The last two days we were on the road ... it was a relatively dull drive, which is a good thing: no speeding tickets and decent time, despite the near-constant rain through Arkansas and Tennessee we made good time to the hotel the first night and the Competition Hotel Thursday night. A gin and tonic or two the night before, and we were up and ready for Robot fights this morning. Hit Back after viewing an image.

Our hotel room this time has a stand-alone hearth, which is actually pretty neat, but still: we mustn't dwell - this is the first day of competition and we have 'bots to fight!

We made it to the arena about 8am after a quick diversion for coffee, and took a pair of tables near the main arena area after hopping a ride in with a quad-ride which was much easier this year due to the investment in the additional container for all our small parts. At arena-side there wasn't much happening yet, as the small arena was still being constructed, so we went back to work on our Sportsman.

We were pitted next to Mike and Julie of Near Chaos Robotics, and Mike was good enough to lend us an extension cable for the drill press - Thanks Mike! It's quite a nice feeling to roll into the pits and not be franticly wiring something at the last minute. We had eight 'bots ready to fight, and the Sportsman was really a distraction - we were going to put some effort into getting it ready, but not worry too much if it doesn't get done in time.

For the first couple of hours it was just Sportsman-building and battery-charging, but the small arena had been assembled, and safety inspections for the fairies and ants started. Transcendental Terror 1.0, Poor Punctuation 2.0, and Malicious Mule all passed without a hitch, so all that was left to do was to wait for the brackets to be generated, and the fights to start!

As it turned out, Lauren was going to be thrown into the pool at the deep end - not only as one of the very first matches, but against a nasty-looking beater called OverClock. Here we go, then, the first match for a first-time participant:

YAY! A win! It should be confessed that Toni was more than a little jealous, having had to go through about five competitions before ever winning a match, but we suppose the experience helped, and Malicious Mule collected a winner's pog! Hurrah! Lauren did a pretty good job driving, and after the match we checked out the 'bot, but there didn't seem to be any damage at all, so the battery was put on the charger (not that it really needed it) and we lined up for our next match: Poor Punctuation 2.0 versus Mateo:

Well, darn it - the judges gave the win to Mateo, and we were left scratching our heads as to why the weapon hadn't spun up - it had worked just fine back at the Build Space, so something must have gotten out of alignment, so we headed back to the pits to take the top off and take a look. There didn't seem to be anything specific - the weapon motor gears and the idlers all looked to be engaged with the weapon ring gear ... hopefully we'll see signs of life from the weapon in Poor Punctuation 2.0's next match, but right now we're headed back to the arena for Malicious Mule's next fight, against Ferocious:

It looked from the outset that Ferocious had one side of the drive train out, and once again Lauren did a good job driving Malicious Mule, but the judges gave this match to Ferocious, presumably because it appeared to be engaging us more than the other way around. Again, though, no damage so the 'bot went back on the charger, and we had a little time to take a breather. Lauren's cousin and her husband had come out to visit, and they enjoyed themselves watching the matches, and generally catching up.

Next it was the turn of our smallest 'bot, Transcendental Terror 1.0 to head into the ring, up against a hacked R/C car called Rosie the Littler:

Unfortunately the blade on our fairyweight kept getting stuck in the thin aluminium on the front of the opponent, rather than really doing any major damage, so we spent a fair bit of time locked together during this match, but the Pololu motors on Transcendental Terror 1.0 were more than up to the job of running both locked 'bots around the arena, until eventually Rosie the Littler tapped out. A debut win for the fairyweight - yay! The next match rolled around quickly: Malicious Mule versus the spinning bar of Odahviing:

As with the match against OverClock, Lauren was able to drive Malicious Mule straight into the weapon of Odahviing, disabling it! From there it became a game of "Chase Me" as Odahviing kept running for space to be able to try and spin it's blade up again, while Malicious Mule kept after its opponent. Lauren had more pushing power, and with the weapon out of action, by the time the match went to the judges, it was fairly clear that Malicious Mule had prevailed! Yay! Again, the 'bot was put on the charger, and we lined up the next match, which was Poor Punctuation 2.0 versus Gyroscopic:

Grr! Again, the weapon wouldn't spin up, and without it we were ravaged by Gyroscopic, who put some good hits on Poor Punctuation 2.0, although in re-watching the video, we also caused Gyroscopic to take a few flips too! All in all, a fun match, but the last hit from our opponent split our antweight open, and we tapped out, as we didn't want to lose any of the internal components to another hit. We didn't have much time to mourn the antweight crashing out of the competition zero and two, because the fairyweight was up next!

An early hit on lolcat appeared to have knocked out one side of its drive, but we weren't in a position to capitalize on that fact, as we were upside down, and unable to right ourselves. Unfortunately the wheels on Trancendental Terror 1.0 weren't quite big enough for the 'bot to be able to drive inverted - oops! So although we were able to get a little motion, we had to hope a hit from lolcat would right us, but with one side of its drive out, lolcat had issues getting to us for that hit, until eventually we burned out the speed controller for the weapon motor, which was also powering our receiver, and the 'bot was dead.

Back at the pit table we had some time before the next match, so we pulled a speed controller from Poor Punctuation 2.0, scrounged some solder from Mike (thanks again Mike!), and replaced the controller in Transcendental Terror 1.0, getting it working again - phew! After that repair, we had a few more minutes free, then it was time to line up for another match with the star rookie: Malicious Mule versus KnightLight.

A tough match for Malicious Mule - a faster opponent with a veteran driver, but early on it appeared that one side of KnightLight's drive gave out, and Lauren was able to pin KnightLight repeatedly, winning the judges' vote at the end of the match! Three wins! Hurrah! There was a bit of breathing room, so the 'bot went back on the charger, and we waited for the next match to come up on screen. As it turned out it was Malicious Mule again, and against another fast, experienced wedge again, although this time it was our pit neighbour Mike, with Kobalos:

Phew! A very tough opponent and with its years-old Copal motors Malicious Mule was outclassed by Kobalos, leaving us with a second loss, and Malicious Mule was done for the day, but with a very respectable 3-2 record! Well done Lauren! We still have one 'bot running, and it's time for another match: Transcendental Terror 1.0 against Kongol:

Something was up with our 'bot - one side of the drive wasn't running, but the first hit was a good one, flipping both us and Kongol, although only one of us was able to self-right, and it wasn't us! With the next hit we took the saw blade off Kongol and cut his weapon motor wires, but unfortunately we were stuck on our back unable to show any movement, so Transcendental Terror 1.0 was counted out for lack of movement, a Technical Knock Out for Kongol.

