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maddox
Joined: 21 Dec 2006
Posts: 786
Location: Belgium
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Maidstone event report.
The event started a day early (again), saturday 6 october. Around 10 am , Kos arrived. Tough As Nails would make the trip with Leo's van, Kos and Jeroen were traveling with Gravity 5.2, taking the chunnel around 5 pm.
A bit later ,Marien and Leo joined us, and we started the first round of "Van loading for advanced roboteers". After this, Bullfrog got the last bits of electronics , a touch up on the 2 CO2 bottles, and a short test. And to the van with the Green Mean Machine.
Having time to spare, we started reparing and upgrading Ltn Lee, Mariens Raptor. It got quite a beating at MMM14, cracking the 10mm polycarbonate baseplate and a series of dents and rips in the steel 20*20*2 box section. The box section got some welding and grinding , the cracked PC plate replaced by HDPE, and for giggles, added some hardox here and there.
Still time to spare, rummaging trough the stockpile here, the
idea's
started to percolate. It ended up with a drive to a nearby DIY, buying a very very very cheap anglegrinder (and a spare).
A txt message from Jeroen set us to the heavier work, and some cutting later, more stuff was loaded in the van. It seems Bullfrog is contagious.
Saturday, keeping in mind that we would start traveling around 3 am, was closed of with a spicy stew and some gentle talk.
A very early morning drive, and around 9 am local time we were setting up shop at the Maidstone leisure center.
Team RCC had 4 fights. 3 with Bullfrog, and 1 with Hannibalito 3.
The first fight with Bullfrog did show a disadvantage of a very low robot. It can slide between the steel cables of the RR arena flipper-annoying infrastructure.
After this fight, refill the bottles, remove the
LifePo4
batteries and charge those,mount everything, ready.
The second fight did show some other weak points, but it was a good fight, as can be seen
here
.
As can be seen, liquid CO2 was being vented, but it wasn't a big concern at that moment. Not a big disaster in itself....
Refill bottles, charge batteries
3th fight. Razerdave at the wheel. Unfortunatly, the flipperarm started rising slowely when I opened the first bottle gently. Closing that bottle, and into the fight.
Was a good fight, pity about the weapon as some great flips were in the offering.
Hannibalito 3. Just entered it for 1 melee. Last week it came out of the arena at MMM14, gassed up and recharged batteries at that even. At home we did grind off some sharp edges, and at Maidstone we trew it in the arena, and it went for it. No complaints, no nags, no sags. Just plain flipping anything on the flipperarm
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Sat Oct 20, 2012 1:20 pm |
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maddox
Joined: 21 Dec 2006
Posts: 786
Location: Belgium
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Long overdue report on this machine.
With one or 2 events a year, this machine isn't utilised a lot, but it got a steady series of improvements after each event.
Main changes are in drive, position of the pivots and some new ideas in pneumatics.
The drives got turned around, so the motors are in front of the wheels.
This diminishes the wheelie effect a lot.
Changing batteries from 10S 2P Zippy 4200mah LiFePo4's to 10S Zippy 8000mah LiPo gave another boost in speed and runtime.
The old airtyres replaced with a set of runflats given to us by the Sewersnake team, way back in 2004. Great change in grip.
The pivot of the arm was placed shorter to the ram, so the leverage ended up around 7-1. Disadvantage, the forces on the pivot are so great I had to mill a new mounting block and construct a brace in the monocoque frame/armor to spread out the power.
Now we run on 1 2Kg bottle.
The space gained is used by a liquid heatsink to keep the setup "unfrozen".
This year was heavy tough. First trying to get into Series 8
Here the promo film.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN7eB-amryY
When we got news we weren't selected, it went with Kan-Opener to the Russian event in Moscow.
8 shows in 3 days with machines like Beast and Ripper are tough on any machine, but except some CO2 and flipperarm issues.
Bullfrog came out in flying colors. Not only surviving, but also pinpointing some small issues on ease of maintance.
And soon after adressing the Obvious issues, we went to Portsmouth.
This was equaly heavy on the machine, and now age and wear started to show.
The wheelarmor isn't hardox, but 4mm 15Mo3 boilersteel, and that's buckling and cracking now. Needs to be replaced.
Also, the liquid heatsink doesn't have enough capacity to keep the setup from freezing, so it needs some enlargement.
But that will be for november, at earliest.
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Thu Aug 18, 2016 1:56 am |
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