Team Kaizen Build Diary

[Ocracoke]

The gears in the carrier themselves are fine, it is the actual axe motor gear that is slipping. I think what has happened is when I drilled the holes for the motor face bolts I drilled too big a hole because I couldn't line them up on the HDPE sheet (I was lacking a pillar drill at the time, which I now have).

The quick and dirty solution is to slide in a bit of 2mm HDPE underneath the motor to raise the front of the motor up to mesh properly. Longer term is to rebuild the carrier entirely as described.

The drive motors, I think either the motor or the wheel itself is out of position. I suspect the latter but will measure.

[McMullet]

Sounds like a frustrating day out Lucy, glad you still have a plan and the enthusiasm to iron out those last few mechanical issues!

[Ocracoke]

Don't get me wrong, I was grateful for having been to an event at all, the robots just underperformed. If I can get the time, I'll try to go to Dojo with both to get them properly tested. That being said, we are planning to move house fairly soon here to somewhere with a proper shed area so I don't have to haul these things up and down the stairs.

[Ocracoke]

As is customary for this thread, here is the review of Team Kaizen's performance in 2021.

Ramu/Osu/Ikari/Amai
The ants, accompanied by a new robot from a first time roboteer called Ghosty, did reasonably well considering the competition at BotFest 4. For 2022, I'll be retiring Amai 1.1 and building a replacement robot which interestingly enough my Dad suggested the design for when he came to BotFest 3. Ikari will also be rebuilt to version 3.1 to address some of the issues in the 3.0 version.

The Honey Badger
The experience at Rampage in Chatham was a brusing encounter but fun nonetheless. The drive motors in particular are completely knackered and need replacing along with the body which I am not happy with overall. I'll be looking to make the 4.2 version more compact and with stronger/faster motors and better protection around the wheels as a whole. The flipping arm mechanism though I am really pleased with and may carry that forwards to other robots.

Azriel
I must confess I wasn't happy with Azriel's performance at Robots Live! in Crawley. The axe worked well enough sure but there were/are a lot of build issues that often meant an early retirement from the melee matches and wouldn't stand up in a competition match. I had originally been planning to completely rebuild Azriel into a 2.0 version but I am instead going to concentrate on the electrics for a 1.1 version (which is where the majority of the problems are) and tidy the whole wiring loom up so that it'll be less likely to shutdown during a fight.

Jibril
Like Azriel, Jibril didn't perform as well as I would have hoped in Crawley. It moved OK but the gears in the drive need replacing and the axe needs retiming to ~25:1 with proper independent mounts. The armour held up fine but one of the side arms became bent from being flipped and landing awkwardly. If being totally honest, I think the main issue with Jibril is the baseplate where it isn't stiff enough. I will see if I can add in a brace for the 2.1 version.

So with that all out of the way, I won't be able to work on the robots until I've moved house as practically all my machining gear and robots themselves are in storage at the moment. This also means that I can't work on the BotFest arena until the whole process is done and that could be a long, long while (as in late spring time) but the process will be worth it as we are looking to move to somewhere with a garage and a extra special something. I am hoping to find the time to edit the BotFest 4 video this week to finally have that released.

[Ocracoke]

So moving house... yeah. That has pretty much stalled and has left me bereft of most of my tools and equipment for building robots as they are in storage, as is Azriel and Jibril. So big brain move, let's rebuild The Honey Badger! In all seriousness, it needed it after Chatham and dammit, I want to go back to roboteering.

The Honey Badger
If you recall, The Honey Badger 4.1 was at Rampage in Chatham and it did... urm... about as well as you might expect against some really top notch competition. It left the event with broken motors and a really chewed up rear end. Since then, I've not touched it for various life related reasons.

Anyway, cut to this week and with one week left to go until the deadline to prove it was mobile, I found the motiviation to go and do it. I was wavering on wherever or not I was going to drop out but eh, better to try and break it than to never build it in the first place.

This time, I decided to use a set of new ESCs and Motors from BBB since I get the feeling that it is more in line with what people in the BW scene are using in terms of a brushed setup. However, I did fluff up and didn't get the right sized screws so will need to repurpose some copper pipe clips for motor clamps. Not a big job in of itself. I also had to try and head the HDPE to straighten out the damage. Lacking in a heat gun, I ended up using the hob in the kitchen and my hand wrapped in a towel to bend it back straight. Kids, do NOT do this. I am a idiot so learn from my mistakes.

