Team Kaizen Build Diary

[Ocracoke]

The 3S would replace one of the 2S batteries, my series adaptor only accepts two batteries.

[McMullet]

Aha, so your 4s is 2x 2s, so you'll take out one 2s, replace it with a 3s and then that makes a 5s... It's almost too simple! :P

Hope you can bring Azriel to Robodojo! Assuming the spinners don't get it at Grantham

[James Williams]

There's no spinners at Grantham, but that floor flipper of theirs can mess you up as badly as anything. I'll try not to get us both caught on it this time Lucy.

[Ocracoke]

Hahaaaa, no worries James. Azriel shouldn't be as prone to getting stuck as The Honey Badger was, but we will see.

[Ocracoke]

RL Grantham 2019
A personal opinion first - if you are new to the whole fighting robotics scene (and by new, I mean first ever event), I do recommend Grantham. I might be a bit biased given that two years ago, Grantham was my first ever event but it is honestly a good place to be.

So Jibril and Azriel did go to Grantham. As it turns out, Jibril's Scythe issues turned out to be far less than originally feared. The ESC hadn't died and the shaft, although bent, was good enough to be remounted and allow the gears to mesh. Azriel was finished on the Wednesday before hand, having been started on the Saturday beforehand so it'd be interesting to see how a robot made out of recycled parts and bodged wiring would work.

On the Saturday, myself and fellow MW competitor in Jackpot (of Tantibus fame) arrived and after some debate, we entered into the Featherweight melees with them. Robots Live were running 2x FW melees per show so that was a potential 6 fights. For balance, we both went in with our FWs in the first melee and the MWs in the second melee.

In the first FW melee with Azriel, the question of how reliable the robot was came to mind. The answer was "not very". The first hit it took, the whole robot shut down. The rumble around it did bend the axe somewhat but was otherwise undamaged. A quick analysis afterwards revealed that several of the terminal connector blocks had come undone, including the one to the fuse. Managed to reconnect all but the fuse terminal block back together, which point blank refused to screw down properly so I pushed the wire in as hard as I could and got some tape to hold it in.

In the next melee fight (which I have a video of so I'll post that later), Jibril was up. Prior to the event starting, I had noticed that the castors at the front of the robot had been twisted, warped and eventually had come off. The drive issues I have had with Jibril means that I tried running the robot without any castors on the front but the bolts used to hold the front on dug into the arena floor and it wouldn't move anywhere.

Luckily, the quick thinking of Jackpot saved the day with some HDPE feet mounted to the front arms of the robot. This jacks the front up a little but the slipperiness of the HDPE (I think) allowed the robot to move so in it went as Jibril 1.01. In this fight, I was still trying to get to grips with controls but finally, the Scythe finally fired and hit something. In this case, it was The Plastic Fantastic but the slow motion of the Scythe meant it was unlikely to do very much. It then got stuck on the wooden floor and Jackpot took my robot for a ride, slamming it against the arena walls. I managed to fire the Scythe to free myself but the repeated ramming pulled one of the RC wires out of the drive ESC and I was done, eventually left hanging over the pit.

After this fight, Jackpot was pulled out due to a twisted gearbox and/or shaft I think, leaving Jibril as the only MW competitor in the event. Because of this, it felt "wrong" to put a single MW in with the FW when there wasn't another MW to fight with. During Sunday, I tried to organise a non-flipper HW melee with Jibril but regrettably, this didn't come off. Although there was enough HWs to do this with, the number of full pressure flippers made this impossible to organise within the constraints of the show.

For the Sunday show, a newbie to the live scene was in the pits who was with Theo and we struck up a conversation about how to build a robot. Eventually, I asked him if he wanted to have a go at driving Azriel, which he did.

The first melee was a repeat of the first fight with Azriel. The bodge I had used to fix the wiring failed and it promptly shut down. This time, there wasn't that much damage to the robot so I charged the batteries and soldered the connection (like I should have done in the first place) to the fuse.

The next melee was far better. Cullum drove Azriel again and this time, the robot went the whole three minutes. I had taken the front polycarbonate wedge plate off to see how it did with just the forks and it seemed to do OK though the 3:1 axe and the non sharpened head was a bit weak and we were nibbled by a nasty looking crusherbot from Team Cobolt. At one stage, it had been flipped over but amazingly, did managed to self right though how is a mystery to me (might have have some assistance). Still, I count this as a win in my book, even if the axe mechanism came apart at the end. Easily fixable.