For the rest of the afternoon we watched some matches, tinkered with the Sportsman, and chatted with Lauren's cousin and husband. At the end of the day, we packed away the 'bots, and headed back to the hotel for some pizza, a shower, and a good night's sleep!

With such a small number of things left to do we took some time after dinner tonight to wrap up Malicious Mule and get it ready for competition. We needed to trim some weight and bind the receiver to the radio, then see how it behaved. Hit Back after viewing an image.
SGGS: Houston - we have lift off!

After a quick turn on Milly we put the 'bot back on the scale and the problem quarter of an ounce had disappeared, and we were fighting fit at 15.94 ounces.
SGGS: Although Malicious Mule, like Steel Stiletto lacks a weapon, it makes up for it with Formula One-class driving and indomitable intention to win!

After bolting together the drivetrain it was time to put the newest antweight through it's paces on the test cardboard platform:

SGGS: In it's initial test run I was pleased to see that the Malicious Mule drove more reliably, smoothly, and with a more reliable drive-train than my Jaguar ever did! For the remainder of this week, the Malicious Mule (along with it's sister Steel Stiletto, will go the the paint shop for a Graffiti-fabulous paint job and of course, custom shoe logo. We must look our best, after all, for the competition.

This time in two weeks it'll all be over at Motorama 2012 and the arena is likely almost disassembled and stowed in the Benson Trailer, but for now we still have work to do in preparation for the event. Specifically we have an antweight and featherweight to finish, and possibly a Sportsman to wrap up. We've definitely decided to drop Versatile Villain 0.9 in favour of Unlettered Understrapper 2.5, so that one can go back on the bench. Hit Back after viewing an image.

Yesterday we had a space issue with the wheel walls, so to get around that, this morning we decided to take 1/16" off the wheel walls, so we set Milly's atomic batteries to power and turbines to speed, and took care of that.

That's much better - we can now install the outer wall without any interference from the wheel wall, so we just need to do the same thing with the other two wheel walls ...

Et voila! With these walls installed we can now get to sizing up the longer UHMW walls and drilling and slotting them to complete the frame work.

Meanwhile, Lauren's here working on her antweight, and the 'bot is being disassembled for installation of the drive axles.
SGGS: Today I found a new talent in addition to tapping ... the arbor press. With the fuel of a double-shot of espresso and the background of MASH Season 1 I got Malicious Mule disassembled.

Some drilling and pinning later, and all four motor/axle/wheel combos are reinstalled back in the 'bot.

The rest of the chassis is reassembled ready for wiring.

It's a nice, simple design - easy for a new builder to get to grips with. At this point it's time to fire up the soldering iron.
SGGS: Almost done - that same feeling as on Christmas Eve.

The electronics are pretty easy in this 'bot - two ESCs and four motors to be soldered together, and the ESC power source to be soldered to the battery connector.

The battery and receiver are simply mounted to the baseplate with 3M double-sided foam tape, and there we are: done!
SGGS: Time to celebrate and plan out a graffiti-fabulous paint scheme before sparring trials this upcoming weekend.

The reason this isn't a "Presenting ..." post is because the 'bot is a quarter of an ounce overweight, so we're going to slap the 1/4" 6061 aluminium front and rear plates on the mill and pocket out some weight.

At this point in time (three weeks til Motorama) we have a finished antweight, a finished beetleweight, and two finished hobyweights. Still in progress are a fairyweight, an antweight, two beetleweights, a featherweight, and a sportsman. We changed our mind on the fairyweight design a couple of weeks ago, and we're not feeling entirely confident that the featherweight will survive it's first hit, but nonetheless we're pressing on! Hit Back after viewing an image.

First order of business is breaking out the table saw and cutting chassis parts for the fairyweight and sportsman. We've cut some UHMW frame rails, and polycarb rails and plates - made quite a mess but they're done.

We also have some UHMW blocks for the two halves of the fairyweight chassis, which we'll set Milly on in just a little bit.

We've slotted the chassis parts for the sportsman, and are testing the fit - looks fine so far. We will need to do a fair bit of drilling though ...

... But not so much tapping - Pete Smith gifted us some Nutstrip at the last Motorama, so we've cut some lengths with a jigsaw, and we're planning on using it to assemble the outer chassis of the sportsman, as UHMW doesn't hold a thread well.

Ta-daa! Kudos to Pete for a handy product - assembling this chassis took about an hour, including the cutting and drilling. Much better than having to tap 36 holes!

Meanwhile Milly is off and running on the fairyweight chassis blocks, using the G-code we got from CamBam+ a while back. Should be interesting to see how it comes out ...

... Quite nicely actually! We need to clean up a little bit with a craft knife, but it's pretty much just as we imagined.

Unlike these frame rails for the sportsman! Geez ... out of six holes, one is in the right spot - the rest ended up all over the place! Not good ... for some reason we had problems seeing the punch marks on the drill press. We're going to have to try that again.

On the other hand, Milly is doing fine cutting the fairyweight chassis down to size. A quick clean-up, flip, and she can do the other side too.

To give us this! They currently weigh 70 grams, but are still half an inch too long, and have another bit of pocketing to go, but they do look how we envisioned the chassis to come together.

Lauren's getting in on the action too, working on her antweight Malicious Mule. She's working on the drive train at the moment, and Toni's letting her do 95% of the work, to get the full building experience :-)

The 'bot is coming together quite nicely, although perhaps not as quickly as Lauren would like, but it'll be up and running, and sparring with Poor Punctuation 2.0 by next weekend.

The final shot of the evening is a close-up of the fairyweight internals - there's an awful lot of wire that's going to need to be trimmed down, but otherwise things are looking good. Next step with this 'bot will be mounting the drive motors and wheels, and drilling holes to bolt the chassis halves together. But for now it's time to go grill some steaks!

After a very busy work week we were looking forward to making some 'bot progress this weekend, and we have a couple of 'bots very close to being done, so we're going to concentrate on those this weekend. First up, the second version of our antweight spinner: Poor Punctuation 2.0. Hit Back after viewing an image.

Last time out we decided that we needed some idlers for the ring, and found some aluminium spacers, pressed the titanium idlers onto them with extreme predjudice on the arbor press, and installed them in the 'bot.

