No it wasnt a Freudian tit
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Bots that do not destroy you, only make you stronger.

Dismantlred the weapon system, replaced the cables with the 16 gauge deans wire. Ran the wire through braid and attached Deans plugs to complete actuator system.

Found Al box at Jaycar perfect for 2 small vantecs and secured the controller in the case, shortened wires, braided them and used deans again to complete weapon system.

Just finished the final battery config and was happy to see the 6 rows of 3 batteries charge up to 25.67 volts, just short of the vantecs 26 volt limit so will be keeping eye on that I think just in case voltage increses.

Have replaced scooter motor that was giving me probs and placed cap inside motor and cut first piece of stainless that covers top actuator system.

Whats left, finish wiring harness, shield IBC somehow. fill tyres with something to make them puncture proof and cut up the rest of the kitchen sink for armour.

So far there seems to be only 2 or 3 lightweights competing.

Is there any others out there?
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Bots that do not destroy you, only make you stronger.

Remember that 2 x non-spinner feathers can enter the lightweight class as a cluster-bot.

However, therre will be *limited* lightweight places available, so naturally priority will be given to the actual lightweights over cluster bots..

The lightweight class is mainly being used as "filler" at this event to pad out the minimum time between rounds towards the end of the second day. Hopefully it will grow to be a stand-alone class in the future.

We should have more information as to the scheduling and number of lightweight fights available in a few days..
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Pic time.
Heres KingPin with finished weapon except for some armour.\Working on 2 bots at same time means none are actually working but soon they both wiil.
As they share batteries and electronics makes it sort of easier to work on them both at the same time.
Have to setup the wiring next so can swap parts easy.

http://robowars.org/forum/album_pic.php?pic_id=418
THeres a few gaps but b4 u get too excited about a plan of attack I will be usinf some plates for armouring those areas.

And here a pic of the final packs.

http://robowars.org/forum/album_pic.php?pic_id=417

The yellow one is the fluoro pack and the green one is an earlir idea that is a minimalistic way of spacing. Looking through the pack as in pic you will notice nothng actually as the spacers are just small little piece of wooden venetian blinds cut up into small squares.
THis allows maximum cooling properties as they are only big enuff to space out the batteries, nothing more.

Have dropped these accidently off table and they seem very strong.
Love that braid.

And final comment on the binding method. Have gone for the bandaged look to help keep air flow high.
In regard to the Gaffa, am a big fan of the US stuff as have been using it for about 25 years but dont think its that necesary as the main differnce in quality is when you want to remove it.
Personaly I buy the best and worst roll and use them accordingly.IE good stuff for wires as u will pull your hair out trying to remove crap gaffa from your wiring so just opted for this coloured stuff from bunnngs.
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Bots that do not destroy you, only make you stronger.

Well what a busy couple of days. Up last nite till 5am getting both bots to a running stage and within 5 minutes of waking up had a coffee and angle grinder in my hands.

Good to test out arena, unfortunately didnt really test Pinscher much as my motors havent arrived yet so i used lesser motors that where water broken but one of them was smokin. Guesing some oil I applied dripped down into the brushes. wanted to abuse them but thought about my IBC and left Pinscher alone and transferred parts to its bigger brother.

I enjoyed driving Kingpin in the arena a lot.
Even though the floor was a bit smooth after a little while I was making the robot drift with control around the arena. Was sliding so close to the wall and sometimes i let it crash to see how it holds up and it felt pretty good. Left about a dozen rubber marks on the walls from impacts and scratched up the arena pretty good. (sorry Brett, had to be done).

Was happy to see it behaving like a RWD car. ITs going to have different characteristics, probably some of them will be disadvantages but hey it does donuts and burnouts, woohoo.

I found out the cost of a high gear ratio on drive and that is you end up with hot batteries. Suddenly i feel good that I spent time to help them dissipate heat and make funky packs as there is no doubt that if they where touching each other, the heat would have been worse especially if they really liked each other. (sorry bad joke, need sleeep.

The solution to the problem would be to use 2 packs in parralel. Lucky thats exactly the size left in KP’s guts and lucky have 2 ident packs. (Actually the proper solution would be to change gear ratio)

Kingpin weighed in at 20kg without batterys and actually looks very tiny in arena for some reason.
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Bots that do not destroy you, only make you stronger.

Floor of the arena was fun to drive on, looked really stylish sliding around but for real combat I don't think we would have much hope

WEll my lightweights progressing better than Pinscher is.
Have installed friction drive wheels to give me a form of 4wd.
biggst advantage for me is it gives me more brake.

Has a tail on it like a mini wedge and top armour is on.
THese few little things have refined its shape a bit and am finally starteing to be happy with its lines.

Was always trying to do things with angles to hide the fact that its basically a box. The friction drive wheels sit close to the bottom so it creates a sloping effect which is what I always wanted.
Even though am a bit stressed atm it gives me a buzz to look at this robot. Its really coming together nice and strarting to show a bit of design to it and looking very chunky.

