Backstory
We were pretty deflated after Moto 2004’s flop. But, we had parts, and we wanted to do another middleweight. The ideas stayed dormant until 2005. There were a lot of big bot competitions that year, and we decided to make the leap on Robotic Revolution in New Orleans. There was one large issue.. budget. Working part time and in community college, there was not a lot of funds to make this happen well. It was very well slapped together, and we worked late into the evening before the carpool arrived (Thanks Rob Masek!) to pick us up. Want to know why this bot was a bad wedge? Because there was no intention of making it a good one.
To our surprise, it held up pretty well. The surplus lexan for the sides for RF reception exploded wonderfully, as aged and weathered polycarbonate does. What floored us even more was, with the 2-2 record, it finished moderately well in the brackets, and it was an RFL Nationals qualifier. We qualified for Nationals.. with this thing. That required us to make a very small concerted effort to make it be more effective (new drive motors, borrowed ESC, nylon blocks to help keep the wedge at the ground, shipping help). Getting to Nationals would have not happened if the community didn’t pitch in and help. We DHL’ed the frame, and then carried on the electronics, some tools, and three other small bots that qualified to San Fransisco. It was another underwhelming performance, but the frame withstood beatings from The Mortician, and Icewave. The bot just suffered from not enough battery to run hard for 3 minutes, and also the nylon blocks to help pitch us down weren’t extremely effective.
Modifications from Total Anarchy v2
– Removed the weapon assembly completely. After we trashed a T74 in testing before Moto 2004, there was no going back. We had rough knowledge of how to create a proper hammer arm/lifter arm at that time.
– Took the NPC 60522 motors and instead of direct drive, geared them up for a little more speed. There was still plenty of torque. This is how the original SubZero was driven, but that was a larger ratio up.
– Chopped up the frame for a dual wedge. In hindsight, this was a horrible design choice considering the wheels were centered on the chassis.
– Added a Robot Power ESC and attempted to run at 36v. We believe the ESC was torched in testing at Robotic Revolution in New Orleans. We had to back down to 24v to run on borrowed ESCs.
– Between Robotic Revolution and RFL Nationals 2005, we switched from NPC 60522s to T64s. We were able to procure a pair with a hardened casing instead of the stock cast iron to better handle abuse. At Nationals, we ended up being able to run at 36v again with a Vantec that we were able to borrow (RDFR36? can’t recall specific model).
– Top/Bottom armor was scrap 7075 from the local scrap yard. Steel framing and wedging was all surplus mild steel. Side armor was 1/2″ scrap lexan.
How you ship a Middleweight on the cheap
Fights
Build Photos