Which caused an issue - the ring terminals are too bulky with the idlers installed, and we didn't want them getting in the way, so we decided to remove them and look at alternative ways of wiring the 'bot.

With all the ring terminals out of the way, we sat for a while trying to figure out whether we could solder the leads together. They didn't all stretch to a common point though ...

And then we had a brain wave! Inspired by thoughts of old "Vampire Taps" in networking, what if we ran two 'bus' cables for positive and negative, and 'tapped' into them for the components? Sounds like an idea, so here we are soldering a weapon speed controller onto the busses.

And it actually was pretty painless to complete - we're going to have to remember this trick for other small 'bots!

We were almost ready for a first full test drive! We spent a bit of time with the 'bot hooked up to the battery charger in preparation, then ...

We didn't get anything done over the weekend on the 'bots, as we had some pretty big issues to deal with at work, but this evening we decided to see if we could wrap up the antweight Poor Punctuation 2.0. We need to install the weapon speed controllers and finish the wiring - ugh. Hit Back after viewing an image.

Unfortunately the bushings we ordered for the idler gears haven't arrived yet, so we'll approximating with some random bronze bushings and installing the weapon ESCs around them.

The ESC is a 12A HobbyKing cheapie, but light, and does come with a programming card. It can be programmed via the card to run in reverse, so we're going to be soldering the connections to the motor, as we won't need to undo them to switch direction if the leads are hooked up wrong. Here we're testing that the R/C connector we put onto the cut-down Y-cable works - success!

With one side done, we turn the 'bot through 180 degrees and start on the other side. We're trying to make sure that the spacer closest the wheel is keep clear for the idler, as we route wires, etc.

At this point we're verifying that both motors do run in the same direction: the don't. But on the plus side, our Y-cable works, and our soldered connections from ESC to motor are good, so we can move on.

To fix the motor direction we flipped the jumper on the card, applied power to it, and connected the ESC to it - took a couple of tries, but eventually we had it sorted out, and moved on to the rest of the wiring.

Not trusting our soldering skills to hook up five wires for negative in a single connection and the same for positive we decided to break out the ring terminals and go that route. Sure, they add weight, but last time we checked we had about an ounce spare, so no problems. The main issue is that they take up space, and that is a precious commodity inside this 'bot, but we managed to squeeze everything in, and we were ready for a quick weapon test!

After verifying that the ring did actually turn (and yes, we were kneeling behind polycarb while that test was being run - the white sparks at the end were due to the ring coming off the motor gear) we bolted down the lid and tried again, but this time there was too much friction for the ring to spin up. On review the cause of the friction isn't the UHMW buffers, but cabling inside the 'bot catching on the motor gears and not letting them get up to speed. There's also the issue of the ring getting out of alignment because one motor spins a touch faster than the other.

So close! All we need are our idler bushings, and we're going to have to hit YouTube for a crash course in soldering so we can neaten up the wiring and make everything fit inside the 'bot! But this 'bot will be finished by the weekend, and we'll be on to others ...

We received some parts today that mean we can get back to our cutest 'bot: Poor Punctuation 2.0, and see whether we can install the drive ESCs. Unfortunately this was going to mean soldering - never our favourite task - but we steeled ourselves to the task and decided to see where we can get to. Hit Back after viewing an image.

Here are the parts in question: eight TinyESCs, version two, from Kurtis at FingerTech Robotics. These things are awesome for fairies and antweights, and in a pinch can be used in a beetle, depending on the motors. Plus Kurtis gives amazing customer service, so if you're looking for small-bot ESCs, definitely check these out!

Here's our current situation - 13.47 ounces with everything but the weapon ESCs (which should arrive tomorrow) that weigh less than an ounce for the pair of them. We have plenty of weight to work with. We've also thrown in a couple of bronze bushings and two idlers for the weapon ring to help keep it in alignment.

As we're going to be soldering in the drive ESCs we need to make sure we're going to get them hooked up with the right polarity to the motors, so we're running some tests to verify which lead goes where. As you can see we've tied the battery down to prevent it from sliding into the weapon motor gears and getting chewed up.

On to wiring. We've stuck down the receiver with some heavy-duty 3M double-sided tape, and started routing wires. In order to run both weapon ESCs at the same time we need a Y-cable, but for some odd reason the only cable we found was quite literally two feet long! Fortunately we have pins to be able to cut them down and replace the connectors.

At this point the TinyESCs have been stuck down and soldered to the drive motors. We've been careful to leave clearance around two of the stand-offs where the weapon idlers will be located.

Test Drive Time! We didn't take video because it wasn't super-exciting, but it was great to see the 'bot running around under direction. The wiring is going to be super-tight, but we think it's doable.

Now that we have the 'bot running around, you can see from our To Do List there isn't a whole lot left to do on this 'bot - as soon as the weapon ESCs show up we'll wire them in and take the 'bot for a real test drive!

We haven't made much progress this week, as we've been preparing for a Business Continuity Test that's happening tonight, but we're ready for it, and have a few hours free before the test starts, so it's time to hit the Build Space! Hit Back after viewing an image.

Here are our customary To Do Lists, and as you can see, there's quite a lot to do! Hopefully we can check a few things off today. We're going to tackle some of the jobs that were holding us up with the drill press out of commission.

But now we're back in business! We went through a number of different size and lengths in V-belts trying to find one that worked, and ended up with a 3L330, which is a little big, but works, so we're going to run with it.

Starting out today with the rebuild of Didactic Duelist and we've piled on all the parts, coming out at 2lb 12.6 ounces, so we're well underweight, and can get on with assembly.

First up for the repaired drill press are the aluminium side walls for the Beetle, and it doesn't take too long to drill them out.

Some time later, after a lot of tapping and a couple of episodes of The Invisible Man, we have all the chassis parts tapped, so moving on ...

Lauren popped over, and spent some time working on her antweight Malicious Mule, including a turn with Milly, cutting slots on her chassis parts.

Here we're drilling the mount holes for the weapon motor, using the old mount as a template. That worked quite well.

So we put the parts down in the Paint Shack, and liberally applied the Radicus Purple to the Beetle's frame pieces.

While those parts were drying, we turned our attention to the drum for Nihilistic Naysayer 2.0 and drilled out the mounting holes for the end caps.

A bit of tapping later and we had the weapon pulley mounted to one end cap, and the end caps ready to be mounted, but before we could do that ...

