Design Improvement Ideas and Rough Thoughts

After this weekend and getting my first real driving practice with the bot with the weapon in full swing I have a lot of personal notes for ideas on how to improve the design before the next tournament in September (hopefully). First things first I want to cover pros and cons of the design that I saw this weekend.

Pros:

• reliable/rugged
• high potential damage
• very fast, seemed to be one of the top 2 fastest bots there in the weight division which has potential for a lot of out driving these drive motors are very well rounded and are probably actually over-sized for this weight division.
• lots of torque, won a few pushing matches 
• invertable, can drive upside down
• after reducing the weapon teeth from 5 to 4, I had a lot higher weapon reliability.

Cons:

• relatively high wedge clearance, wasn't winning wedge on wedge fights
• steep wedge, couldn't get people up the wedge due to the aggressive 45 degree angel
• difficult to open and close top of robot quickly
• need a main power switch that powers and unpowers the whole bot, opposed to the janky 5v eliminator workaround I had

Ideas for redesign:

1. Less steep wedge to allow bots to actually drive up it and into the weapon, lower the grade of the wedge by 33% and bring it down to 30 degrees instead of 45.
2. Better ground wedge, have it have a lot tighter ground clearance to allow me to win more of the battles for the low ground.
3. Possibly change wedge material to aluminum sheet? (not sure if weight will allow)
4. Redesign backplate of the robot since I abandoned the side armor in favor of a front wedge.
5. Use loctite to connect the drive motors with their mounting hubs, they tended to unscrew themselves after rougher matches and when the weapon was running for a long time, this connection should be almost permanent except for when a drive motor burns out. Actually had a drive motor twist its leads to crap after it came unscrewed during a match.
6. Add tolerances to the mounting holes in the backplate so that I don't have to sand it for 50 minutes every time I print a new one.
7. Possibly add a well for the nuts that attach the top and bottom plates to the frame, to hopefully decrease time it takes to remove and attach it.
8. Look into why the nut in the middle of the top plate keeps getting stripped and messed up. I've had to dremmel off the screw 3 times now. :( not fun.