This is pretty late, but I have been very buy with the start of the school year. Without wasting anymore time lets get into it. For this tournament me and RJ traveled to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. We left home about 10PM Friday evening, with plans on arriving there at about 8-9AM Saturday morning. Travel goes well without a hitch, and we end up arriving at around 8:30AM.
This tournament was hosted by Raymour and Flanigan furniture store, and they had the box set up in the middle of the Store, and it was the first thing you saw when walking in to the store. Very cool setup with a lot of couches and chairs surrounding the box for people to sit and watch the event.
The box setup in the main lobby of the store
When getting there, they had us move around back to their warehouse area which is where they had us set up pits.
I ended up wearing my old high school robotics shirt, represent.
Me rebuilding the weapon assembly for the 4th time that morning.
The first fight of the day was against Captain Doom. Captain doom had 5 ground scraping forks on the front of their bot and a powerful drive train that made them very difficult to bully around the box. Without my primary weapon this match was going to be near impossible to win due to their more powerful drive train and low ground clearance. At the end of the match however, we have a giant collision that ends up knocking something lose in Captain Doom and they are rendered immobile. We win the match and qualify for the round of 8.
Since Captain Doom was just a push bot, we didn't have any repairs to do outside of charging the batteries. This left us a lot of time to try and figure out why our weapon wasn't spinning up. Upon the recommendation of another builder (I can't recall who) we lowered the kv of our brushless motor and swapped from a 3200kv motor to a 1100kv motor.
Me rebuilding the weapon assembly yet again.
Finally ready, with the weapon working.
For the next match of the day, we were facing Mondo Bizarro. Mondo has a very nasty vertical spinner on the front, but a relatively weak drive train. So for this match I wanted to stay away from the front of his bot and get around to the sides and the back. However, this did not go quire as planned, and I took a lot of early hits that ultimately led to the failure of my weapon. This fight won me "Most Destroyed".
After it was all said and done, we were unable to continue on the day. We finished top 8 and got this cool gif.
cool gif
Overall Thoughts:
I think performance was pretty okay, but had issues with reliability off the bat. Below are a few thought on how to change the design and how to prepare for future competitions next calendar year.
Remove all 3D printed parts from the design. They are pretty rigid, but tend to snap and break instead of losing chunks and chipping. Want to switch over to UHMW for the mid and back plate, or possibly 2 different materials. The logic being that the back is subjected to more hits, and the mid is subjected to more torque and sheer force as the different sides get hit. Will probably get completed after the November Tournament in Virginia.
Make the permanent switch over to a lower kv motor. Maybe not 1100kv as that seems a little bit too low, but under 2000kv. However, all I have on hand are 1100kv, I'll see if I can find some 14-18 hundred kv motors before the next tournament. (Will probably get completed before the next competition in 2 weeks)
Practice driving, I really shot myself in the foot not practicing driving more, with that being very apparent in the Mondo match.
