Team Darklight - Sawcerer (Featherweight overhead saw)

[firefly1]

Drumroll 2: The Druming

[qbnut]

What's changing for Mk II?

A long, long list:

• The drive
  • It's way too fast, even rate limited to 40% as it was at 'dojo
  • The ground clearance is dreadful, which is why I got beached against Telekinesis and the fight had to separate us and restart. It looked fine in CAD...
  • Blue castor wheels provide next to no grip on the 'dojo floor. Blue castors seem great in principle, but they aren't, and it's clear with that much power in the drive, all it did was slide and drift. The rest of my featherweight robot fleet will be switched to an alternative tread system as well.
  • The motors were very, very toasty after every fight, so needs some better way to dissipate the heat
  • It needs to be protected in a way that that wheels can't simply be sheared off due to the kinds of robots we have on the UK featherweight circuit right now.
  
  
• The weapon
  • I got the pulley distances calculated for a belt size that I couldn't buy when I came to actually purchase parts. I therefore added a belt tensioner, which didn't help and just got incredibly hot in the fights. Lesson learned, purchase the pulleys and belts first and design around them, not the other way round.
  • There's a serious lack of torque in the saw. It's fine for HDPE, but little else. And everybody, knowing there's now a saw on the scene, had alternative lid configurations made of Hardox. So it needs to be able to damage those.
  • I added a slip into one of the pulleys but all that did was smoke belts rather than cut in (see if you can spot it smoking whilst I'm in one of the corners in the Telekinesis fight)
  • The saw blade I chose to use was crap for Aluminium and Steel. It was a general purpose blade and frankly, a bit rubbish.
  
  
• The arm
  • Is not Drumroll / Revolver proof
  • Is far, far too weedy. It needs to be able to take a hit like that and maybe not be perfect afterwards, but at least still work to the end of the fight
  • Has that big MOD2 gear in it that makes up for 1.5kg of the total weight. It needs weight saving far, far more
  
  
• The pulley system
  • Don't use bushings for this application. Because they were pulled both towards the weapon motor and the saw at two angles, all that did was cause extra friction. Bearings are the way to go, so new pulleys needed

There's more, but that's the main crux of it

[Eidg]

If you choose a higher gear ratio for the drivetrain, the bot will be slower and the motors might run cooler.