage when it hits.

[Eventorizon]

In that scenario yes, the machine with the greater reach would have a better chance. However, NST is the only invertible horizontal bar spinner in the UK. Massacre is to high up and is non-invertible so it doesn't fit into the same category. The new machine is very unlikely to be in that position since NST is probably going to retire this year when Shard, Sams new vertical spinner, takes over.

The main reason I say it need to be any bigger is because you then start using weight to get adequate support for the weapon, this reduces the weight you have for armour an a system that is powerful and robust enough to take the larger diameter weapon. NST's is around 600mm so a 700mm weapon would be good.

[Mouldy]

360 was a similar weight and speed to what your planning.. it was, and still is one of the best spinners around.

When designing a spinner the weapon isnt my first priority... the strength of the chassis is way more important... whatever you come up with... think of the worst case cinario impact and design it to take the hit.

When i first built 360 i designed it to take verticle hits... which was easy at the time due to the fact it was the first brushless spinner in the uk...a good hit from a modern verticle would total it.

I designed 720 to take horizontal impacts from NST... and it does.

Take rango as a good example of an effective modern spinner... the drums pretty tiny... but the chassis is well matched to it...smaller diameter disc means less leverage on the point it meets the chassis during an impact from a big horizontal.

Also i believe NST has had its day... its still an awesome piece of kit... but the weapon means on a big impact its to likely to hit itself out ot the arena... a few years ago when one big hit was all you needed it was well suited... but these days due to the new robots being much stronger its to easy to flip itself out.

So IMHO verticle is always going to be a better combat machine, not just due to the fact you can control the fight better, but if you take into consideration the strength you need to engineer into it in comparison to your disc OD... for example db10 v 360... db10's 10mm alumec bulkheads and the 12mm hardox disc got totally bent.

Have fun!

[mrsam]

Cheers Dave lots of useful advice there, mine won't be as well built or designed as 360 but i'll take your advice and work at making the chassis as strong as possible. My original plan was to use thick aluminium angle for a frame with Nylon for structural support and spinner mounts, then using Hdpe for the body panels, does this sound good enough or should i use something stronger?

[mrsam]

Got somr goodies in the post yesterday courtesy of Harry, the shaft a pulley set up for the beetle spinner and the shaft and pulley set up for Wraith the feather spinner.