Team Picus build diary

[terminaldamage]

All those lovely robots to look at, and the only thing I notice is that you have the same Reader's Digest Altas of the World that I have at home

[joey_picus]

I like it, it's from 1989 and still has the U.S.S.R., Yugoslavia, East Germany, South Yemen and Zaire in it also makes an excellent background for robot pictures, hehe...

POST-AWS UPDATE
Considering how worried I was about robots not making it out in one piece, I ended up exceeding all my expectations ^^ Catatonia won the fleaweights, making it - as Dave Weston (I think?) pointed out on the day - the most successful fleaweight of the nascent FWS era, although victory did come at a cost...as can be seen here, the wheel is basically split into several pieces after Fleabite and I am now thinking, considering the abundance of parts I have, that a rebuild is if not imminent now inevitable.


Jigsaw...I had been worried that the design was no longer competitive, and had maybe played to that by not putting any acetate on (which probably ultimately cost me at least one fight) but even without acetate and with some very nervous driving it finished in the top 8 of 69, and not due to any easiness in the draw either as it fought Variant *gulp* and my own inexplicably successful clusterbot Something (which with Harry Hills' excellent command of Catatonia and Jim Blunden being constructed of pure awesome as ever, had me on the ropes more than once). There's definitely a few AWSes left in the current design, and I plan on taking it with me to Canada and seeing if it can replicate its success there, should I find a 150g competition across the Atlantic ^^


The Hurting surprised me most of all, as I had honestly expected it to eat its own armour and/or be forcibly deconstructed in a very expensive manner, yet not only did it avoid hitting its own armour (although the bolt at the top left wasn't so lucky - next time I'll remember to use countersunk ones!) it chewed up other robots rather impressively, and the problem I actually have is one of how to actually drive a highly destructive spinner for maximum effect, as I have absolutely no clue and thought full throttle was either too slow or too fast for the whole of the event...


Overall I was really happy with how I did, even with the two that didn't really do much (Hide and Seek didn't fight due to incompetence, and Head over Heels was too quick for me to control) and I have a few things to do, namely:

> Rebuild Catatonia, probably with higher power motors and better wheels within the same form factor (the armour may also be reused as it's mostly intact)
> New armour and armour attachment brackets for The Hurting - I am considering something other than the thin 0.5mm aluminium I ended up using (due to weight issues) but I need stiffness combined with low weight and the ability to bend and work it, so finding a different material may be hard.
> My main priority though will probably be related to no individual robot, but to my transmitter - I'd like to rehouse the DX7 electronics entirely within something different for ease of use and durability, which should be...i-interesting

As most people will be aware I'm heading to Canada for a year, and so will miss the next few World Series, but hopefully I'll be able to keep my robot brain going throughout and I can promise that you've not seen the last of me XD whether this is a good thing is of course very much up for debate...

[earthwormjim]

Hi Joey!

[joey_picus]

Hi Jim!

Things have been a bit light on the robot front unfortunately, university has taken up a fair amount of my time since coming to Canada and although I've had a lot of ideas - as anyone who knows me on MSN can, unfortunately, testify at length - I've been a bit short on the tools and materials necessary to accomplish them. Two bits of news I do have though:

Jigsaw 64 (Commodore or Nintendo?)

After watching the live stream of AWS40, I've given a bit more thought to the next Jigsaw design (aided by the stress cracking problems - I am leaning towards building the next version as opposed to rebuilding V now), and after talking to the rather awesome Jim a bit I have found out that Dremel do a stand for their products enabling them to function as a drill press, which to me and my stone age construction techniques is the equivalent of a full workshop with every tool imaginable!

Therefore the construction of Jigsaw 64 is going to be a bit more robust, and hopefully incorporate 5mm thick UHMWPE side panels to make it less springy - to accommodate the weight of these the armour will be changed to a composite of 0.51mm Ti and carbon fibre backing, which should give similar strength without taking up half the weight like Jigsaw V's somewhat overkill 1mm armour. In addition to that the robot will be a bit smaller, have a different, faster flipper servo, slightly reworked electronics, grippier wheels, be capable of short-range time travel (which should help with Stuart's randomised battle system!), and hopefully reliably self right again. Whether that list of features matches what the final robot turns out to be like is yet to be seen, but hopefully weight lost and weight gained will balance out!

