Team Kaizen Build Diary

[Ocracoke]

Aye but then again, it was just good to be back in the scene and to see everyone again after over a year of not being able to compete. v4.2 will have new 22mm drive motors, new wheels to avoid the tyre coming off again and some studs in the back to prevent it landing on its back the way it did.

Also planning the return of Shu! as something different.

[Ocracoke]

Hmm, I guess it depends on wherever you find working to the BW scale easier than the FW scale. I find working on FWs easier than BWs simply because of size of components but then again, I've gotten better at building over the years so I guess it is down to preference. A BW is definitely easier to manage size wise.

what changes to shu are you planning?

Shu! is going to be fully rebuilt for its v3.0 build. Gonna try and aim for a 15cm square machine with 8mm hollowed out HDPE bulkheads.

[McMullet]

That's a tough fight card. 0-3 looks bad but great job making it through all the fights!

[Ocracoke]

Aww thanks Sam. Having rewatched the fights, its simply too slow and, being honest, big for what it is. I don't think the size is the problem but yes, definitely new motors and mend the damage. It'll live again

[Craaig]

You had a super tough heat - hell, I felt like I had a tough heat. You held up awesomely!

[Ocracoke]

Awww, thanks Craig! It was a tough heat, wasn't it? Still, will improve for next time :P In AW news...

Ramu
Ramu had been on the backburner for a long while as I wanted a clear evening to replace the malfunctioning NanoTwo v2 with a v3 model. That was tonight whilst fighting a bad head. After quickly putting the motors on the new ESC and soldering the ESC to the switch and battery, it bound fine... and then appeared to burn out on me.

20210712_191438.jpg

I say appeared. After a bit of time away from it, I took another look at the wiring, tested that the switch wasn't what was broken with a LED and found that the positive wire had come away from the NanoTwo board. In order to get to it, I had to remove the heatshrink and after burning my fingertip, managed to get the positive wire back on the pad. A rebind later and finally, it's alive again.

So, unofficially, it is now dubbed Ramu 2: Whoops, I voided the warranty. If I find the time, I'll repaint the robot and replace the worn Polycarbonate on the front.

[Ocracoke]

Been a while huh? After a fairly good performance at BotFest 4, I needed to take some time off from full on robot combat. Not to go into too much detail but 2021 has been dogged by persistent health issues which has meant I've not had time to really concentrate on anything, let alone full on robot combat but I am now in a position where I can resume where I left off.

Jibril
I am committing to getting the darn video done of it because although there are up and coming changes, it is for the most part finished barring some last minute machine work. Amazingly, the Scythe-Axe works first time and it is very, very satisifying to see and hear it work. That being said, the 39.88:1 gearbox feels now to be a little too geared for my liking so I am going to experiment with a change to 25:1.

My hope is to get into Robots Live! in October with this thing and finally fight some HWs or MWs properly.

Kaizen
I've been planning this one for a while and am nearing the end of the design phase. I am going to stick with it being an axebot (I had planned a front hinge flipper originally) and have most of the parts here to construct with. The design contraints of the transport I have for this robot means its going to be fairly small for a HW and like Jibril will need to be capable of being dissassembled into smaller parts but I think I've nearly nailed it all down.

Azriel
I really feel for this machine. It was rebuilt a while ago to the 1.0 specification it is in now and it hasn't gone into any robotic events since. Since now I have a proper pillar drill, I am going to be doing some lightening work on the axe mechanism and see about improving the overall durability of the robot given some parts are knocking on 4 years old now.

[McMullet]

Sorry to hear you've not been well Lucy, hope things are or soon get better.

Sounds like you have some good stuff planned, look forward to seeing the Jibril video!

[Ocracoke]

Haha, thanks Sam. I hope to have something up after Robots Live in Crawley, still waiting on the BotFest video as well.

Both Jibril and Azriel are ready to go to the event. Batteries are fully charged and while Azriel is in ready to fight condiion, Jibril needs a bit of finessing at the event itself before it can go in. For some bizzare reason, the bolt holes for the lid have managed to fall out of alignment. My main concern is the axe ESC playing up again but we'll see. My friend and I will be trying to get to the event early as to to get the robot as ready as it can be.

[Ocracoke]

Jibril and Azriel - Robots Live! Crawley 2021
It was great seeing everyone again after so long. Turned up at the event a little later than I wanted to but we got there with plenty of time to spare to get ready. Also had the pleasure of meeting up with Darryl Fountain at the event (apologies if I got the name wrong). His dad, Brain Fountain, was one half of Team Mace from the original run of Robot Wars.

I am also now convinced I am in someway cursed with Robots Live! events and being utterly mangled at those events.

