Team Riptide: Hardwired and other builds

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After the incoherent mess that was the old build diary, I've opted to start a new thread to encompass all my ongoing builds and whatnot, now I've got Hardwired 2, Overdrive, [next year's secret entry] and my beetles, Fhqwhgads and The Rift. This'll just cover my machines, I'm sure Sam will have his own build diaries for Hatchet and Lynx, or in other words the better robots in the team haha.

Rundown of the machines so far:

Hardwired 2



Weight: 9.4kg (featherweight)
Weapon: sick drifting skillz
Armour: all the hardox ever (6.4mm total hardox 450 steel)
Active: 2014 - Current

My first combat-ready robot, this is a 6.4mm-ish (2 layers of 3.2-4mm) welded Hardox brick, previously powered by two speed 900s. Worked decently at the 2014 championships - was very bricky but with drive problems, and control was improved a little at the 2015 championships. Eats motors like they're going out of fashion though, and for speed 900s, that's not the best thing. Planning a brushless upgrade for this one.


Overdrive



Weight: 10.3kg (featherweight)
Weapon: 2.5 kg drum at a theoretical 12000 rpm
Armour: 10/15/20mm HDPE
Active: 2015

I'll be honest, Overdrive did not do well. Maybe it was my dodgy CAD skills, maybe it was the fact it was built less than 48 hours before the event. Either way, it underperformed massively, and got one good hit on Hatchet before deciding to no longer function due to a broken motor shaft. After the weapon broke, I swapped out the drum for an altogether more fearsome weapon...

Banana Overdrive



Weight: 4.8kg (Featherweight?)
Weapon: Banana, intimidation
Armour: Banana
Active: 2015 - current?

Because inflatable fruit. Banana Overdrive was riddled with problems, just as its predecessor/alter ego had, but it has one key strength that Overdrive did not have - a banana. It didn't drive particularly nicely because I still have yet to buy a mixer and on-transmitter mixing for DX5s is dubious at best, but it captured the hearts of both roboteers and audiences alike. Well, until it deflated that is... I am thinking of pulling a Great Pumpkin with it, filling the banana full of expanding foam to get rid of the potential entanglement risk and running it as a rambot at live events - Overdrive's going to be retired in its current form and taken back to the drawing board, so the old chassis is just laying about...

Fhqwhgads



Weight: 1.1kg (beetleweight)
Weapon: Rambot
Armour: 2mm alu, 2mm hdpe, 20mm wood
Active: 2015 - current

The net result of building a robot 3 hours before an event with scraps found in your shed. Fhqwhgads is by all accounts a shambles, but rather enjoyable to drive at that - the motors and gearboxes are genuinely beefy things from a small scale tank, and the armour lasted surprisingly well against spinners and the like. Admittedly didn't get to fight all of them in working order, but I feel slightly confident now in the design and I'll be running it again now. Even if it is the size of a moon.

Will be updating this imminently with the post-champs report and new stuff, just at a time when it's not 2AM haha

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Slightly late post-Champs update
(hey it even rhymes)

Everything considered, I think this championships went really well considering Overdrive was still being finished less than 10 hours before getting in the car to drive up to go to the Gadget Show. Massive thanks to Harry there for firstly putting up with my nonsense and secondly actually building a half decent machine in about 48 hours or so. Even if I did end up breaking it... but we'll get to that later!

Fight 1: Overdrive vs Hatchet vs Satanix 1.666
Loss: 1 point

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOs1x9v4Hwg

Well, it worked at least. The disc got up to about 60% throttle in total (wanted to take it easy just in case there were issues) and a pretty nice hit on Hatchet ended up highlighting my dodgy engineering skills. Namely, I hadn't aligned the front panel properly and it sort of came off. The machine itself didn't break, all that went was the weapon belt which I'd not done properly anyway and of course the front plate - I tapped out because the innards of the machine were all exposed as a result of the panel coming off, which included a receiver, two ESCs and a pair of lipos. Not entirely sure I'd like to risk it at that point haha. Still, got a pretty damn nice hit on Hatchet, flipped it over and caused two nice chunks in the front scoop at that!

