Flow - general changes & upgrades

[shakesc]

very nice drives

[daveimi]

Are those Team Wyachi

[harry hills]

They have Team Whyachi written on them.... think hard lol

[overkill]

They are probably the very last new pair of TWA40 gearboxes in existence - I still have a bunch of spare axles if you need them later on.

[daveimi]

"They have Team Whyachi written on them.... think hard lol"

I laughed when I read this the reason I asked was because I've tried to buy some and failed lol.

[maddox10]

http://www.astroflight.com/640.html


Pricetag is a tad on the high side

[Mouldy]

Awesome motors though.. got one on 360s self righter.

[Revsmin]

They sure are, at peak power that's a horsepower per side.
David, the gearboxes are these ones. They only sell them in batches of 50 or more, so I'm very lucky to have a pair or it would've been custom gearboxes and that's just a pain.

[geeza]

I have custom gearboxes for these in Asgard, took 3 months to design and manufacture though.

[Revsmin]

Long time no update
Lots to talk about, so bear with me.
Firstly, Flow.
When we put Flow in the arena at Newcastle the regulator was misbehaving. We tried everything to fix it but couldn't .
For Stevenage we got a brand new Trevor reg fitted and it worked fine, besides a little leak in the base. To fix this we blasted it through with gas to cool it, tightened the fixing and let it warm up again. Once in the arena it was armed up and the flipper arm began to lift :P. After some investigation we found that the manual override on the self right valve was knocked into the open position, we closed it and it ran beautifully in the final fight. Flipped over 20 times and still had half a bottle left by then end! The pressure was turned down quite far so it wasn't as powerful as it should've been, but itll be running at max power for Bluewater. Unfortunately not had time to fit the Astros yet, so still running the 550s, but they will be fitted along with TZ85s and running on 6S rather than 4S after Bluewater.

Ricochet.
We finally figured out what was causing it to cut out, it's the old motors drawing too much current for the XXL to cope with, hence it stops for a moment and takes off again seconds after. Because of this I've regrettably had to retire this version of Ricochet while I figure out how I want to rebuild it better than it was before.

RPM
RPM had a good run at AWS 44, taking second place to Anvil. After that the second hand 3S Lipo was truly dead, ao I ordered a new one and waited. And waited. And then, days before Stevenage, it arrived. But it turns out it had a break between cell 1 and 2 in the pack, rendering it useless. I borrowed Headbangers battery (thanks Dave) for some demos, and blew an ESC, so had to sit the comp out. New bulkheads have arrived, and shortly going to order some new ESCs, so RPM will be back and working soon.
I'm getting an antweight done for AWS 45 in November, so I might post that here when progress is made. I also have a beetle design I intend to have completed for the next Robots Live event, which I think will be Whitwick next March?

Anyway, sorry for tl;dr post. Thanks to all who helped out, I really appreciate it. Hopefully see most of you at Bluewater on Saturday

[daveimi]

Sounds daft but for Ricochet could you split out the servo cables and use a second XXL etc? Would allow you to keep the robot as is if you're happy with it.

[Shakey]

Sounds daft but for Ricochet could you split out the servo cables and use a second XXL etc? Would allow you to keep the robot as is if you're happy with it.

It could work provided the ESC's don't share any motors between them, if they do it might get a bit toasty :P

[Revsmin]

I had considered putting in my spare TZ85s to run them, but the damage to the motors (bearing in mind they've been in two robots and are now 3 and a half years old!) has meant that they've started to struggle under load. That and it was always too slow for my liking, time to make it faster

[blazerbotics]

just swap the motors???

[Revsmin]

It needs new gearboxes and a new chassis anyway. It works (just), but it's tired and I want to see how I can improve on the design. Plus I'm looking to at least double the speed, 6mph is a bit on the slow side for a drive based robot.