Generaly if you're holding the grinder with both hands you could get away with no gloves, but by the sounds of things you were doing it with one hand, and holding the material with the other, which would make controling the grinder slightly harder
I find thin disks fairly easy to control, but do you also have a lot of trouble using wire brushes? I find it badly hurts my hands from the vibrations after just a few minutes of use.

I hope this injury doesn't prevent you entering robowars with this very cool looking bot!
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YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

I use a pair of welding gloves when ever I use my grinder for more then 15 seconds. Because I abuse my XU1 grinder like nothing, it gets pretty hot, fairly quick. The gloves also stop the blue sparks arcing onto your hands when the brushes nearly let go
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https://www.halfdonethings.com/

Just had the stitches removed so big woohoo to that.
Within 10 minutes of getting home was using an angle grinder on a tyre, ah that feels better. Started new habits now because of my cut, espcially when cutting rubber, Wear both gloves and now wear an overcoat to stop molten rubber destroying my clothes and skin so nice new habits.

At recent vic meeting was very pleased that the robot was weighing about 12 kilos.
Still needed some gaps closed with armour but can finish it as I like.
Needs some fine tuning to stop some friction losses when dragging but that’s minor (I hope).

Size wise we compared it to reboot and it was smaller in every dimension, lower, shorter and narrower so its going to be a small target for ye all.
Havent actually done much driving but know its going to handle fairly well just have to eliminate friction losses so I don’t lose too much speed.

Tonite will install electronics in the body and start driving it around and tomorrow will hopefully finish off the wedge and its gearbox.
Then when everythings finished will put on its fangs, it’s a spyder after all
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Bots that do not destroy you, only make you stronger.

Well still working on the robot, what a pain, jumping from one to another just to keep production going. Thought it would be a good time to say AAAAAAAARrrrrrHHHHHHhhhhhhGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!
Cant wait wait for sunday night.
The feather will be ready one way or another but it will be buggy so will learn alot from getting it trashed, looking at the positive.
The lightweight still needs work as well, schit, and so does the exhibition bot, phuk. But will not be working late friday nite so will see where am up to tomoro eve.
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Bots that do not destroy you, only make you stronger.

While its fresh in my mind a bit of a report on my robot.
The leading weeks to the event where a bit dificult with an injury and work commitments and had a fair few problems to deal with but once I decided to only focus on my featherweight a weight was lifted and I relaxed abit more.
Had a few problems with my lifter mech so really tried to just get through the first day to do repairs that night.

First fight Snak Masheen – This was one of the robots that the wedge was designed for so just had to decide if I could flank it or go straight for the weapon. Soon into the match I seemed to just decide to go for the vertical disc and nothing else and really enjoyed that fight. The wedge stood up well to hits and copped a hit to one of my wheels throwing the robot in the air but the wheels stood up to the disc well. Was given the win and good to see the armour holding up well to the vertical disc, bad luck Angus. Hurry up and post the fights please

Second fight Vincent. This was a concern because it was a lifter like mine but Vincents lifter was actually working so had to keep its wedge away from me and I managed to do that. Vincent never got a chance to wedge me or get behind me, and on pretty much every occasion I got underneath Vincent but coulnt do much without my lifting wedge working but Vincent was never given an opportunity to use its lifter even once. Was a bit surprised that I lost that fight but wasn’t really fussed by it but found it interesting that a few drivers came up to me later to tell me that they couldn’t understand why I lost. I was told by a judge it was because of traction which made me loose a lot of confidence because in 4 years have never heard that before and I always have had traction problems but have learnt to control the robot anyway. Oh well.

3rd fight 6X7.
Didn’t expect a win here, was trying to work out how to win over the judges and all I could think of was to drive backwards to improve traction. Was abit of a scrappy fight I guess with me using the back of my robot to lead with and tried to just be aggressive.
Didn’t reeally expect to get the win but got it in the end but didn’t feel like sayng woohoo or anything.

Saturday nite tried to do some repairs to get lifter working and found the XL that gary had kindly lent me was not working. Decided to take an esc out of T34 and run a separate battery pack gaffa taped to the top of the robot as it only handled 8.4 volts.