... We needed to mount the teeth!Truthfully it's been a good long while since we worked with tool steel, and drilling the holes in the teeth took quite a lot of time, pressure, cutting fluid, and drill bits, but eventually we were done!

Et viola! The completed drum, ready for installation into the 'bot.

Which was quick and easy, so there we are - after all this time, we've almost finished the rebuild of the drum-bot.

A quick sanity check, to make sure we weren't going to encounter the "Three-Eighths Issue" we had with version one: the teeth do, in fact, clear the chassis, which is a plus :-) And that's where we're going to leave it for today, as we need to go make some dinner and get to the office for the Business Continuity Test. More next week!

Despite trying a number of V-belts from Grainger, we still hadn't found a decent replacement for the drill press, so we had to find other things to work on this weekend. We do have a lot of drilling and countersinking to do, and we're waiting for more parts to show up, so we decided to tackle the things we could actually finish without the drill press. Hit Back after viewing an image.

We started out with some 3/4" UHMW blocks loaded into Milly's vise and a quick G-code script to cut out the wheel holes. We did three blocks, just to be on the safe side.

Another G-code script later, and we had cut the lip in the other side of the block for the top plates. Unfortunately we were down to two blocks at this point, because of a mistake mixing X for Y, and ruining a piece.

Here we've been scribbling to determine the paths for the half-inch end mill for the next two G-code scripts to cut out the insides of the chassis.

The outsides were easy. We had issues a while back trying to cut the whole block because the UHMW flexes in the vise, so we used aluminium spacers to prevent that from happening this time.

And success! Two fairyweight chassis blocks ready for the internals to be added, and no errant cuts. We still need to cut slots for the arm, so that's out next task.

Et voila! We've cut the slots for the arms, and the waterjetted top plates fit great! We finally have a fairyweight chassis to work with ... just as soon as the drill press is back in business.

We spent an hour trying to get the weapon motors mounted in the antweight, but the #2-56 nuts were too big to fit against the weapon motor can, so we decided to sand them down a bit and try again.

Yay! After fiddling around for quite a while longer we finally had the weapon motors installed, and they look good! We Dremelled the titanium gears out to fit the motors and Super-Glued them to the motors earlier this morning.

Here we've tested the fit with the weapon ring, and life is good, although this isn't quite as good as we had in our mind's eye, because there's the potential for the ring to move out of alignment if the two weapon motors aren't perfectly in sync, so we may have to add the idlers back in to this design.

Here we've milled down the lower UHMW ring by 1/32" and the titanium ring moves pretty smoothly, so hopefully we won't need to add bearings to the UHMW.

Now that I have Steel Stiletto in good shape, other than continuing to practice mutilating pieces of wood in preparation for doing same to actual bots at Motorama, it was time to face the unknown: building Malicious Mule from scratch. Props and thanks to Toni for the design and ordering of the waterjet parts. Hit Back after viewing an image.

I don't really weigh 300lbs even tho that's how I photograph! Diabolical drilling as I build another bot to take over Motorama.
 

A triumph of tapping - as in I didn't break a tap!

 

Chillin' after the conquest of countersinking.


 

Broken and injured but not defeated. Like The Stig, the SGGS lives to drill another day.

 

We decided last night that we had to do something about the garage Build Space as it had become too messy to work in, so this morning, before building we spent a couple of hours tidying up and generally getting organized. It's going to be a short build time, as we're going to the movies tonight - Yay Alamo Drafthouse! - so let's see what we achieved ... Hit Back after viewing an image.

Here's where a couple of hours of tidying and organizing have gotten us. The worktable is clear, and all the 'bot parts are organized. Unfortunately the ShopVac seems to have run out of 'suck', so chances are we'll have to replace it soon, and probably for a larger model, as Milly does produce an awful lot of chips.

So, back to 'bots, and we elected to work on Poor Punctuation 2.0. Luckily, the Super Glue seems to have done it's job on the motor and gear we messed up last night, so we were okay to proceed. Note that on the bottom of the motor both the shaft and electrical wires protrude below the base of the motor, so we started by drilling a couple of clearance holes in the baseplate.

Next we attached the UHMW spacers with #4-40 bolts. We could have sworn we ordered our customary black oxide finish, but no matter. Note also that the bolts are not entirely flush with the polycarb - that's okay too - we'd rather have the 'bot ride on steel than the polycarb.

On the inside now, and here the 12 aluminium spacers that hold the top and the bottom of the 'bot together have been screwed down to the baseplate.

The battery pack fits exactly inside the spacers, although there is the potential for the pack to move sideways, which would put it in direct contact with the weapon gear in either direction, so we're going to have to come up with a restraint ... a ziptie running around the four middle spacers would probably work fine.

This is where the weapon motor sits. For some odd reason we don't have any fasteners to be able to bolt the motor down, so that'll go on the next McMaster order. We also ordered replacement motors for the one we destroyed last night from HobbyKing's USA warehouse, so they ought to show up next week.

Here's what the 'bot looks like with the top on! Truthfully the titanium weapon ring doesn't spin as freely as we want it to, riding on the UHMW, so we may mill a few thousandths off them later.

While we're here we may as well install the drive motors. Here are the motor mounts - drilled and tapped 1/4" polycarb with the outside shape of the Pololu HP 50:1 motor waterjetted into it.

With a tiny bit of filing and a quick push from the arbor press, the motors are happily situated in the mounts (the gearboxes are rectangular, so the don't go back any further in the mount) and the mounts were reinstalled.

With the top back on, you can see that the 'bot is actually invertable - yay!. The little battery hole we had cut works well for accessing the battery plug, so that'll be our power disconnect, and we can also put the whole 'bot in one of the Jumbo LiPo sacks when it comes time to charge it up! :-)

Time to see how we're doing weight-wise. The original design had steel weaponry rather than titanium, and was about 90% of a pound. As titanium is nearly half the weight of steel, we expect to be rather light. The chassis, drive motors, and weapon ring are 10.9 ounces.

Piling on as many internals as currently have, the weight goes up to 12.8 ounces. Factoring in another weapon motor/gear combo and speed controller, we're guessing we'll wind up at about 14.2 ounces. Hmm ... maybe we ought to invest in a couple of rare earth magnets ...

The top of the 'bot is right at 7/8ths of an inch, with the wheels sticking up another eighth, making the whole 'bot just one inch tall. Nifty.