Fight 2: Overdrive vs Beauty 8 vs Satanix 1.666
2nd - 2 points

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dfTpa61FZk

Not much to say here really, Beauty 8 flipped Satanix out then Overdrive almost out, but it bounced into the pit. It looks like the hit I get around 9 seconds in or so snapped the weapon motor shaft and that's when it stopped working. It wasn't spinning up to full anyway so there was probably an issue right from the start, but there you go! Also note how slowly Overdrive was well, driving - that's partly due to dodgy mixing on the DX5e, for some reason it was going insanely slow and I remedied this for later fights by just not using any mixing. Potential upgrades include a more powerful drive and an external mixer so shouldn't be a problem in the future.


Fight 3: Banana Overdrive vs Richie vs Twisted Sister
2nd - 2 points

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTCqjYDOImc

It begins...
At this point in the competition, I was going to just drop out entirely I'll be honest - no working weapon and a drivetrain which wasn't much good for pushing isn't the best recipe. Instead, it gained an inflatable banana (courtesy of Jamie) and it was a real laugh to drive around! In this fight I appear to lose one side of the drive, all that happened is a screw came loose and got caught in the plastic colson hubs, which is what stopped it in the end! Unfortunately when Richie turned the robot over, guess which wheel it ended up on?

Fight 4: Banana Overdrive vs Little Nipper vs Rabid M8
2nd - 2 points

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFFzrxFTp7E

Well this went roughly how you'd expect. Two machines with big spiky claws, one robot with a piece of inflatable fruit in place of a weapon. Got a few holes punched in the lid (Nipper is scary lol) but no major damage. Even if Nipper missed everything important by mere millimetres - I held my speed controllers together with electrical tape and there was a small scuff on the electrical tape where Nipper's claw had been resting on them but didn't have enough depth in the crush to get them... which was rather lucky! Nipper also managed to miss my right hand drive motor by less than a millimetre too... Oh and the banana got swiss cheese'd by the end of it, which must come as a total surprise to everyone haha.

After that, Overdrive didn't go into anymore fights - instead, its electronics were put into Hardwired 2 to run that in whiteboards which on 3s and with new tyres actually ran quite nicely. The motors from that are now going to a new home so I can be inspired/forced to run brushless like I've been saying for literally a year now. Overdrive's maybe getting upgraded to also run actual brushless this time instead of brushless-wait-they-don't-work-I'll-just-use-drills-instead. Oh and 4wd with big beefy rock crawler wheels. I'm thinking of upgrading the latter so I have something to use at next year's championships, then work on the brand new machine, just so I have a fallback!

All in all though, great event - extremely enjoyable as always and I've learned yet more things for upcoming projects which is always a bonus too! Focus for the short term will be on beetleweights (not another featherweight event for presumably another year now) but I'm building early this time, another thing that I've learned is good haha

[daveimi]

Was nipper powered by hydraulics or a lecky actuator?

[harry hills]

Hydraulics.

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It runs on the ruined hopes and dreams of Banana Overdrive.

And also a very nice hydraulic setup, big ol' brushless on the pump. Did some pretty nasty damage to say the least!

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Was doing a bit of lurking on Youtube (as you do at 20 past 2 in the morning) and found this video courtesy of Peter (Scruffy/Night Fury)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9JNXQcGcnM

It's the 'free kick' battle as I remember it. Or the 'someone please break the rest of Hardwired, because I accidentally all the electronics' one. Took the most amount of damage in that one fight as it did all championships, but it still all amounted to a few chips out of the armour and a big scuff on the back from Shard... Oh well, Round 3 next event!

Also on a side note, Shiny is actually really scary, I know Nick was taking it to see how it got on, would call that a successful series of tests!

[overkill]

Ahh, good times! Next year I definitely need to try out the magnetic hold-down, that gyro dancing was really annoying. Thanks for finding the video

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Yeah it did look to be a pain, but I guess that's the perks of having a vertical spinner haha! Hopefully shouldn't have as many problems with it myself with Overdrive's redesign...

