Boring Brick

[maddox10]

Go for the 85's. Easier to upgrade later on.

[mrsam]

I think that it will be the 85's as they leave the most room for improvement, the robot now has a name it will be known henceforth as.... Jack of Blades....dun dun. If anybody has played the game fable you'll know that Jack of Blades waas the main villain who wore the possessed mask.

[maddox10]

Jack of all Blades sounds more fun tough.

[mrsam]

Jack of all blades, I like it

[mrsam]

How does polycarbonate usually stand up in the arena? I have a sheet of 12mm that I'm thinking could be the lid, any thoughts?

[maddox10]

Polycarbonate is a tad heavier than HDPE and a lot more brittle.

[RogueTwoRobots]

As a lid, 12mm will be more than enough. I use 6mm on the top of Drumroll, it does a fine job of keeping the axes out and the only thing to get through it was a powerful hydraulic crusher.

[mrsam]

Good to know, I was slightly worried robots like little hitter or your new axe would go straight through

[Ellis]

Well, the arena walls are 10mm polycarb, put it that way! The reason they contain the robots, though, is because they're big and flexible, and loosely mounted into the frame. Without some shock absorption, polycarb cracks/shatters, so some form of bounce in the plate if you use it wouldn't be a bad idea.

[mrsam]

Yeah that might be an idea, any suggestions on what I could use to absorb some of the shock? Maybe some thin hdpe under the polycarb?

[mrsam]

I've been looking around at speed controllers and i'm considering trying either a sabertooth 2x25 or a scorpion xl instead, is there any reason not to use them?

[Eventorizon]

Varies on a person's experience. Some slate the Sabtertooth ESC's others love them, depends how you treat them. Scorpion's tend to be good all round, though they occasionally have strange happenings when it comes to interpreting signals.

Many people will say though to go for a pair of TZ85A from Botbitz. Treat them right and they should last years of heavy use.

Thats me, but wait and see what others say.

[daveimi]

The cool thing with a Sabertooth or other "dual" speed controllers, is that they mix fwd/bck/lft/rgt a lot more reliably than having a single controller per motor and then using a separate mixer. They tend to be a bit dearer, but you will end up with an extremely simple setup i.e. receiver, speedo and battery. Job done.

The Sabertooth's aren't as posh as the XXL's and Vantecs, but then they're half the money. I've been using a Sabertooth 2x12 for ages and even in a recent event and it hasn't given me any jip. I love anything simple and easy to use so Sabertooth suits me. As mentioned above, some folks hate them, some folks will tell you that Botbitz's are the mutts nutts. It's just whichever you like the look of. Most items in a robot take a beating and will need replacing as time goes on so I will usually just buy whatevers cheap lol. But yeah, to sum up the ramblings I recommend the dual controllers for the simplicity factor.

[Team Invade]

We've used a Scorpion XL in Explosion for coming up to six years now and it broke for the first and only time this year (which is especially good considering how heavily used Explosion is)! Even then the customer service was excellent and they gave us all the information we needed to fix it and we got it going again for Portsmouth 2 weeks later. We also used a Sidewinder in Invasion for years (excessive for most feathers but made by the same company) and never had any issues. We've got a new XXL to put into Combustion so we're sticking with them simply due to how good they've been from experience.

Just for another perspective and to put a good word in for the Robot Power speed controllers

[mrsam]

The built in mixing of the xl and the sabertooth is what's drawing me to them, how does the 2x12 cope with use in a featherweight? i'll only be using 18v gimsons or overvolted argos drills so nothing too current hungry i wouldn't have thought