And if you're unsure on any of them;

Loki - electric four-bar lifter
Hatchet - electric axe w/300W scooter motor
Galactus - touro-esque spinning drum, ~10,000rpm (maybe more)
Tiny Toon - Hardox rambot, 2010 champion

Beauty 8 - CO2 flipper
TS3 - 3.5kg beater powered by a Speed 900
Carcinus - my electric horizontal grabber. It's a pansy.

Hornet's a new one, not 100% sure on it.
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Jamie
RogueTwo Robots
www.rogue-two-robots.vze.com

With great power, comes great reliability

When do you get the bot back from the welders nick?

Steve
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Steven Martin
Twisted Constructions
http://www.botbitz.com

Hi Steve, The welder said they would start on it yesterday and they hinted at finishing it today or Wednesday. Needless to say, I am now anxiously hovering over the phone for their call.

Thanks Jamie and Dave, I have been doing my research and it looks like I got a mostly favourable draw:

Loki: its got 3mm ali armour - 'nuff said

Hatchet: thick HDPE armour that my sharp beater will dig into nicely. I also have 2 countermeasures for axes.

Galactus: Not such a good draw, this bot never seems to break in the videos. It has 20mm thick aluminium sides and my beater will still have nice sharp tips.

Tiny Toon: its an annoying wedge but I noticed in the videos that some bots out-wedge it, so there is still some hope with the new front forks that lower the beater and have a longer wedge.

Beauty 8: I never fought a CO2 flipper before; if I can't hit it from the side pretty early on, its not going to go well at all.

TS3: That's going to be interesting; TS3 does not look to be invertible in the videos and its beater looks to be a larger diameter than mine. Its probably down to who can turn faster.

All in all, I think there is a fair chance of making the cut and if not, there are some interesting side competitions.


Progress:

I was just notified that the spare weapon motor has shipped and should arrive on Friday or next Monday at the latest. That is great news as it has the stronger 8mm shaft and bearings. I can mount a larger pulley on that to increase the beater's RPM.

The first thing for today is getting the MDF prototype running and get some idea of how much energy the drive motors use up in three minutes. I cleaned up the driveway so there is a large area to drive on.

There is also a spare bearing block to make, pulleys to finish and other spare parts to prep - its going to be a LONG week!
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Australian 2015 Featherweight champion
UK 2016 Gladiator champion

This is getting exciting
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<Patrician|Away> what does your robot do, sam
<bovril> it collects data about the surrounding environment, then discards it and drives into walls

Its getting real and scary!

Progress:

Lots of little bits got finished: both the new battery packs had their connectors soldered on, all five power links had a small lanyard added to make it easy to pull them out in a hurry. The wiring loom was tested and everything powers up & spins properly on the bench. The spare weapon bearing block is almost finished, just needs boring out to size.

Oh, I also picked up my international driver's license - if you see headlines about a 100 car smash on the M6 to Birmingham, that's me at the front of it
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Australian 2015 Featherweight champion
UK 2016 Gladiator champion

TS3 is not invertible but it does have a self righter if memory serves.

I wish you luck and can't wait to see Mr Mangle in the flesh (titanium)
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For my stuff
http://bodgeitandhope.blogspot.co.uk/

Interesting - TS3 has a symmetrical shape as if it was meant to be invertible - perhaps Calum the builder had a change of heart or ran out of weight. Either way, I like the way it performs and it must be tough if it won the annhilator last year. I just found it's build log, looking thru that verrrry carefully.
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Australian 2015 Featherweight champion
UK 2016 Gladiator champion

Progress:

I knocked up a battery travel case from a very unattractive foam floor tile:



After the lid is taped down, it will be super-safe to transport.

The spare bearing block is almost done and this should be the last milling job for Mr Mangle:



While the boring head is mounted, I will try to fix up an old project with a weird problem:



This is the die grinder and mount to transform it into a toolpost grinder for the lathe. After the hole was bored out slightly over-sized, I discovered that the grinder's neck is slightly square and didn't fit . If there is time I will bore the block out a fraction more until its a proper fit.
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Australian 2015 Featherweight champion
UK 2016 Gladiator champion

Progress:

Still no sign of the welded frame , so I filled in time with some safety features:



The safety cover is just a strip of car carpet with Velcro to hold it in place. The clamp gets a good grip and is very quick to get on or off, so that's all the safety rules covered (I think).
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Australian 2015 Featherweight champion
UK 2016 Gladiator champion

Oops!

Well there definitely won't be a driving test video today. I had a quick run before setting up the camera and this happened:



MDF and glue does not a robot make . Nothing apart from the MDF was damaged and the 30 second test showed that everything is working except that one ESC needs recalibrating. The frame failure is also a good demonstration of the self aligning bearings- the beater still turns until it hits the frame.
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Australian 2015 Featherweight champion
UK 2016 Gladiator champion

Not much progress today as the frame is still not finished; the welder was supposedly working on it today but I think they forgot all about it until I rang them . The front forks are ready to pick up first thing tomorrow so the drill press will be running hot countersinking the M12 screws. There is a surprising amount of metal to remove for an M12 countersink and it could take all morning to complete.

I think the drive ESC calibration issue is now fixed; they have all been programmed identically and I reduced the dead-band to 2% for less pause between forward & reverse. Its hard to tell how well it worked with the wheels off the bench so there may be more work to do. Speaking of that, I found a spare ESC without its mounting base so there is one more milling job after all.



Spot the ugly duckling...

The spare weapon motor still hasn't landed; it might get delivered Friday but its more likely on Monday. The pulley for it is almost finished and just needs reaming for a tight press fit. There are so many parts 'almost finished' and waiting for the frame / forks / motor to turn up that Monday is going to be a 24 hour marathon before I fly out on Tuesday. The pressure is on!
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Australian 2015 Featherweight champion
UK 2016 Gladiator champion

Shiny titanium progress:

I picked up the front forks today and the waterjet shop did an excellent job, with very smooth edges and almost no undercut. The 9.7mm thick forks should last a long time but there are four sets just in case NST or other horizontal spinners get to them. The set at the top are slightly shorter to lower the weapon almost to floor level. The thinner forks at the left are specially for flippers and wedges; the forks are much longer and they are angled so the weight rests right on the tips. With all the weapon's weight resting on such a small area, the forks have a very good chance of getting under Tiny Toon and Beauty 8 IMHO.



The carbide countersink is both awesome and an epic failure at the same time; it cuts the countersinks in seconds but leaves a very rough finish.



I tried all sorts of variations to make it cut better and there was almost no difference so I am calling those huge radial ridges a design feature, That's right, the Team Overkill integrated anti-slip screw retainer - it costs a lot to look that cheap!
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Australian 2015 Featherweight champion
UK 2016 Gladiator champion

Thank goodness there isn't a like button. I would've almost worn it out reading this thread. The coarse finish on the countersinking really does look like a anti-slip feature. I mean, who ever heard of a star washer under a countersunk screw?

I hope you meet your expectations Nick. It looks amazing in every respect.

edit: take some non-ball-ended allen keys and some spare screws for those countersunks. From bitter experience the hex hole in their heads don't last too long using the ball ended drivers.

what type of countersink is it and how fast were you running it and last of what were you trying to do it in?

I get very similar effects went trying to countersink hardox.
However I only get one shot at it, if it stops cutting and glows, it's already hardened itself so hard that it eats my carbide.
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https://www.halfdonethings.com/