And putting the weapon teeth right at half an inch above the deck, so hopefully at our opponents' tire level!

Right as we were packing up to go clean up for dinner and a movie the UPS guy showed up again - this time with the remnants of the water-jetted material, which made for an interesting (to us) photo :-)

We've had a pretty productive week so far! We're making good progress on two of the beetles, have one 'bot done, and are really waiting for parts to show up to get cracking on the others we're planning on taking to Motorama 2012. While we wait for those parts we have some pieces we can make ourselves, and we still have the wiring to do on Unlettered Understrapper 2.5. Hit Back after viewing an image.

We set Milly off and running on the remaining aluminium parts for the featherweight. While that was going on we decided to finish the lifter for the beetle. We've drilled and tapped one hole for the crank, to fit a #6-32 1" screw which will be Loctite'd in after assembly.

Looks like Milly has finished - we have the three aluminium wall pieces and a spare for each. Still some drilling and tapping to do, once the top and base plates show up.

With the aluminium done, we set Milly off on the UHMW wall pieces, and went to go find something else to do.

Here we've bolted in the crank for the beetle lifter. We still need to round off the ends on the sander, but it's looking okay so far.

A bit more drilling and tapping and the rocker arm has gone in place. Again we need the edges rounding down, but it's coming together nicely.

For fun, we decided to put the arm into place in the 'bot, using hex keys, and the holes all line up, so yay! :-)

Here's where the arm extends to, give or take, and it ought to be enough to be able to fall to one side and roll on to the wheels again. The only issue is that cranking the arm takes a bit of force, and we're not entirely sure whether the HD servo we have is up to the task. We'll have to see when the 'bot is a bit more assembled. We can always switch to a gearmotor, and figure out limit switches using a Team Delta relay.

Yay! The UPS guy just dropped off a fairly large box - let's see what's inside!
:-)

Parts for Formidable Fustigator 2.0: base plate; top plate; and boom strengtheners.

Parts for Poor Punctuation 2.0: top and bottom plates for a one-weapon-motor configuration; top and bottom plates for a two-weapon-motor configuration; a pair of UHMW rings; and titanium weapon ring and gears.

Parts for Malicious Mule: top and bottom plates; inner walls; spare outer walls; front and back plates; and aluminium outer walls.

Parts for Didactic Duelist 1.5: base plate; top plate; side walls; wheels walls; engine mounts; rear walls; and side walls.

We couldn't resist: we had to do a little on the antweight parts! Here we've drilled the UHMW rings slightly to accomodate #4-40 locknuts.

And with minimal effort the locknuts have been pressed into place. We had originally envisioned regular hex nuts, but inexplicably we don't have any, hence the locknuts.

Here's how the antweight parts stack together - polycarb, UHMW ring, titanium weapon ring, UHMW, and then polycarb. There will be a bunch of spacers holding everything together.

Meanwhile, Milly is still turning away on the UHMW parts. Because even half-inch thick UHMW is a bit bendy, we're only doing four inches at a time - the width in the vise, to ensure that at least that much doesn't flex while we're cutting.

Here's the front wall for the 30lb'er, and it's 26.5" long, so we're having to work around the lathe chuck to be able to get the middle of the part, but we finagled it successfully.

Here's a test-fit of the 30lb'er walls on the baseplate. If you look at the back wall, it's not sitting on the baseplate, so obviously we messed something up. On closer inspection we mis-measured the length of the side aluminium walls - they should be a quarter-inch shorter! Thankfully that'll be pretty easy to take care of tomorrow, so we've put it on the list of things Milly has to do tomorrow.

A quick trip to the mailbox yielded junkmail and a package from Hong Kong - more spiral bevel gears! We were planning on using these on the 30lb Sportsman Walker Cyber Scorpion 0.9, but we've scrapped that idea - just too complex with not enough time for Motorama 2012, but on the plus side it'll be a project that will keep us engaged in 'bot-building through the year, rather than just the few months leading up to Motorama 2013 ...

Here we've already counter-sunk all the holes for the top and bottom plates for the antweight's two-motor configuration, so we're about to throw some team colour on them, while we fiddle with some other parts ...

... Namely the antweight weapon motors. They came with set screws in place for prop-savers, but by golly they were in there tight! We ended up Dremelling them off.

Right - we've taken the can off one of the motors intending to press the titanium ring onto the can!

Er - yeah ... not so much. We've mangled the can pressing the gear on, so something's obviously not right here. We broke out the calipers, and groaned. For a press fit you typically aim for three or four thousandths difference in size. What we have here is four hundredths difference. Grr. Our bad on the DXFs we sent to the Whyachis, so what can we do about it?

We set the Dremel-a-like onto it and see if we can neatly take the inner diameter of the gear to somewhere close to the motor outer diameter. Unfortunately we got far too carried away - not realizing the Dremel-a-like worked so quickly on Grade 5 Titanium, and now the ring just slips down the motor. Drat!

At this point we have one good motor, one bad gear, and two fresh gears. Obviously we're going to have to order some more motors, but we started wondering whether we could reclaim the bad gear some way, so we built a jig ...

... And applied some Loctite to the motor/ring combo. Ordinarily we'd have used duct tape, but felt this operation needed a little more finesse. The jig has the ring 0.25" from the bottom of the motor, so if this works we have one working weapon motor. We'll find out in the morning whether we were able to save the titanium gear.

But the first thing we have to do tomorrow is clean, tidy, and organize the garage Build Space, because we wasted a whole heap of time today simply trying to find things! This place is a bomb site hit by a tornado! So that's the plan for first thing tomorrow. For now, we're going to have a gin and tonic, and order some motors ...

The last version of Poor Punctuation had a pretty major flaw - well - two flaws really: (1) It was pretty ineffective in the weapon category; and (2) it wasn't invertible, and flipped over frequently. With those issues in mind, we set about redesigning the antweight, wanting to invest as much Moment of Inertia as possible into it's weapon, which would translate into kinetic energy, and make the 'bot invertible. Here's what we've come up with! Hit Back after viewing an image.

Starting from the bottom-up, we have a 1/16" polycarbonate baseplate, and on top of that is a 6" diameter ring of quart-inch thick UHMW. There are eight #4-40 nuts pressed into the UHMW, which are bolted into from the baseplate.

And the same again with the top plate, and upper UHMW ring. These two pieces leave a gap that is an eighth of an inch.

