After a restful night, today's the day the Big 'Bots fight (and hopefully win!) so it's time to throw on some clothes, find some coffee, and get the rest of the fleet through safety inspections. Having decided to leave the Sportsman alone, we didn't have any last-minute building to be done, so we decided to head in later than we've done in previous years - that was a mistake! We got to the Farm Complex about 9am, and the main parking lot was already full! We were herded over to a secondary lot and took a bus to the main event complex. Hit Back after viewing an image.

By the time we arrived at the pit table it was pushing 9:30am, and most competitors were already here and going through safety inspections. Lauren took Steel Stiletto over for a safety check, and passed without any issues. I took the two beetles and Nihilistic Naysayer 2.0, and again we had no worries getting through safety.

That left the thirty pounder, and we had actually done some last-minute meatball surgery, as the hole we'd milled in the front wall wasn't exactly lined up with the path of the blade, and with Milly 1500 miles away, back in Texas, we took the easy way out and cut the front wall with the jigsaw. After that, the safety inspection was fine, and we were ready to compete!

It typically takes a while for things to get going, the first morning of the Big 'Bot event, and this year was no exception, but eventually the Drivers Meeting was held, and the crowd began to assemble in the stands, as the brackets were being drawn up.

It seems like we usually miss out on byes at Motorama, but this year Didactic Duelist 1.5 and Nihilistic Naysayer 2.0 both had byes, and yikes! Formidable Fustigator 2.0 is the first match of the event! With all the 'bots charged up, we steeled ourselves for the competition to begin!

Here we go with the first match of the event - and it's not looking like a pleasant match-up! Formidable Fustigator 2.0 versus the full-body spinner of Tetanus:

Thanks to Mike for the video. Ouch. Pretty much a repeat of what happened to us in our second match last year, but hopefully we'll be able to patch this up and run the featherweight on two wheels for it's next match. In theory the two remaining omniwheels ought to let us move around the arena. We checked the brackets, and Didactic Duelist 1.5's bye just went by, so up next we have our oldest 'bot, Unlettered Understrapper 2.5 versus SID (Sadistic Infernal Device):

Thanks to Kyle for uploading this video. Yay! A win! After eight years we finally get the 'bot into an arena with a working weapon and come away with a win - neat! At this point we have a bit of a breather before we need to load up again so the 'bots are back on the battery chargers, and Lauren's on her way back from hunting down some lunch. Nihilistic Naysayer 2.0 has a bye, so up next we have Steel Stiletto versus the old warhorse War Drums:

Thanks again to Kyle for the clip. YAY! Steel Stiletto beat War Drums on a Judges' decision, after a couple of decent slams dislodged the two rear wheels from War Drums, and the front wheels were looking a bit wobbly too! Despite the couple of initial hits from War Drums, we couldn't find any damage back at the pit table, so the 'bot was put on the charger, and we scanned the brackets for our next fight.

There's plenty of activity in the seconday pit area, with 'bots being repaired and charged as the day went on. It's great to see so many familiar faces, and the spirit of cameraderie is evident, with builders helping each other get their 'bots back together - sometimes the driver who just destroyed you is the first one to offer to help!

There was a bit of downtime for us before our next match came up, which was going to be Unlettered Understrapper 2.5 versus Maniac Kathy:

The carcas of Unlettered Understrapper 2.5 after the beating it just took from Maniac Kathy. Suffice it to say, with one win and one loss, we're happy with this old 'bot, but it's time to put it out to pasture. The insides are in good shape, but it can't be fixed up for another match, so we forfeited the next match against Ripto 3.0 and turned our attention to the 'bots that were still running.

Didactic Duelist 1.5 had been slated to fight Traumatizer in the beetleweight brackets, but due to damage Traumatizer received in its first match against Revenge of Dr. Super Brain, it had to forfeit to us. Our next match was going to be in the hobbyweight division, putting our drumbot Nihilistic Naysayer 2.0 up against another veteran 'bot, Alan's Zandor:

Again, thanks to Kyle for the video. A lot of folks on the NERC Forum were skeptical about the UHMW drum, and as it happened, there was a failure, but not of the drum itself - but the bolts holding the dead axle sheared after a weapon-to-weapon hit with Zandor, and ultimately the drum separated from the 'bot. Back at the pit table we quickly extracted the sheared bolts, and replaced them. The front wall had taken a hit from the drum as it separated, and the polycarbonate had shattered on one end of the wall, so the 'bot was a bit rickety, but lives to fight another match!

Up immediately after the drumbot was Steel Stiletto, versus the nasty spinning bar of Fiasco:

Thanks again to Kyle for the video.

Steel Stiletto took a fair bit of abuse from Fiasco before breaking it's weapon, and at least one of the speed controllers went up in smoke, leading to the tap-out. Lauren set about disassembling the 'bot to see if we could get it back up and running for it's next match. After tinkering for a while, we weren't going to be able to make the repairs needed in time for its next match against Placebo, so with a 1-2 record, Steel Stiletto is out of the competition. We will try to finish the repairs though, in case there's an opportunity for a rumble or grudge match tomorrow.