Razor Wind

Two years after attempting to build it for AWS35 (getting as far as a chassis before the bits found themselves ultimately transplanted into The Hurting) it looks like I might finally get an axe robot built! At the moment plans are a bit sketchy (the only parts I have are motors, recievers, and The Data Fields' old SOZBOTS controller) but with the very, very kind assistance of Josh Valman and his new venture (aided by a rather large amount of money) it should have a CNC milled polycarbonate bodyshell, and I'm trying to work out how to do the axe without needing to buy three metres of aluminium bar just to use 100mm of it - I'm not realistically hoping it'll penetrate anything thicker than a Coke can, but it should look good at least!

I have all sorts of other ideas, including walkers, spinners, armours, pushers, and lots of others all ending in 'ers', but I'll try and focus on those two for the immediate future. Being away from my tools is probably a good thing given some of them...also on the cards is more work on my new website, and the transmitter modifications mentioned previously - I'm now thinking rehousing the electronics in a blank project box might be a better idea.

[joey_picus]

Razor Wind Part I: The Beginninninginningenging



The CNC polycarbonate bodyshell is here, and it looks absolutely fantastic, as can be seen above! (credit goes to Tracy for picture taking ^^) It should hopefully resist most things that can be thrown at it - it's all 1mm thick with stiffening ribs and pillars and will be covered in carbon fibre and titanium cladding, so it might even look good too...

Working on this is going to be a bit odd (the parts for it are/will be in three cities in two countries and old mouse mats are involved) but hopefully the precision on the shell should help everything line up properly. The plan is to use BotBitz 30:1 UHP motors for drive with a 50:1 for the axe, running on 2 cell at first with The Data Fields' old SOZBOTS controller - the only one physically present that I have going spare! - for drive and a Wasp for the weapon with microswitches to limit travel - the latter will be an interesting exercise and I'll post as many pictures as I can of it as (if) I get it working!

(I'm going to be shameless for a second and plug Miproto because Josh really was brilliant and had a lot of time for someone who had no clue what they were doing, and gave me a very good price for turning two bad Paint drawings with dimensions into something that works )

[joey_picus]

PRE-AWS 42 UPDATE
Unfortunately, after the last post, I got very little done robot-wise - my summer was ultimately consumed by dissertation work, moving back to the UK, showing Tracy around the UK, and at one point being in very real danger of spending most of the rest of my life trapped in Rotherham with no means of escape. Unfortunately for all concerned, I broke free, and in the last couple of weeks have been able to get some robots improved and ready for the AWS in Burntwood (after the traditional 'sign servo driven robot up and promptly break servos' fiasco). Here's what everyone can expect, presented in the medium of awkward text and phone camera pictures that, for no readily apparent reason, appear to have been taken in 1993:

The Hurting

The robot fundamentally remains the same as it was, most of the changes being to fix things that broke in Brighton or since (new rear armour mounting bracket, new armour, removing rust (!) from the blade). The most obvious difference is the rather better than I expected it to turn out carbon fibre veneer on the aluminium shell, which has added some much needed strength. It has added weight too, but with a couple of weight savings (battery packaging and potentially taking that big capacitor off the speed controller) it should be okay.

Arcus (pocket edition)

In the three years I've had Arcus, I have often been asked (usually after "did you make those yourself?" (I wish) and "why does it lose traction when it's clawed something?" (um...)) why it's not been entered into AWS events, and the answer is simple: due to incompetence in design, it didn't fit into the cube despite looking very small and weighing about 125g. However, this year, I saw sense and have hopefully made it fit, by way of trimming about 10mm from the chassis and removing the side wings, a new smaller reciever, and a new, tougher bodyshell (consisting of my first ever attempt at plastic welding, which I am perhaps a bit too smug about!). Functionally, though, it remains exactly the same, and somehow weighs five grams less than it did so it may gain a lot of armour between now and the 26th...

I'll do a website update when time and Pokémon allows, but until then I hope this provides something interesting!

[haz]

I'm slightly in love with Pocket Arcus