Because there's no direct attachment of the top and bottom through the walls, we need another way of holding things together, so these are 5/8"-long threaded spacers for #6-32 screws. Between the 13 of them, they ought to keep things fairly solid.

Putting the top aside, you can see here the weapon. The outer ring has 140 20 pitch teeth cut into eighth-inch steel, and two teeth. This piece will be waterjet-cut, and mates with the large gear you see in the bottom-left, which has 35 teeth, for an effective reduction of 4:1. The other two gears are idlers with a bearing in the, spinning freely on the spacer, to prevent the ring from being able to move around. Well ... obviously the ring moves a-round, but not around, if you catch the drift?

The weapon motor is a Turnigy 2204-14T which almost squeezes into the 5/8"-tall space inside the 'bot, but not quite, hence the hole in the top plate. The driving gear for the weapon is press-fit around the can of the outrunner motor. Nifty, eh? The red block is a 10A speed controller for the weapon motor.

Here are all the other bits, including our trusty Sozbots drive speed controllers, although if we have the cash we'll switch them for FingerTech tinyESCs; the drive motors are the same Pololu HP 30:1 gearmotors and 1" wheels from version one, and in fact so are the 1/4" polycarbonate motor mounts. There's a 460mAh 3S lithium polymer battery, and an OrangeRx receiver to wrap the internals up.

Here are all the internals in the 'bot. And there's even a little bit of space! We were contemplating two weapon motors, but we don't have the weight for it. The 'bot is 7" in diameter from tooth to tooth, and 3/4" tall, except the wheels.

At the moment we have about 1.6 ounces unaccounted for, but as you can see in the list above we haven't factored in the weight of all the fasteners yet, nor have we worked out a power switch, so that 10% of the pound will probably be eaten up quickly!

And of course a render in team colours :-) For those counting, in order to get at the battery, we need to undo 17 screws ... that's rather a lot, so we're trying to figure out whether we can make a battery hatch, and keep it under weight ...

While snacking at lunch time I started playing with a new program I downloaded from WoodGears.ca called Gear Template Generator. It took a couple of minutes to figure out the interface, but within moments I'd come up with this:

Using the Export to DXF function I was able to pull the ring gear into Rhino3D, tweak the outside dimensions, and add a couple of teeth, then extrude it into a solid. To have this waterjetted from 1/8th-inch steel would leave an antweight weapon blade weighing 2.75 ounces, which sounds very fair!

Now to design the rest of the 'bot ...

Tony's Competition Diary - February 18th, 2011
The alarm clock went off, immediately followed by the wake-up call, but neither of those were responsible for bounding out of bed this morning: the credit goes to the fact I'm here! In Harrisburg, PA! For Motorama! With 'bots!

Last night I'd looked up the local Dunkin' Donuts, and after a quick shower and some hotel breakfast I took the circuitous route to DD for coffee before jumping onto I-83 and zooming round to the Harrisburg exit. Getting into the parking lot was easy, but apparently getting to the North Hall to unload is now verboten, so I had to park and wait for a quad with a trailer to haul my stuff to the small arena. Wish I'd gone ahead and bought a couple rolling tool chests, as these forty-seven small mailing boxes I have all my stuff in are a hassle to wrangle. Ah well - note for next year. Click Back after viewing an image.

After wiping the road spray off my stuff and hauling it into the hall the first thing I noticed was that the Farm Show people had re-done the floor since last year - it looked very nice. Wonder how it'll look when we're done Sunday night!

I wasn't alone in the hall - Ed, Beth, Rob, Gina, and a few others were already in and setting up, so after the meet'n'greets I swiped a table and started organizing my stuff.

Yes, I'd brought the drill press - had to do something to fill up the Botmobile! It didn't take too long to unpack and organize, but I had a bit of work to do before I'd be ready for todays Fairy- and Ant-weight competition - namely fixing the weapon motor pulley on the antweight.

Here I'm right in the middle of pulling the old motor out and installing the new one. We'd had major problems trying to get the pulley fastened to the motor, and with the old shaft cut so short the motor was now useless. After installing the new motor I decided that the new $10 motor and $2 pulley were expendable, and super-glued the one to the other. After letting it dry I reassembled the 'bot, and tested the weapon motor, gratified to see the pulley stayed on tight.

Just as I wrapped up the antweight repairs, the Benson Family (custodians of the Big Arena) showed up, and the unloading process began. There were quite a few people who volunteered to help, and it didn't take long at all before the parts were off the trailer.

Heck, assembly of the arena begain before the small 'bot competition! It's unusual for the main arena build to move that fast, but people were really fired up this morning - probably because it was about thirty degrees warmer than it usually is at Motorama, and people have energy to expend on things other than fending off hypothermia!

"All right Mr. De Mille, I'm ready for my close-up."
With the antweight ready to roll, the small arena assembled, and most of the competitors for the day starting to look ready, it was time for the first day of the competition to begin! There was a brief safety/drivers meeting, and then the brackets were generated.

There were six of the 150 gram Fairyweights, and twenty-seven 1lb antweights in the competition. A whole bunch of the competitors were new, which was great to see, although they did need some extra assistance getting through safety and making weight, but ultimately every 'bot that showed up made it into the arena!

Time for our first match of the day: Poor Punctuation 1.0 versus Knightblade.

Yes ... well ... firstly, sorry about the video quality - there's quite a bit of glare on the polycarbonate walls. Basically what happened there was on the first hit on Knightblade by the shell of Poor Punctuation 1.0 it popped right off, because the 1/16" roll pin that secures the shell to the shaft hadn't been pressed in all the way. Although we could continue to run around, a nakid shell spinner against a wedge isn't much of a match, and the judges awarded the win to Knightblade.

Knightblade's builder was pretty happy after that first match! But the day was just getting started, and this is a double-elimination event, so Poor Punctuation 1.0 will get to fight again ...

... About an hour later as it happened. Our second match of the day is Poor Punctuation 1.0 versus Rudy, another wedge, this one from MH Robotics. We'd made sure to secure the roll-pin this time, and so let's see what Poor Punctuation 1.0 can do!

Again, sorry for the poor video, but this time out, while the shell did indeed stay on, the gyroscopic forces of the shell meant our antweight flipped over onto it's top, but didn't have the ability to flip itself back up again, ultimately being counted out for lack of translational movement. Ah well, back to the drawing board for that 'bot! But it was a lot of fun, and great to be back competing at Motorama - maybe tomorrow's 'bots will fair better.