Next into the arena we have our damaged featherweight Formidable Fustigator 2.0 going up against a Canadian saw-bot by the name Gloomy:

Once again, thanks to Kyle for the video. Two things about this match: first, we actually went the distance - the full three minutes; and second the weapon spun up which we were very happy to see! Even though we didn't do a whole lot of damage to Gloomy we were able to knock his saw blade off, and by spinning the 'bot (the DeWalts were in high gear) we got a couple of good thumps in for good measure, but at the end of the day the Judges gave the match to Gloomy, rightly so.

Here's the carcas of Formidable Fustigator 2.0 following its match with Gloomy. Note the very clean cut on the bottom-left of the 'bot: if that cut had been on the right side, there would have been an interesting circumstance - that's where the batteries were! As it is, there's a number of chewed up power and signal cables in there, so the post mortum back at the Build Space will have to weed out the re-usable parts from the destroyed parts.

There was a pretty good crowd in the stands today. Truthfully it thinned out a bit towards the end of the day, but for the better part of the fights today I'd have to guestimate that the stands were 90% full. At this point it's getting on for 5pm, and the fights are spacing out a bit, but it's time again for us to throw a 'bot in the arena; specifically our beetleweight Didactic Duelist 1.5 goes up against the über-speedy Shame Spiral:

More thanks to Kyle for the video. As you can see, Thomas's 'bot completely out-classed Didactic Duelist 1.5 - the weapon died shortly into the match, and after being slammed around the arena, and being left inverted, everything pretty much died after a few more slams, leaving Shame Spiral with a win by Knock Out.

There's your problem! This is the PWM cable for the weapon speed controller in Didactic Duelist 1.5, and as you can see, it's been rubbing against the weapon motor, and that's chewed through the insulation and cable, shorting it, which is why things went quiet in that last match. We also have amber lights on the BB3-9 drive speed controllers, so first thing tomorrow morning we're going to have to switch out both the drive speed controllers and the weapon ESC too!

We hung out for a while to see whether we were going to have any more fights this evening, watching some of the matches, and generally hanging out with some of the great folks running and competing in the event. As 6:30pm rolled by, it became obvious we weren't going to have any more matches this evening, so we tidied up, and called in a reservation to the Texas Roadhouse near the hotel. It was going to be a two-hour wait, so we headed out to the car and ran a couple of errands before dinner.

After dinner it didn't take long for the hectic day to take it's toll, and wrapped up the day with a gin and tonic, and review of some of today's matches.

Ugh - despite a huge head cold, we stumbled out to the Build Space determined to continue making the most of our week off, and get some building done. We didn't want to work with Milly - besides, the Alka Seltzer Cold medicine says not to operate heaving machinery, and Milly is 900 pounds - we we settled on the wiring for our ancient beetleweight Unlettered Understrapper 2.5. Hit Back after viewing an image.

When we were tidying yesterday we came across this case, which had been taped shut literally since moving from Baltimore to California. Inside is a mess of MiniEV motors, sprockets, and even some DeWalt motors - score!

In our last batch of parts from HobbyKing we'd picked up some OrangeRx 610 receivers, which the reviews said fit in the same casing as the Spektrum AR6110e. We just happen to have a dead AR6110e (left), and the 610 does indeed fit into the casing just fine (right).

Anyway - to the business at hand. We want to finish this old beetle up, and move on to other 'bots. At the moment it weighs in at 2lb 8.9oz, mainly it's so light because the original design had NiCad batteries, which we've switched to LiPo, a largish brushed motor, which we've switched to a brushless one, and an aluminium slotted front pipe, which we lost a long time ago.

Here's where we've been stumped: trying to get all the electronics and wiring neatly tucked away inside the 'bot. It seems like there ought to be sufficient room for everything, but we just can't seem to make the wires go where we want them to.

So we pulled everything out, and started from scratch. This meant testing the components, and noticed that the thresher spun the wrong way, so we switched two leads for the weapon motor, and that was fine.

It seemed like there ought to be sufficient space for the weapon ESC to fit behind the weapon motor, but we couldn't get the motor leads neatly tucked away, because the barrel connectors made things unweildy.

So we decided to do away with them and go with what we know, and we know ring terminals! We cut off the barrel connectors and switched each lead to a pair of ring terminals screwed together with a #4-40 screw and locknut.

Which didn't take too long. We taped up the connections, and worked them down into place.

And eventually we had the leads neatly tucked away under the drive motor, and zip-tied the ESC to the drive motor to prevent it moving forwards into the thresher.

We did have to cheat and add a piece of wire to the ground on the ESC to get it routed into the other half of the 'bot, but with the weapon ESC in place there ought to be plenty of room left for drive ESCs, receiver, and battery.

And here we have everything zip-tied into place. The only things left to do are bolt all the reds to the reds, the blacks to the blacks, install a power switch, and bolt the top down.

The power switch is the same toggle switch we've always used in this 'bot, and here we're hotglueing it to the top panel.

