For testing, octagonal will show how much aerodynamic efficiency can be improved and the foam is probably a disposable item that will have to be replaced every match or two - no point in making it perfect if it only lasts 3 minutes!
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Australian 2015 Featherweight champion
UK 2016 Gladiator champion

Yeah but the foam won't look as cool…before or after the match.
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Miles Blow - Julie Pitts
www.mulesfilm.com.au
www.wombokforest.com.au

-Pickasso- Vivid Sportsman champion 2015

Progress:

The foam filler is working out surprisingly well . The 50mm thick sheet has enough material to make quite a few fillers and the thickness means it can be shaped into an almost perfect cylinder:



Rough-cut on the bandsaw




After 5 minutes with a micro razor plane.

The blocks were dead easy to form into shape using a simple woodworking tool. I will cut a filler block to fit in the middle of the beater and then glue all three pieces with urethane wood glue, which has really good gap filling properties. The only problem is that the glue takes four hours to cure, so after the first filler gets broken, it can only be replaced overnight.
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Australian 2015 Featherweight champion
UK 2016 Gladiator champion

New benchmark for fugliness

The foam filler is glued in place and ready to test - after my eyes recover from looking at that ugly mess:





The foam is really solid, no movement at all now that its glued inside the beater. I hope it stays there; if the foam gets sucked in between the beater and the frame, it not going to end well. I'm going to be standing well back for the next spin-up test!
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Australian 2015 Featherweight champion
UK 2016 Gladiator champion

that is some next level stuff! next you will be trying to reduce drag on the body

I'm sure one of the disk spinners will help nick add some speed holes
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Mechanical engineers build weapons, civil engineers build targets

No testing today - I laid more flooring at the new house, which was way less fun. I finally found the programmer for the weapon ESC and set the spin-up time from 3 sec down to 1 sec - that should make thing more exciting
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Australian 2015 Featherweight champion
UK 2016 Gladiator champion

I wondered when someone was actually going to try this. I was going to put on my single tooth but the asymmetric design made it impractical.
It will be interesting to see how much of an improvement it makes over a regular whisk.

quote:

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I'm sure one of the disk spinners will help nick add some speed holes

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Foam Filler Fiasco

The foam beater filler didn't go so well; I decided it would be smart to test the filler before getting up close & personal with test instruments. As the video shows, it was a good call!

http://www.nswrfc.org/Nick/Foam.mp4

The video is 240 FPS and everything is still a blur. I don't know what the final RPM was, possibly a little more than usual and there was definitely much less air movement than usual. Now its back to scraping off all the glue from the beater .
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Australian 2015 Featherweight champion
UK 2016 Gladiator champion

still looks great flying apart

_________________
Miles Blow - Julie Pitts
www.mulesfilm.com.au
www.wombokforest.com.au

-Pickasso- Vivid Sportsman champion 2015

Seems the forces were just to great for the glue to withstand. I wonder if I could 3D print something strong enough... though we all know how that turned out last time so... hmmmm.

I'm all for 3D printed parts but something that large would have to be printed with a very low fill or it would weigh too much. With a low fill factor, the strength will go right down and you are back to square one.

The foam weighed 101 grams without the glue and that's all the spare weight I have to work with, so using metal or stronger plastic wasn't really an option. One option I could have tried was sewing the foam parts together with kevlar thread. I have some .5mm thread with a 70Kg breaking strain - 10 loops of that through the foam would have really helped!

I am looking thru build logs to find a drum design that will work in my bots; I don't really want to go to all the extra trouble of fabricating a drum but it has major benefits.
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Australian 2015 Featherweight champion
UK 2016 Gladiator champion

i think your weapon as is will pack more than enough punch.
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Miles Blow - Julie Pitts
www.mulesfilm.com.au
www.wombokforest.com.au

-Pickasso- Vivid Sportsman champion 2015

Ready to Battle!

Mr Mangle is 100% finished and ready for the event; from now its just testing/ practise and maybe making a few spare parts. I made a new top cover and painted the beater today, then had another weigh-in. Mr Mangle is juuuust under the limit with the new 3.7AH battery and with the smaller pack, there is enough weight for a thicker top to protect against axes.


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Australian 2015 Featherweight champion
UK 2016 Gladiator champion