Speaking of tomorrow's 'bots, we had registered two beetles, because Scott was going to meet up with me tomorrow, but Versatile Villain 0.9 hadn't been finished in time for the event. I had thrown the carcass of an old beetle in the Botmobile though, Unlettered Understrapper 2.0, a 'bot from 2004 that had never made it into the arena due to weight problems running the thresher. After talking with Pete Smith from KitBots who had some items with him for sale, we picked up a brushless motor and speed controller, and intended assembling the 'bot with these new parts in time for tomorrow's competition.

As a brief interlude to the building, an antweight rumble was called, and we threw Poor Puntuation 1.0 into the ring, figuring that with half a dozen opponents we ought to be able to hit something :-)

That was as much fun as I remembered, despite spending most of the rumble off my wheels! Back at the pit table I went back to building and I remembered I had some issues with the other beetleweight to deal with too. The drive train was extremely weak, and my plan was to swap the old beta Banebots speed controllers with brand new ones. Between chatting with people, helping folks prepare for tomorrow, and working on Unlettered Understrapper 2.0 I did't get to working on the ESC swap, and as the first day of the competition wrapped up, with Rebound taking first place in the Fairyweights and Gilbert taking the antweights, I threw both beetles in the case and headed out to the Botmobile, tired, happy, and really looking forward to the rest of the competition!

Back at the ranch hotel I ordered in a pizza, intending to dig out the beetles and get to work, but between the food, drink, travel, and adrenaline of the first day draining away, I dozed off ...

What we accomplished:
• Made it to the competition with a working antweight.
• Completed two matches with the 'bot.
• Met a whole bunch of new people.
• Met a whole bunch of regulars too!
• Had fun helping folks prepare for the competition.
• Enjoyed the first day immensely!

What we learned:
• The small arena can be assembled in less than an hour with enough people.
• The large arena can be 95% assembled in the first day, again with enough people.
• Our antweight has a nasty habit of stripping and/or breakdancing.
• Motorama is still as much fun as we remember!
• It can be above 30°F in Harrisburg, PA, in February!

Where we go from here:
• Boosting Didactic Duelist 1.0's drive train.
• Attempting to assemble Unlettered Understrapper 2.0 in time to compete.
• Firing up the featherweight!

"So much time and so little to do. Strike that. Reverse it."
Willy Wonka, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl.

We were hoping to be able to give you another "Presenting ..." post tonight, but it didn't quite work out. Today was a day of tackling challenges, and being beaten soundly by them! We didn't take photos of everything, but enough to give you a flavour of what went on today. Hopefully tomorrow will be über-productive. Click Back after viewing an image.

First up, milling slots in the UHMW pipe that's to be the hobbyweight's drum. This operation at least went without incident.

Here we realized that the teeth are wider than we thought, having ordered 3/4" steel, but received 7/8" steel. We do have the clearance in the 'bot for the width, but the question is wether we have the weight. We may wind up having to cut the teeth back a bit.

Milly seems to be cooperating with us today - here we've loaded one of our new endmills into a collet and cut a quarter-inch slot in the front and middle walls for the weapon motor mount.

At this point we'd just finished recharging the two 4S packs that go together in series to power the featherweight's weapon, and plugged in the 6S drive pack, intending to recharge after our recent drive test and go again, but what's this? "Voltage error?" Darn ... inspection of the pack showed it to be a bit 'puffy' - not a good sign with LiPo packs, and the voltage read 14V, meaning the 6S pack looked to be a 4S pack. Drat. We hopped online and ordered a couple of spares to be delivered to our Motorama hotel - so much for test driving. To really hammer homethe misery we soldered connectors to a new weapon ESC for the 12lb'er - misery loves company.

While soldering we had an "Ah-ha" moment and figured out what we'd done wrong with the antweight - we used the wrong weapon shaft pulley which is why the belt seemed so loose. To use the 24-tooth pulley we needed to enlarge the space in our bearing block we made a while back, which we did, and pinned the new pulley to the shaft.

This serene photo does nothing to convey our mounting frustration trying to re-pin the weapon motor pulley to the weapon motor shaft. We went through about a dozen rollpins, and finally - just as we seemed to have cracked it, when the motor pulley pinged off and across the build space for the umpteenth time we threw our hands up and put the 'bot aside for the day. We have another motor showing up tomorrow, so we'll re-do it tomorrow.

Back to the drumbot and we re-drilled the new polycarbonate weapon motor mount using the old one as a template. At least that was straight-forward.

With a bit of drilling and tapping the motor mount is done. A minor victory, but a victory none-the-less.

Looking at one of the beetles, and the titanium front fits just right. We're going to ditch the front wheels and just run 2WD on the back with skids up front.

Here's a quick test layout of the weapon blades, and we decided to move to drilling and pinned them to the shaft. That didn't go well, with the drill bit snapping off in the steel rod, so we're going to have to cut another one and start over. Grr.

At least the drive motor axles fit properly, although we have no idea how to mount the Lite Flight wheels, so we may switch them out for some different, beefier ones. We did some other miscellaneous stuff, but nothing that added up to a finished 'bot, so we're going to have food and make it an early night, hoping tomorrow will be better ...

As if by magic the temperature climbed to 60°F today, and it was a pleasure to be out in the Build Space. Not just because it's warm, but because we knew we'd be finishing a 'bot today! Click Back after viewing an image.

Here's our short-term To Do List. Some 'bots naturally have more left to do than others, and the fact UPS has suspended deliveries to most of Texas means we're missing some final parts for a couple of these 'bots, but we'll do what we can over the next couple of days until we have everything we need in hand.

The center of today's attention is the thorn in our sides that the antweight has become. We're getting sick of soldering this little 'bot, but we press on anyhow, and want to finish the speed controller repairs, and be able to focus on another 'bot for a while.

Here we've successfully wired up one drive ESC and we're about to solder the leads to the second. This certainly has been a fiddly build, but we have a sense of being on the final straight ...

Ugly? Sure. Functional? Thankfully yes. We've had to clean off the remnants of the old wire and solder in new leads. It looks bad, but it should work just fine.

Here we're in the midst of reassembly, re-routing power leads and connecting the electronics to the receiver. Fortunately we've managed to reassemble the chassis without breaking anything this time!

