With the wedge, try to use the thickest, strongest metal you can find for it. It will need to be really strong to cope with this years line up of spinners. However if you make one low enough it might not even get hit at all!
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Done some more work on the frame. I've got the wheels mounted, although I think I need to tighten the mounts up a bit more.

Here is a picture of it
http://i118.photobucket.com/albums/o91/waggy81/Robot.jpg

I've also been test driving it, it seem to drive pretty well. Just need to put the armour on, the rear wedge and the front spikes.

Looks good you will probaly have problems with the belts comeing off from the way you have mounted your wheels once thet get put under load the axel might bend or the ali bracket will bend or elongate the hole.

.One sugestion for a quick fix would be to get a piece of thin walled pipe that fits over the axle bolts and put it acros the robot between the wheels to hold both axels parralel.

I am going to have to pull out of this weekends competition. I've had to re-design my robot and I have just not had enough time to finish it. I didn't start the redesign until after the Vic builders meet (mid Dec) and I've since found that I can't put my wedge on (due to weight) and had to put a passive weapon instead of the original planned active one.
I'll still turn up with my demo bot and I'll bring along what I've got done on my robot.

Update
Armour: Changed my ideas about the armour, going to have 6mm ali with chopping board on the outside, this is for the sides of the bot. The front is going to have 3mm ali with chopping board and the back is going to be 10mm ali with chopping board.

Batteries: Decided the 2nd hand 3.4A Panasonic SLA are too heavy (2.5Kg for 2) and I now only have 1 set of 2, as the other set didn't have much capacity in them.
Still undecided on what to use, I could use the 2.2A DOSS SLA from Radio Parts, although I would need to buy 4 of them and would need another charger as well , so that idea pretty much throws that idea out the window.
I was thinking of using 17 or 18 of the N3000CR batteries, they would be around 1.5kg and I would still need to solder another 7 or 8 onto the stick of 10 that are already joined.
I was think of Lipos but I would need a pack of 6 and most places only seem to sell packs of 3, is it ok to join 2 packs together ?

Andrew

To just clarify about the reason I was only going to use 18 Nicad cells is that I am running a Scorpion XL (which has a max operating volatge of 28V).

Has your XL got the good regulator chip, did you see the link I put in the Chronos Build page.
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I don't know yet Gary, I'll check it later. I did see your post in team Chronos and I went to the website and read up about the issues with it.

Had a look at my Scorpion controller, and its one of the ones with the problem regulators .
Decided what I'm doing with the batteries, I'm going to use 18 of my N3000CR Sanyos.
At the Vic builders meet I was able to weigh my robot, it's around 11.5kg with all the aluminium I was going to use as armour and 18 Nicads. This means I will be able to make a strong support for the top and still keep it under weight. It was also suggested that I change the orientation of the motors. This brings the belt of the motor closer to the support rather than being at the other end. This does bring the wheels closer together, but I don't think that will cause any driveability problems.
I will try and post some pictures tomorrow.

Went to Battleshed with an unfinished robot. Finally got it finished in the pits, thanks to Neweyn, Matt and Gary, who helped me finish it off.
The 1st two heats I sat out as I hadn't finished the robot .
The 1st fight was against Hammerhead where the belts came off my wheels as the motors were only tied down with cable ties (Didn't get a chance to buy longer hose clamps).
The 2nd fight was against Black and White and the same thing happened again.
The 3rd fight was against Bane 1 and this time the belts stayed on, after Gary lent me his hot melt gun. This fight ended when I lost control of the robot, I found out that the main power lead between my 2 12V SLAs had broken . (shouldn't have used a single piece of 12G cable soldered onto the top of the tabs)
My last fight was against Bender, I was actually able to drive it this time but alas Bender was ripping through my 6mm Aluminium armour and one of the hits got my baseplate and high-sided me, oh well.

I learnt alot from Sydney and that having a working robot a couple of weeks before an event is a good idea, it allows for driving practice and fault finding/repair.

Time to post some pictures of my robot after the fight with Bender

Finally got around to stripping the robot back. Bender made a real mess of the 1.2mm Ali baseplate, he also made a mess of a few of the high tensile bolts that I was using on the baseplate.
Got a few ideas on how I'll upgrade it, thinking of using 3mm ali with some 0.8mm stainless on top of it for the armour. I think that will be stronger and lighter than the 6mm ali.

Registered the 'bot for Robowars 5.
Getting a stick welder for Christmas, so I'll be putting 3mm steel on as armour for the sides and back and perhaps some chopping board for around the spikes. If I've got enough weight left I might put some thin stainless on top of the steel . Just now got to figure out how I'm going to charge my 2 2.2A SLA batteries with one charger, I think I might just put the batteries in parallel.

Yep, I was charging 4 batteries in parallel last event. Works fine since it finishes with a constant voltage, so the less charged cells will be getting more current until they balance out.
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They say that he crossed the fine line, from insanity to genius.

Have fun with the stick welder, I got mine for chrissy last year and it's taken a long time to master but I find it extremely useful having not to rely on other people to weld up a frame!
Got someone to show you the basics? It's pretty tricky learning sans help.
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