And there you have it! Our first build report for this 'bot was way back in December 16th, 2003, and now we finally have it finished, a little over eight years later - that has to be some kind of record :-)

Final weight is 2lb 9.2oz. I wonder what we could do with that weight ... Maybe come up with some front wall? Add a layer of ablative UHMW to the quarter-inch 6061 outer track walls? For now we're happy to have it done! Unlettered Understrapper 2.5 will be our back-up beetle, in case either Didactic Duelist 1.5 or Versatile Villain 0.9 aren't done in time for Motorama.

Having successfully implemented the brushless weapon setup for our old beetleweight Unlettered Understrapper 2.0 the thing we have left to do is the piece we dislike the most: wiring! Things were relatively straight-forward before putting the weapon in, as there was plenty of room in the 'bot - now, though, not so much, but we persevered ... Hit Back after viewing an image.

We started out by stripping everything out and part by part re-inserting the electronics to try and find the most suitable position for everything. It was not going well, and then we had the idea to switch the weapon motor position to try and free up more room on one side of the 'bot for the battery.

We drilled and countersunk a couple of new holes in the baseplate and switched the master link on the chain. Hey presto! Half the inside of the 'bot is now contiguous space ... hopefully we can do something with that.

Here we are in the midst of trying to get everything organized inside the 'bot. Moving the weapon motor was a good idea, but it's still a really tight fit to cram everything in. We do have a decent amount of weight left over on the 'bot, and we started thinking about widening the chassis, but of course then we'd have to make mounts for the weapon thresher, and it would be a whole lot of hassle.

Argh! So close, but after three hours of fiddling around we still hadn't quite made everything fit properly. We're probably going to have to take a soldering iron to some of the components and lengthen wires, but we're determined to make this 'bot go! We can afford to spend a bit more time on this 'bot until parts show up for other, better-designed 'bots in the fleet ...

We found ourselves with a couple of hours to spare this evening, and we only have two things left to do with our old beetleweight Unlettered Understrapper 2.0, so we decided to see if we could cross something off the list. Given the choice of installing the weapon or the wiring, we went for the weapon! Hit Back after viewing an image.

After sanding off a small flat on the sprocket we drilled a hole for a set screw. We're going to follow the advice of some folks on the forum and do the flat/setscrew/thread-locker thing.

After unbolting the weapon mount it didn't take any time with the knock-off Dremel to put a small flat on the weapon shaft.

Small issue ... we have no #6-32 setscrews, so we slapped some blue threadlocker on a #6-32x1/2" flathead screw intending to trim it off afterwards.

All right! Here we are with the weapon motor back in place. Turned out we didn't put the chain the right way around and so the master link was rubbing on the motor mount. Rather than disassemble one side of the 'bot to be able to get the thresher and chain off, we undid the master link and reassembled the right way around, noticing that the chain is actually a link too long, but putting an offset link in there would probably hit the motor mount, so for now we're going to leave it.

We did actually fire up the weapon motor, and it spun quite nicely! As you can tell from the final picture we have a bit of work to do to tidy up the wiring and get it all stuffed into the chassis ...

Today we decided to dust off an old 'bot and see whether - after eight years - we could actually finish it the way it was designed. We've had the carcass of Unlettered Understrapper 2.0 sitting around since the end of 2003, and it even went to an event but the weapon has never been fired up. We want to at least see it run - if nothing else it can be a back-up 'bot in case we don't finish any of the new beetleweights in time for Motorama 2012. Hit Back after viewing an image.

To begin with we dusted the 'bot off - literally - and collected up all the parts, to see where we were weight-wise. As you can see, it's 2lb 6oz, out of a maximum of 3lb, so no worries on the weight front. Now, as for assembly ...

At this point the battery pack has been strapped in, and we've reversed the weapon motor orientation so that the power leads are away from where the thresher lives at the front of the 'bot.

These poor BaneBots BB3-9 speed controllers have been through a lot! At this point there are next-to-no motor leads on them, so here we're soldering some extensions on, with Micro Deans connectors, to match the Escap motors.

Oh no! More soldering! This time putting connectors on the ESC for the weapon motor. If nothing else, at least it's good practice, right?

And now for today's frustration - finding a working receiver. Pictured here are three Spektrum AR6110e receivers, two OrangeRx R610 receivers, and an OrangeRx R410 receiver: none of which we could get to bind successfully to the Spektrum DX6i transmitter - so frustrating! We pulled the R410 from Didactic Duelist 1.0 and verified that everything did in fact work with that receiver, but still - that's almost $200 worth of receivers in that pile - none of which work!

With the working receiver - which we didn't dare try to re-bind to a new transmitter model slot - the tracks moved, and the weapon motor spun up. The only thing we were missing was a way of putting the weapon sprocket on the weapon motor shaft. It's a 3mm shaft, and we have a spacer in the sprocket to convert down from 1/4" to 3mm, but we're stuck for a way of coupling the two together. A search of the forums shows that a popular option is to use Shoe-Goo to stick them together, so that's going to have to go on the shopping list along with a handful of new receivers, and then we'll finally have this 'bot up and running!