quote:

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Originally posted by BH Mike:

quote:

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Originally posted by Nick:
You keep it under your bed???

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*In* his bed nick [/b]

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Yes there is nothing wrong with it, gotta keep her from running off with those other robots

but in good news i got it all wired up and such. the sidewinder gets two big thumbs up from me. the low speed control is extremely precise and it seems to give you more control at low speed then at high. which i like.

havent got it in the arena yet but so far so good! definitely wont be using a gyro now. if for anything itll just be to keep it straight at top speed. very very impressed!

now i just have to mount the reciever box and find some foam to pad up the batteries with.

after that im gunna get the drives a bit more efficient then see if i can make a few more packs
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www.demon50s.com - Minimoto parts
http://www.youtube.com/user/HyzerGlen - Videoooozzz

ah k this tempremental little bastard went not too bad for the weekend.

through the week i tinkered with the current limit and expo settings on the sidewinder to try stamp out the timing problems which got it running really good.

the 6 cell A123 was giving me hell all week so i had to replace it with 3x 2400 nicad packs with the bonus of giving me 4 extra volts. the packs worked great all weekend so getting the a123s balanced and getting enough packs to cycle about will be the key now.

as for the fights i was really happy with it! was pushing most of the thackbots once i got them up on top of the wedge (was a bit hard to get them moving head on head with the crap colsons) and didnt get stuck under many tiles so im very happy with that. only robot it had problems with was offset obviously, had to try wait till he drove and lifted the front up then crawl under him which only worked once. until it died.

other problems i had at the end of day 1 where the robot died randomly in the offset fight till i turned it off and on again. its been doing that for a while now and its giving me hell. ive replaced all the wiring and the speed controller + batteries and switch thus it MUST be spektrum related.. also had some problems with one side wheel slipping off and that lost power.

so in the morning i swapped a spare wheel on there and put a 1000uf cap on the reciever to hopefully try stop the random resetting.

seemed to work against rapture and took a few decent hits without cutting off but then vs rhino it cut out for about 15 seconds before it came good again. so im thinking the cap helped a bit but didnt fix the problem.

and last of all i got into the semi finals and thought i had a pretty decent chance of flipping dumbell over and after that busting up plan g's weapon to take the finals but when i went to turn the robot on to fight dumbell the drive got jammed full speed on one side and i swear to god a welder style spark blasted out with a hefty amount of smoke and thus died the sidewinder

pulling it apart revealed a bolt holding the switchmod regulator on had loosened up due to not being loctited and shorted out the whole bank of fets. the main chip on the bottom is dead as are about 4 fets on one side so all of em will have to get swapped. the other bolt was coming loose too so im very dissappointed at the care robot power has put into their construction. ill definitely be hitting up robot power to get it fixed for free

but many lessons learned to pour into the next version. im thinking ill keep it going for just one more event to test a couple more things out. its not perfect yet. so no point in making another version till i get the bugs out.

but fixes so far will be

1) getting a super cap and diode to put on the radio to HOPEFULLY stop it freaking cutting out. it must be browning out or something and not wanting to properly start up again until its powered down. i think ive lost almost 6 fights to this now so i have to get it sorted.

2) crap traction and poor hubs. they are always spinning inside the wheels and thus no pushing power. aside from that the colsons are just way too hard a compound and the hubs are overly heavy.

so i really like those banebot wheels. they come in heaps of compounds and there cheap as. so ill see if the 73mm versions will fit then grab a few of the hard compound ones and see if they go. even with the new hubs it should loose a significant amount of weight and tracion should go way up. plus the hex hubs should resist tearing out easily enough.

3) batteries. i have to get the a123 working. i really want to try out 8 cells to get more power as i think the setup will handle it just fine. so will have a look at how i could jam that in the back with balancers.

*takes a breath* i think thats all lol! crossing my fingers that i hear good news about this sidewinder.. id definitely recommend them anyway with a rebuild as soon as you get em.
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www.demon50s.com - Minimoto parts
http://www.youtube.com/user/HyzerGlen - Videoooozzz