Have side armour pieces cut out ready to be mounted. trying this new concept for armour unique to this robot as Pinscher has its own unique armour as well so there will be some new and original concepts being tested with both robots.
THe Vics have already seen PInschers new armour and general feedback was positive. KIngpins armour concept is still under cover for now, at least till I finish it
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Bots that do not destroy you, only make you stronger.

Sorted out what happened with my order at RMP. I used an 8 instead of a 6 on my exp date. Doh.
Still dont know why emails were not getting to me but what are u going to do?
Anyway chances are motors will arrive within a day or 2 of the comps so nothing like added tension. Will be ready regardless I hope.
Anyway took some pics as it always makes me feel better.

A little hard to see but there are rollerbade wheels used as friction drives down low. Looks like they are floating in air a bit but are strong.
And the little black tail is the base of some scissor jacks which works pretty well and saves me having to make something up and matches the front end a bit.

Hopefuuly will get time to put on some slanting armour above the friction drive wheel tapereing up towards the top.
Apart from some wiring needs side plates connected to protect my wheels abit and match the actuator top plate shown in pic made from stainless steel.
And an invertable aerial/antenae thingy doover

http://robowars.org/forum/album_pic.php?pic_id=427
http://robowars.org/forum/album_pic.php?pic_id=428
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Bots that do not destroy you, only make you stronger.

Well KingPins first outing was a success I thought.
Melted the glue out of my battery packs but thats cool. Motors only got warm and dont think the IBC struggled with it.

Wheels worked a treat. Had one of them punctured but didnt make much difference as at 6 inches the tyres will support the weight when flat.

Scary thing for anyone wanting to play with my lightweight in the future is that it is under powered. Using less voltage than the motors are rated.
Need to decide if I should increase drive battery voltage or just run the same size in parralel.

Trying to get it to be less than 20kg and leave the rest for either armour or external wepons. Like the idea of having hammers and stuff on the top that a second person can operate.
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Bots that do not destroy you, only make you stronger.

Will get back to King PIn after next event. ATm its mostly together, needs a few little things done and find appropriate batteries.

Anyways reason for this post is looking for ideas to control invertable driving.
This is the scenario.
Drive motors are with IBC and can use channel 5 (switch) for swithing to inverted driving. THat part all OK.
Weapon is controlled by 2 seperate ESCs and 2 channels on the stick.
Want to somehow be able to invert the weapon speed controllers at the same time as the drive so when I flick the switch on channel 5 It needs to invert the whole robot ( 4 channels - 4 speed controllers).

ANy ideas anyone, fisrt thing I gather I need is a Y harness but what would do something like that?
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Bots that do not destroy you, only make you stronger.

If you're using Hobby ESC's to drive the jaws, then the only easy way I can think of right now is to do the inversion in the Transmitter.

From memory your TX has some pretty programamble options.. I know the 7CAP can be programmed to automatically invert multiple selectable channels at the flip of one of the other channel switches, before it even gets sent to the Rx. Maybe yours can do the same ?

If it can't, then nothign except using an ESC with an invert function, or maybe an IMX (?) comes to mind right now, then again, it is 12.30am and I'm still at work so the brain might be missing some other option right now..
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Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people

You could just rig up a relay to the output of each jaw to reverse the current going to each actuator, and trigger it with either a pic or a hacked servo hooked up to the same channel as the IBC flip.
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Jeff Ferrara
fb@ffej.net

ffej.net

So just put a relay between the esc and the motor to invert the connectors, makes sence.

Can you invert the robot as well as trigger external relays off the same pin on the IBC, is it simply connecting to ground for both or is that not a good idea?

As its low power requirement, 5 - 10 amps max then could I use a single relay lke a double pole double throw to have it do both to save on components, assuming I can find one easy enuf.
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Bots that do not destroy you, only make you stronger.

How Stupid of me, trust an Electronic/Microprocessor engineer to think about the complicated electronic approach and overlook something as simple as a relay to reverse the connections to the motors.

Yes, connecting the Auxillary outputs to the flip input as well as switching a relay should work OK.

The only caution I can think of is that the Flip input is connected directly to the IBC's microprocessor, whereas the auxillary outputs are driven through a special driver chip with spike protection built in to allow them to power relay coils and things that make electrical spikes.

So if you connect the auxillary output to a relay AND the flip input of the micro, then you could potentially subject the micro to voltage spikes from the relay coils that arent isolated by the driver chip.

So to play safe, and avoid *possibly* (not likely but possible) blowing up the micro from a negative voltage kick from the coil, I'd add a reverse-biased diode (stripe to positive) directly to the relay coil on the relay. This will help clamp any kickback from the coil and protect the micro's flip input.

DPDT (Double Pole Double Throw) Relays that can handle 5-10 amps of current are easily available from any jaycar or dick smith.
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Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people

Was saying thanks today to the person that gave me the matching set of seat actuators that made KingPIn Possible and was stoked to find that there was another set available to me. THis time complete with all the parts and mounted to a frame.

This set of left and right is also an upgrade from the last set.
Different mouldings around the worm drive and has plugs instead of permanent wires coming out of the motors so all I can say is OH JOY with a mixture of WooHoo.

http://robowars.org/forum/album_pic.php?pic_id=853
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Bots that do not destroy you, only make you stronger.