The next fight I took the controls back and fought with Azriel. This fight, I managed to get the axe stuck in to a few competitors and although the robot was suffering from a terminal lack of power and the axe mechanism once again fell apart after being pushed into the big spiked roller, it was still moving at the end so again, another win in my book.

In the last fight, I put the wedge plate back on but even before the fight started, I could tell Azriel was now feeling a bit batteworn. Even with fully charged 5S batteries, it seemed to be moving slower than it was before. Even with that, it still managed to plough into a spinning BlueBoi and got stuck in for a bit before Satanix pitted it.

(I'll upload videos of a few of these fights later)

So Azriel ended up surviving 2 fights. Incidentally, that matches the best performance of The Honey Badger in a single event. From this event, I think the things to do on Azriel before a potential appearance at RoboDojo are:

• Get new drive motors
• Get replacement batteries?
• Replace the wheels
• Fit wheel guards
• Up the gearing on the axe to 6:1 or 8:1
• New axe arm
• Paint it
• Potentially a rear tail to stop the robot hopping on axe return

Jibril needs my attention first before EXR Bolton. It needs:

• New 15.75:1 gearbox fitting
• New front top panel
• Front wedge fitting

[Ocracoke]

Here is the video of the fights, apologies for the ever so slightly shoddy camera work. :P

[Ocracoke]

Jibril
The two stage gearbox is almost finished. Everything is roughly lined up so the next thing to do is secure everything own in the box, mount it and then get it affixed to the top and bottom panels. It should result in a stronger build overall and, more importantly, a faster firing Scythe with more power behind it. If I can settle down to get it measured and fitted, I can have it ready by the middle of next week for Bolton.

JPEG_20190626_175056.jpg

[team death]

I'm looking forward to seeing what speed the scythe operates at with that 15.7 ratio.
Those cim motors are not renowned for their speed but you could always over volt them
for a bit more speed and grunt if the scythe is too slow.
It's a pity we didn't get to do battle at Grantham last week but Mean Machine was very
unwell after its last fight but I'm sure they will do battle sometime.

[Ocracoke]

Yeah, it was a shame we didn't fight but indeed, The Mean Machine didn't look very well at Grantham. The Scythe is driven by a Ampflow motor, the CIM motors are part of the drive system but in any case, yes, hopefully the new gearbox should solve the firing speed issue.

[Ocracoke]

Jibril
This robot is making me work for this, it has been a hard slog to get this far.

So the gearbox was located in the robot OK but then I found the pinion gear to the output gear was sat too low so the output gear to the axe would not reach. That meant I had to rebuild the gearbox to allow it to sit higher so that it would mesh but the n the cuts I made in the polycarbonate panel needed to be extended to accommodate the new height (never build a 100mm high Middleweight again...).

So after 3 snapped jigsaw blades, an injury to the finger and a series of increasingly choice words, the panel is now cut and everything is roughly lined up to be drilled and bolted down. I need some new bolts for the Scythe head but it is finally coming together.

JPEG_20190629_163556.jpg

[McMullet]

Thanks for the event video and write up, sounds like fun times despite some minor operational hiccups!

The new axe mechanism is looking great. Those chunky gears look like they mean business. Are the plates holding the intermediate shaft/gears also going to connect the top and bottom covers together?

[Ocracoke]

Yeah, Grantham was fun. Azriel quickly became a favourite of mine during that event. Needs a more effective axe though.

Yes, they do attach top and bottom. The downside of attaching it top and bottom is that if the front panel has to come off, it is a bit more of a faff than it was previously but if I want a strong robot, it is the price. It's fine. :P

Jibril
So the Scythe motor is bolted down, the gearbox is bolted down and after a bit of a kerfluffle with gears compressing and seizing up solid, the mechanism is finally in. I've not had a chance to try the big Scythe head but the arm now swings violently. So violently, it managed to break itself on its first full power swing. It went so low, it managed to put the axe shaft underneath the first stage shaft and jam, pulling a bolt out of a bearing in the process.

I've managed to fix it so on Wednesday, I'll be refitting the Sycthe head and doing some tests, including the dreaded self-righting test with the 15.75:1 gearbox. Certainly feels like it'll do it.

[Ocracoke]

Jibril
Well... it works. :P I say "works", the second stage pinion is slipping quite badly but I think I can fix that the show. I'll be there early to get it sorted and tested in the arena.

Took it to a quiet place and tested it on a sheet of 10mm HDPE. Even at this stage with it not quite tuned in, the Scythe can puncture the sheet so when the pinion gear is lockthreaded and bolted in place... it is going to do something.