4th fight was against bane – with the lifter half working gave myself half a chance.
Just had to avoid the pick smashing the external pack off.
Stategy was to try to get in and use lifter but realised early that at 8.4 volts the lifter could not lift the weight so went with original strategy from Saturday for dealing with bane and that was to basically go head on into its spinning pick axe. The shape of the wedge worked well here and deflected banes hits rather easy. On occasion the pick was stuck around my wheels but found that by lifting the wedge could release myself easy and returned to attacking the spinning pick.
Guess that’s not what everones strategy would be for this robot. Got the win but was more happy that my robot could deal with the thwack bot more that anything and also was good to show that my lifter worked even though it was only with 7 cells.

Unfortuntely that was the end of my day. Took the cover off my robot to cool the insides and had a break to watch some fights because never had any damge to worry about.
When I came back to it later the IBC wasn’t working but the power light was on. Jason tried to replace chips but had no luck getting it working so had to take myself out of the comp. Wasn’t too disappointed – It would have been nice to take on Trent next match but was happy how my unfinished robot performed. Weight was 12.75 btw.

During a break I went home to grab some other speed controllers for pod and came back and wired it all up ready for the wacky races. Everything was installed and was all ready to go with everything working A1 so got some food and waited for the wacky races. When I came back to plug it on I found that my radio was severly not right with the display doing weird things and the robot just spinning one side at full throttle when I switched on the radio.

This was very annoying and seems to happen a lot to me and spewing that I couldn’t enter the race. Wasnt happy so just decided to leave so no one had to put up with my disappointemnt and no one could write abiatch statement about me.

Hope the race was fun for all, good event and thanks to everyone involved
Good to see all the interstaters again and meet Angus and Trent.
Looking forward to watching the videos
Ended with a 3 to 1 score without my lifter functioning, no damage against a vertical disk and a thwackbot and all fights lasting 3 minutes, have a lot of confidence that when finished this will be a difficult robot to fight against.
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Bots that do not destroy you, only make you stronger.

I was very impressed with how spyder went George. It certainly surprised me a number of times in the matches.

Its competing with people like yourself that make travelling interstate more bearable. Thanks

Hey all, just an update of where am at.
Firstly the chain drive is gone, too ambitous to use a 9 tooth as the key sprocket so just managed to fit a seat actuator under the wedge.
Its way slow and its movement has been limited but its reliable and can lift a fair bit.
Having a worm drive suits well as It holds its position due to the brake feature.

Unfortunately the actuator meant that the back of the wedge is higher so all the angles of the front are out and thats one of the jobs left to do on the weekend.
That will basically finish off the main body work for now and then will have the real issue of fitting the guts in.
Didnt get on top of repairs as I should have from last event and am struglling to fit relays etc for the front in as a sub.

An order from RMP might come in any day and wil save the day but wont count on that and will try to find a way to squeeze everything in, hopefully.
The lifter is so slow that speed control is not needed but small ESCs are smaller than relays etc so don’t really have a choice.

Don’t really expect too much from this unfinished robot but being invloved would be cool and testing my metal would be somewhat satisfying even if its short lived.
Oh yeah I stripped all the paint off it to make it look like a grubby, unpainted NSW bot, will that help, time will tell.
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Bots that do not destroy you, only make you stronger.

Good to see your bot evolving. We tried painting our bots at one point, but the paint just showed where the opponent's weapon had torn chunks of metal out of our bots. Not painting your bot can actually improve your score in NSW
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Australian 2015 Featherweight champion
UK 2016 Gladiator champion

I generally have the habit of putting paint only where it cant get scratched. Usually areas that are sunken in etc and leave the areas of contact metal.
A robot doesnt have to be painted all over. I see it like detailing, choose an area away from the blast zone and add some colout to it. Can make a difference, especially on video at least.

edit;
For example on Scissorhands I would probably paint the inside walls of the drive pods because it would add some colour and make your transmission stand out a bit and will generallly be safe from scratches. Just a small amount will make a difference.
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Bots that do not destroy you, only make you stronger.