Saturday
Saturday was a FW only match for me as I wanted to hold on using Jibril until a possible MW only fight the next day. It was also the day that Robots Live debuted their new FW house robot which is a dragon with a clampy claw. The fight started OK but as soon as it got involved in a brawl, Azriel just... stopped dead. That new house robot then proceeded to put me in the mangling thing at the back of the arena which immediately tore off the rear of the robot and pulled out the wiring with it.

I think what happened there was a battery wire was knocked out of a terminal block which caused the whole robot to shutdown.

Sunday
With confirmaton that there was going to be an unofficial Middleweight championship between Backflip, Audacious and Jibril between the two shows, I held back on putting Jibril in for melees with Heavyweights and focused on Azriel. For the second FW melee fight, I asked my friend to drive and while he lasted longer than I did in the first melee, a strike to the lid caused the whole machine, again, to shut off. This time it was a snapped wire from the fuse to the rest of the robot.

The third FW melee I resumed control and this time, whilst Azriel managed to keep going for most of the right until the battery wire popped out again and another motor wire snapped (many thanks to Nat for helping with that, I was rushing to get it sorted), we found that while Azriel cannot self right when the axe is retracted, it can self right when the axe is in the fired position and it retracts back. So that is nice to know. :P

Between the two shows, there was an hour's break and that was when we had our unofficial championship fight. To put it bluntly, Jibril 2.0 preformed very badly. The axe was ponderous and started slipping again despite being held down with a U bolt. By the time it was flipped upside down, the axe simply had no power to self right with. The drive on one side was also not meshing properly and all in all, it was a very poor showing. That rather soured my mood for the 3pm show because all the time and effort put into the robot it simply hadn't worked. The damage was relatively minor otherwise.

Back to the Featherweight fights, the fourth fight Azriel was flipped out of the arena I think with a wheel coming off and the fifth fight, it was flipped up and over but the batteries weren't fully charged and the axe wasn't in the right position so ended up beached.

6 fights, 6 losses. I must admit, I was pretty upset with the performance of both machines. Azriel has major endurance issues and Jibril... well yeah. The 2.1 version of Jibril is going to have a change in the reduction ratio of the Scythe-Axe and the axe carrier rebuilt so that it doesn't move about as much. Azriel I was initially thinking about a complete rebuild to 2.0 but I might just rewire the whole robot, up the ratio to 6:1 on the axe, switch to a 6S LiPo for a bit more oomph and finally use the metal axe that Jamie cut for me a while go.

[team death]

Ouch ! 6 out of 6 losses Lucy after all that preparation I dot blame you for been upset, of course

winning is not everything, well it is for some but generally it's not always achieved.

My view is as long as you entertained at a big event you are still a winner and I guess your Robot

been grabbed by a house Robot and put through the Mangler did the trick and I'm sure there were

a few more highs when you look back.

Why not try getting to a few smaller events so iron out the creases and find out what works and what

doesn't ?.

[Ocracoke]

It wasn't the fact that I didn't win, it was more a case of the robots underperforming. I have no problem (usually :P) with losing if the fight is good. For example, Extreme Robots Cheltenham 2019 was a glorious event for me despite the MW failing because of a battery wire failure because finally, after a year of that iteration of the MW failing because of stupid things like axe shafts twisting et al, it finally worked and presented at least a credible opposition in the arena. As you say though, I do look back at the event with the first fight with a smile because it just seems to be a thing for me to have my robot destroyed at a Robots Live event. As I put it to Greg, "at least I bring entertainment value."

Why not try getting to a few smaller events so iron out the creases and find out what works and what doesn't?

The issue is for me is that there are no "small" MW or FW events I can easily attend. RoboDojo is on the other side of the country so even going to that is a whole day excursion and when I am committed to being elsewhere on a Sunday or a Saturday I just can't go. I don't have a driveway or even a relatively suitable garden to trial these with properly and obviously, testing in a public space (with the MW especially) is a big no-no.

I may end up building a testing arena for these for use at BotFest events and othes because this lack of testing is getting to be a real pain.

[Team Helix]

Hi lucy, don't be down harted. You were super unlucky i kept trying to get you back over but as hard as i tied you always seem to end up upside down. Sorry.

[Ocracoke]

No worries Tom, I know you tried and thanks for that. One day, I will get Jibril working properly and we'll have to have a grudge match

Speaking of, I am going to order some sheets of Nylon and some more U-bolts and rebuild the axe carrier with the motor supported properly. The change in gearing means the carrier needs to be rebuilt anyway so hopefully the change means it'll look less ungainly. I'll make some plates for the drive gears as well so they'll mesh properly.

[Team Helix]

Just make sure you keep the shafts of the gears solid/ fixed and you should have no issues