[Ocracoke]

EXR Bolton 2019 - Jibril and Azriel

The pair went to Extreme Robots Bolton. I must confess, I was a little nervous about going to the new venue but it turned out to be pretty much like Manchester, nice 'n' roomy in the pits. For me, the event was a mixed bag, rather embarrassing in places.

Saturday
I skipped the first FW melee with Azriel as I was helping put together a new entrant called Masbot (I think) with getting wheels on motors and such. Sadly, their speed controller wasn't up to scratch and the robot felt overweight for a Feather. However, I loaned out Azriel for the 2nd Featherweight Melee of the day to them and they did quite well though they weren't quite used to the controls. Took a nibble from Drumblebot bit nothing serious.

I also had to miss the first Middleweight melee with Jibril. It was loaded up, link went in, went forwards a bit and then shut down unexpectedly, right when the robot was being announced into the arena so it had to be pulled out at the last second. Turned out it was the soldering to the removable link shorting everything out.

Got it going again for the second MW melee, in a team with You Little Ripper and Audacious vs Voodoo 2, Backflip and Smash. I don't quite remember how this fight went but at one stage, the Scythe did fire and hit Backflip but was then flipped and rammed into by Smash I seem to recall. This promptly destroyed the bearings for the axe, split the front panel and ruined the Scythe ESC. It needed a rewire (and some exceptionally choice words) to make it go again.

Many thanks to Tom from Backflip for the replacement bearings.

Sunday
Still, both robots were ready for Sunday. EXR has started running warm up fights for the audience with the Feathers so I put Azriel in for this first one. Made the mistake of tangling with Barróg and got upturned. With the axe not capable of self righting the machine, it was out for the count. Azriel then went into the FW melee during the first show of Sunday and promptly "got shreked" and upturned again. This took off the 6mm polycarb wedge on the front but since it isn't a structual piece of the machine, I think I got off lightly compared to some of the others. I distinctly remember the axe head hitting the disc of Get Shrekt just before the hit, so my aim with the weapon must be getting better, right? :P

Jibril... oh boy. I got moved from Team Ripper to Team Eruption as Voodoo 2 had dropped out and Backflip wasn't attending for the Sunday, meaning I was paired with Smash. I tested the robot in the arena before the event started. The drive was working fine, nice and responsive but the axe was still slipping. Tried to jig it back together but without much luck.

For the first melee, Jibril managed to get itself stuck in the arena before the fight started. On the Saturday, I fitted some HDPE forks to the front of the machine with the intention of fitting Kaizen's old wedge on the front but with it on, it lifted the robot off the HDPE blocks fitted at RL Grantham and I wasn't willing to risk it so I left the forks on. This then dropped down into a gap in the arena and got stuck.

With the Scythe not working yet again (the motor had shifted so it wouldn't mesh), the fight was doing "OK" but then a grub screw came out of the drive, meaning I could only turn and was eventually pitted I think. The replacement bearings had twisted as well. I was not a happy bunny.

The next show, I entered Azriel again into the exhibition melee with a few others before the show started. This time, the terminal block connections came out of the axe and the drive, so no power was going to either. Easy enough job to sort but bah.

Azriel then went into the FW melee of the show and this time, it had a really good showing. I could hear Greg mentioning it a few times throughout. Eventually, I was rammed into the corner by Luna-Tic which caused one wheel to seize up for a few moments before I spun Azriel around to get it free. After the fight, Greg came over and said that until the ramming and the subsequent temporary loss of the one drive wheel, I was going to win that fight overall becuase I was ahead on Aggression and Control, so I came 2nd in that Melee. That really brightened my day, given it is a robot made from bits and pieces I had from The Honey Badger and Kaizen and was built in 3 days or so. I should put more time into improving the capability.

It was then Jibril's final run of the day. The Scythe was broken and the new grub screws (donated by Alex) had to be cut down a lot to clear the bolts holding the gear onto the wheel so it was running with half a grub screw. It went into the arena OK but shortly after the fight started, the screw went and it was back to one wheel driving. It lasted better than I was expecting but was then flipped out the arena, snapping another bearing in the process.

Despite breaking in every fight, because I was part of Team Eruption with Jibril, I picked up a team winner trophy, first one ever. To be honest, it felt a bit hollow given all the issues with the robot. I've already settled on rebuilding the Middleweight to sort out these issues once and for all. I've got some potential ideas in mind but I need time off from this robot, it has been nothing but heartache with this one. I am half decided on going to RoboDojo with Azriel, it needs a bit of work doing to it mind.

[McMullet]

Sounds like a frustrating weekend for Jibril.

Thanks for another great write up though!