Inside Thoughts: Driving, Design, Competition Updates and More

While flying home, I had a lot of time to review a lot of the film more closely, and reflect more on things that went right and wrong in and out of the box at the last competition. I'll be splitting up the list by rough groupings of what the note has to do with.

Driving Technique and Bot Configurations:

• For the first couple matches I had the control toggle on on the controller, this toggle is designed to give finer movement and control of RC devices. As I quickly found out I was one of the quicker bots in the arena and should be leveraging that to my fullest advantage instead of trying to focus on the finer movement.
• Use speed to more effectively get around to other bots sides.
• Remove wedge for large vertical spinners with a wedge.

Weapon Management and Battery:

• From what I can tell the battery is over specd and is capable of running multiple matches without needing to be recharged/replaced. However this is only speculative and is based on 2 relatively short matches. Maybe cut back to a 750mah or 850mah to help cut weight and size. Will need to do actual math for this, ugh.
• Rev to higher rpm, with 4 weapon teeth I can afford it. Didn't seem to have any termal or reliability issues after removing that one tooth. Also didn't cog as much (only during a new dig match) as it did during pre-competition testing.
• Weapon reliably started up and reved quickly. Considering changing weapon gear to 18 or 22 teeth so that I can get a better ratio to hopefully solve any cogging that is still existent.

Things to Change/Improve/Redesign:

• Loctite, almost lost semi-finals to a lose drive motor, luckily it didn't come lose till the tail-end of the fight. Wheel set screws, weapon set screw, drive motor mount screws.
• Even out the grind on the drive motors key slot.
• Prep all my motors leading up to next event (luckily at this last event I didn't have any motors burn out) so that if one breaks I can actually change it.
• Lower wedge angle, and grind it more flush with the floor.
• Make sure wedge is actually touching the floor.

Things to buy:

• LOCTITE on drive motor mounts. All 6-32 screws seem to stay tight and probably don't need it. Maybe on set screw for wheel and weapon mount?
• Belt Sander to grind wedge better, (brownsville???) if not go to grainger or other tool supply store
• 3/16 steel setscrews for weapon hub.
• possibly new sized banebot hub?
• Switch out screws on shaft collars to stainless steel ones from the stripped crap screws that are on them now.

Event Update

Events that I am attempting to attend in the next couple of months leading into the new year are...

• R&F Robot Fight 2019 9-14-19
• NERC Franklin Institute 2019 10-5-19
• Hill City Robot Combat 2019 11-9-19

This may change based on class/project/test schedule this coming semester. Each event is about a month apart so that I have a break between tournaments to reprint, fix, and update design between events. Currently, I am registered for R&F and HCR, and will be attempting signup on Friday at 8PM est for the NERC event. I have been warned that the event will be very hard to get into and that the signup will fill up extremely fast, so I plan on being online and on top of it that day.