NERC's Franklin Cup is about three months away, and we're intending going, so that means we need to start putting some 'bots together. As we had the table saw out today for miscellaneous odds and ends about the house, we decided to chop up some aluminium for Intrusive Interloper 2.0 too. [More]

Having survived the Motorama 'Flu, we decided to finally unload the BotMobile, but seeing as though a large percentage of our stuff was in the car, this seemed like an opportune time to do some spring cleaning in the Build Space. [More]

We were fairly pleased with how the UHMW drum on Nihilistic Naysayer 2.0 held up at Motorama 2012, but the drum shaft was an issue, and the drive train was pretty poor, so with these two issues to fix in mind, we went back to the drawing board, and set about redesigning the hobbyweight. [More]

We've pretty much spent the weekend on the couch, knocking back Alka Seltzer Cold and Flu, suffering from the "Motorama Plague" or "Motorama Flu", as it's diversely known. Heck, we haven't even unloaded the 'BotMobile yet, but sitting here with not much to do except avoid infecting other people has meant idle hands - hands which decided to do some CAD work! [More]

We'll come back to today's build report - honest - but right now we have to clean up, pack some clothes, and get on the road in the next hour and a half, so we'll keep this short and sweet: We're ready for Motorama 2012! [More]

Two build days and two unfinished 'bots. Not much introduction to this one, just get out there and get some construction accomplished. [More]

We only have three days of build time left before hitting the road for Motorama 2012, and we still have two unfinished 'bots. Today we decided to concentrate on the one that has the most work to be done: Palindrome30, our Sportsman-class thirty pounder, and see how far along we could get. [More]

Time's ticking away, and we still have two 'bots under construction. We had some errands to run this morning, but at lunch time we bundled up warm and headed out to the Build Space. There are a number of key things to be done, and with a McMaster delivery last night we ought to be able to make some decent progress. [More]

The last couple of nights we've been dealing with problems at the office, so no build time, but those issues are [hopefully] resolved, and we had time tonight to get a little building done, so it's time to wire up the featherweight. [More]

Flush with our recent successes in finishing up 'bots we're left with two big 'uns to wrap up, so we need to get to it! Tonight we're hoping to finish the frame for the featherweight, so we have some drilling and milling to get on with. [More]

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 sompetition. We needed to trim some weight and bind the receiver to the radio, then see how it behaved. [More]

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. [More]

With the beetle finished this morning, our list of things to do is diminishing quite nicely! But by far the longest To Do lists are for the the two biggest 'bots, and as there's only this weekend and next weekend left to go, we need to buckle down and make some progress! [More]

Last night we almost had another 'bot finished, but the weapon wouldn't spin up, so the first order of business this morning is figuring out why! [More]

A small yet expensive box of parts from SDP/SI showed up this evening, so that meant we had what we needed to finish our second beetleweight. We'd ordered a selection of MXL timing belts for the weapon, as we weren't 100% sure what size we needed, so let's see if we can wrap this 'bot up! [More]

Having dashed out at lunchtime to Grainger to swipe some #2-56 x 3/8" screws we were hoping to get the smallest 'bot in the fleet for Motorama 2012 finished up tonight. There's not much to do,so we buckled down and set to it. [More]

This time in two weeks we'll be on the road to Nashville, on the way to Motorama 2012! Which is exciting, but we still have work to do - the plan is to finish the fairyweight and a beetleweight by the weekend, and then spend the weekend working on the two biggest
'bots. [More]

We started off today by paying a visit to Custom Sheet Metal and met Ron, who took our DXF and titanium, and led us back to their waterjet machine, and we got to watch the Waterjet in action. It never occurred to us that there would be white sparks as the titanium was being cut, but then we've only seen polycarbonate being cut before. [More]

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! [More]

We were feeling pretty good this morning - we finished a 'bot yesterday, and will likely finish another today. We have everything we need to wrap up the build of our 12lb drumbot, so it's off to the Build Space and here we go! [More]