Anyway, the robot is now disassembled in the lounge with the new electronics soldered in. For the 4.1.1 version, I'll be replacing the wheel guards with solid ones because the hinged ones were terrible and will also be adding some Nylon studs to the back so it cannot get beached on its back again but otherwise will look broadly the same. I'll also glue the tyres to the wheels properly so they don't come off. I would have liked to change the wheels entirely but sadly no.

Also, that front sheet of thin HDPE is gone. It made the robot look quite unwieldy and it was a last minute hack which didn't work.

So here it is, very much a work in progress! I hope to have it running tomorrow night.
20220207_231809.jpg

[Shooty]

Upgrades are already looking pretty good Lucy! The BBB drive kit should certainly give you a good boost in power and reliability. The nylon studs also sound like a good idea, may be worth doing something similar to the sides as well (or possibly some form of roll hoop).

Was also looking back at the fights from Chatham, and I noticed you ended up losing a fight due to your link getting hit. Given the height of Honey Badger, it may be a good idea to move the link up to the top of the robot? Should greatly reduce the odds of it getting knocked out at least.

[Ocracoke]

Thanks Eoin!

The nylon studs also sound like a good idea, may be worth doing something similar to the sides as well (or possibly some form of roll hoop).

In practice, the wheel guards seem to negate the need for this on the side but will check after the rebuild.

Given the height of Honey Badger, it may be a good idea to move the link up to the top of the robot? Should greatly reduce the odds of it getting knocked out at least.

I can't get the link moved in this iteration of the build but the wiring does need to be overhauled. Will be for 4.2. For this, I might just add the studding around the bottom of the body around the link to make it harder for other robots to reach.

Fitted the motor clamps last night from some scrap polycarbonate I had and did the power on test. ESCs make a noise, weapon ESC lights up... receiver doesn't. Now, I know the new ESCs are OPTOs so they don't power the receiver but the weapon ESC should as I think that has a inbuilt BEC. I had to resolder the positive wire on that so I wonder if it is a bad connection there. I tried two different, known working receivers to no avail.

I've got a couple of spare ESCs which should work - will see what is going on.

[McMullet]

Lacking in a heat gun, I ended up using the hob in the kitchen and my hand wrapped in a towel to bend it back straight. Kids, do NOT do this. I am a idiot so learn from my mistakes.

That sounds unpleasant! Hope you weren't too badly injured.

Looks like a tidy job on the internals there, hope it all comes together and you get it running soon. Sounds likely it's something straightforward like the BEC power wire like you say.

Fingers crossed the house move gets back on track too!

[Ocracoke]

The plastic was warm but nothing untowards. The fumes though were very prevelant. Many thanks for the kind comments on the tidyness... had to undo most of it to get the clamps to clamp. ^^;

Yeah, gonna redo my soldering on the BEC wire first and see what happens then. It'd be very unfortunate if I had two dead receivers but as I say, they were both known working from Shu! and older iterations of The Honey Badger.

House move is back on track yeah, shouldnt be too long now.

[Ocracoke]

I think I am going to have to pull out of Bristol.

Tried resoldering the BEC wire on the weapon ESC - no dice. So I put in the Sabretooth controller, that worked but only one of the two drive motors work. I pulled the new ESCs from the motors and put the original Sabretooth controller back in. Again, the same side spins, the other does not. Pulled the motor, redid the soldering on the motor, nothing. Took the motor, plugged it into a good battery, nothing.

To say I am disappointed is an understatement. I'll have another go tomorrow when I've got a clearer head on this but I am elsewhere over the weekend and the deadline to get this shown to be mobile is Sunday. So yeah...

[Shooty]

Would it be worth getting an independent BEC to provide a constant 5V to the receiver? That's what I've done for all of my BW builds, and they're dirt cheap on hobbyking or similar stores. I know BBB asks for proof of mobility, but if the BEC is the only issue, you may be able to just send them a DM and explain your situation.

[Ocracoke]

No, it isn't the BEC as I mention. The physical motor itself does not spin when plugged directly into a battery.

[Shooty]

Ah right, I see now. Well if the motor doesn't spin when plugged directly into a battery, either the motor is dead or the gearbox has seized. Only thing I could think of would be to get a new motor so.

[Ocracoke]

The motor itself isn't seized, I can spin it freely. Trouble is, the lead time on getting a new motor from BBB is 1-2 days and I am not able to work on the robot over the weekend. Now, I can demonstrate mobility (loosely) and then send a note to BBB stating that I'll get a new drive motor from them but that feels very out of spirit of what was requested.

[Mr Manuva27]

I'd say the spirit is intended to be proof that you've actually started the build, which you have. If you can get some movement before Sunday, I wouldn't give up hope yet.

Hope you can get it sorted. Would be good to see you and Honey Badger there.