Definitely should enter Shiny next year though, really quite an impressive machine - Mr Mangle is also but Shiny seems even more vicious by comparison! As for the magnetic hold down, depending on whether the motors like the constant downforce or not, I suppose you could use some electromagnets if you can fit any in, so that you can activate them when it gyros, and any other time it's not causing unnecessary stress on the drive? I did have an idea once (for when Archangel was a thing) to use one either side with a distance sensor so they activated automatically when the machine was more than 10mm extra off the ground, but implementing it would have been a pain given my lack of technical ability haha

[overkill]

Shiny will definitely be the main bot for next year (unless I come up with something better by then). Electromagnets are much less efficient than NIB super magnets; did you see the tiny magnet modules under Shard? They weigh very little but can have a huge hold-down effect. That tilt idea has gotten me thinking; rather than activate electromagnets, I could use a tilt sensor to cut the weapon power when the bot starts to lift off the floor - that wouldn't be too hard to do at all.

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Excellent stuff! Would you be bringing your new horizontal too, or just keeping it as one bot next year?

Yeah, there's the thing, they're not as good but you can turn them on or off as you need them... That'd be an interesting idea though to have a tilt sensor, depends how responsive the weapon is to the motor being turned off though, could be something that'd work well with a brake to slow the weapon faster to stop it gyro-ing too much, though I also realise brakes and spinning weapons don't often get on so well haha

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Also, whilst I'm at it

Fhqwhgads gets slightly legit

So, I'm upgrading Fhqwhgads almost completely for some reason, it's now getting 5mm HDPE as a chassis, and these for drive http://www.hobbyking.co.uk/hobbyking...er_2400kv.html on a 6:1 ratio single stage planetary gearbox (first stage of a drill). Probably about a 70mm-ish wheel on those, and 3s for a theoretical top speed of 40mph, which seems about right for a beetle.

In all seriousness it's idiotic, but I have the motors lying about and they're not quite powerful for a featherweight I think, so why not! Also keeps in with the tradition (?) of mostly making Fhqwhgads out of bits lying about in my shed. Just need to find a couple of magnets now (which I'm fairly sure I have somewhere) and should be sorted. Will probably need a gyro as well, but I'll get to that eventually!

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Overdrive

Overdrive last year was a pretty decent machine I think, hampered by a few last minute construction issues because everyone knows the optimum time for robot building is <48 hours before the thing's supposed to fight. I was going to sell the parts on and start afresh, however issues with postage and not being able to get them to where they needed to go, I've decided to keep and revamp Overdrive and give it another shot at the title.

So, first port of call was un-superquickbuilding the thing. Don't get me wrong, it worked but I could see where the refinements and improvements needed to be made (more on that another time) but the core of it is that it's going to now run (hopefully) 4wd from a pair of Ranglebox Saturn-16s and 775 motors. Oh and some nice lasercut panels.



These are the ones that I had lasercut originally, then forgot bolts exist. The drum therefore was about 10mm too wide to actually fit the panels... To remedy that, countersunk bolts in the disc may be the best option. It'd also look pretty nice too I think, along with paint that isn't orange.

Here's the slightly reworked Cad


Not a whole lot different on the outside, the back end is angled to stop it getting stuck and will probably try doing something to the sides too but that's about it. Don't think I ever posted the cad in full however for Mk1, so there you go!

Another interesting thing here too -


Seems like an axe fits surprisingly well aesthetically, and I'd probably be able to get the reduction in. Not an immediate focus but wouldn't need much modification at all to get an axe on it for non-spinner events and/or whiteboards...

[overkill]

Mmm, tasty! The only problem I can see with that is maybe inverted driving? Other than that, the design looks great.

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Thanks! The inverted driving is a big 'maybe' - according to the Cad it should do it, but I'm hoping that the disc will help knock it over if its got enough torque.

Or just hope it doesn't get flipped haha!

[overkill]

I figured it might drive inverted but its hard to tell from the CAD angle. Some things I have noticed from other vertical disks: most disks can self-right if the disk is already spinning when it gets inverted. Few disks can self-right if the disk is stopped - start-up torque isn't the best feature of brushless motors. Disks with surrounds (thinking of the VD series of bots) almost always self-right.

How about adding a pair of HDPE extensions to the top of the disk support arms? I think that with some experimenting you will find a hight where the motor can get the disk up to speed and where the disk has enough engagement with the floor to pop Overdrive back on its wheels. The extensions would weigh very little so its well worth trying.