We pretty much gave up trying to solder the weapon ESC power wires to extenders we added, and opted to go with terminals instead. Naturally the camera decided to focus elsewhere, but no matter. We hotglued the terminals to the chassis and moved on.

Getting there. We've tidied up the wiring, and we're giving everything another look over in case we've missed something glaringly obvious.

Happy with the state of the build, and after verifying the 'bot powers up properly and seems to respond to commands, we throw what we have so far on the scale. 15.3 ounces, so we have a little over half an ounce to make some teeth for the shell.

We break out the jigsaw and cut four pieces from some 1" x 1" x 0.25" 6061 aluminium bar. Aluminium teeth probably aren't optimal, but they're a third of the weight of steel for the same size, so we're going to run with them. They get drilled and tapped for #6-32 screws.

We had some fun trying to countersink the bolt holes on the inside of the shell. With some careful angling we did a half-decent job, and moved on to attaching the teeth.

Ta-daa! With the countersinking being at an angle the bolts are at a slight angle, and we're a bit worried about how they might snag on the rollers on the chassis, but we won't know until we try it, so we need to bolt everything together and see how it works.

And finally! The 'bot is finished, bolted down, tightened up, and ready to roll! Phew! On the scale we weigh in at 15.8 ounces, so that's fine. It's time to move on to the drive test:

The aim for tonight's brush with hypothermia was to fix the weapon motor on Poor Punctuation 0.9. Our investigations last night were leading us to believe we probably failed miserably at soldering the ESC and motor together, so we're going to have another go tonight. Click Back after viewing an image.

While this is ostensibly a build report for the antweight, we couldn't help but throw some parts down for the 30lb'er now we have the aluminium rounds cut. Looking good! Fingers crossed the top and bottom plates show up tomorrow so we can start assembling over the weekend.

Here you can see the paper sleeves we wrapped aroung the open gearboxes of the Pololu motors to try and keep grit out. You can also see the effect of a soldering iron on foam tires - oops!

Having found the missing bullet connector we set about soldering them to the motor leads. Truthfully, attaching these connectors is substantially easier than soldering two wires together! After soldering the connectors to the ESC wires too we were ready for a test.

Success! The moral of the story is always use the supplied connectors and test before installing! Now we move on to reassembling the 'bot, but at this point our fingers are numb and we're going to call "Uncle" and head back into the warm!

Finally! Snow! It makes all the 20°F days seem worthwhile to see the quiet white blanket laid down.

After being forced back inside last night by the absence of warmth in the Build Space we added a fifth layer of clothing tonight and went back out there. We found last night that one of the two drive speed controllers was bad, so we need to replace it, plus we need to figure out why the weapon motor doesn't spin ... Click Back after viewing an image.

Kids: Don't Do This At Home! We're untrained professional amateurs, and plus "Because We Say So". Not wanting to open the garage door and let more cold stream in, we gingerly applied a second later of paint to the shell of Poor Punctuation 0.9, inhaling as few fumes as possible.

Because we industriously soldered all our parts together the other night, we'll have to desolder the connections to remove the speed controller. We sat there for half an hour trying to wick away the solder, before putting down the 25W soldering iron in frustration and picking up the 150W one ...

... Which was quite a bad idea. Now not only do we need to replace the speed controller, but also a bunch of wiring, including the wires to the motor, which means the whole 'bot needs to be disassembled. Grrr!

Seeing as though the 'bot was now in pieces we decided to test the weapon motor outside the 'bot, just in case there was a part of the chassis it was rubbing on, that we couldn't see, which was why it wouldn't spin. But no, even unfettered like this it wouldn't spin. That meant either (a) The motor is bad; (b) The speed controller is bad; or (c) Our soldered connections from ESC to motor are bad. We're thinking (c) is the most likely answer, so we'll re-connect these two, and as if by magic we even found the bullet connector that had gone missing the other night, so now we can do it properly! Note to self: Next time, check all the electronics before installing them in the 'bot ...

This photo didn't come out as well as it might, but finally, at this point we had two working drive ESCs - you can just make out the green LEDs. Before we put the 'bot back together we need to reconnect the weapon motor and ESC. After pulling the electrical tape off one of the three connections, and seeing the two wires fall apart, we were really quite sure it was our horrible soldering job that caused the problem.

Unfortunately the cold has seeped into the bones, and it's too unbearable to hang out here in the Build Space anymore tonight. We quickly pulled the painters tape off the shell, as the paint seemed dry, despite the temperature at 20°F - pretty!

Oh crazy weather! Last night we were building in a T-shirt in 75 steamy degrees. Tonight, it's 25°F and even with four layers of clothing it's pretty darn chilly. Still - we're on a mission to finish the antweight, so time to get going! Click Back after viewing an image.

One of the things we noticed last night was that we'd picked up some grit in the gearbox of one of the Pololu drive motors. Given how dusty and mucky an arena typically is, we're going to install some paper sleeves over the gearboxes to keep the crud out. In the meanwhile, in lieu of a can of compressed air to blow the grit out, we went the other way and sucked it out. Expensive, yes, but Dyson vacuums are awesome.

Although it's 25°F we decided to apply some team colours to the shell of Poor Punctuation 0.9 while it was sitting apart from the 'bot.

Coming up on the last of the wiring! The power leads to the weapon ESC aren't long enough to make it to where we're connecting everything together so we need to solder on some extensions.

Here we're starting to hook all the power leads up. We've twisted together all the positives and we're about to solder them together.

And finally: the negatives are being soldered together. One more thing to do after this - plug the battery in! :-)
Yeah - not so much. When we powered up the 'bot the first thing we noticed was that only one of the drive speed controllers had blinking LEDs on it. After binding the receiver we verified that only one side of the drive was functioning. Anoying, as we could have sworn we tested it before beginning the build.

Of course, it's possible that we have a poor soldering job in there, but to see we grabbed our other SozBots ESC pair and hooked them up to test. Although you can't see it here, both LEDs on this pair lit up, so we must have grabbed the wrong set to put in this 'bot.

The other problem we're having is that the weapon motor doesn't spin. Both the motor and ESC are new, although from Hobby King, so maybe one or both are bad. There are no musical tones when power is applied, although the receiver is receiving power from the ESC, so the ESC must be receiving power, and the motor does twitch when we push the stick up, so there's connectivity. At this point we're numb from cold, so we're going to go inside and warm up, and tackle these issues tomorrow evening.