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| The Diary - Storm 15/12/00 I've just had a 4QD controller to play with for a bit. We know how popular these controllers are (and also respect the company for still using Acorn computers!) - but.... well, you can read our verdict in the site, but the Vantecs still lead by a whisker, despite their price. Caught the show tonight, thought that decision to let Mousetrap through was a bit dodgy. Obviously tracked robots that are still moving about count as immobilized, yet a wheeled wedge that's only just moving about isn't immobilized. Go figure ! 18/12/00 Visited some local companies around Ipswich today for some advice on the hydraulics in Storm. I know what I need, and how to build it, but getting hold of parts that aren't the size of rams off a JCB could be difficult. One company that I went to said they could source "micro hydraulics" which sounded useful. Also went to our local kart racing center to talk about tyres and transmission systems. I'd been beaten to it by Chaos 2's George though, picked up some used tyres though which are going to be useful for prototyping the design. Have fixed up some meetings later on in the week with some local companies - I just hope that they are all as helpful as the guys that I went to see today. I also went to a local scrap yard. When I turned up and explained what I was doing - they were very keen to help, even lending me a hard hat to wear on site as I didn't have my own. The scrap yard called Sackers in Claydon near Ipswich is a good source of sheet aluminum and stainless steel, it looks like there were a large number of stainless steel splash backs from kitchens there - still with their protective plastic film on. 19/12/00 Had several appointments today with various hydraulic companies - they were all willing to help in whatever way they could. Time, cheap parts, once you explained what you were doing to them, and you saw the twinkle in their eyes - you knew they were hooked and wanted you to succeed. A possible major breakthrough today was finding a track supplier. Very similar to the tracks on Limpet, they are made from old conveyor chains. The company has some Carbon ones (sound very flash, but probably not strong enough) and some steel ones. They are going to see if they can find me some aluminum ones - our concern over using tracks is that they may weigh more than we can allow for our drive system, and we're sure that steel tracks would be far too heavy. Perhaps we should do a dawn raid on Suicidal Tendencies and pinch their tracks ! Went out on an xmas dinner with my team from work - spoke to our marketing director who said if I build a robot that can get on TV my company will give me all the sponsorship I need..... must remind him of that fact if I do get through the auditions ! 08/01/00 Its been a while I know - what with Christmas getting in the way of things, work seems to have slowed a bit recently. We've got the press pack pretty much completed to send out to interested sponsors, just got to see what the return is like. We are having an internal row over what motors to use for the robot, we know we want more than the standard 2 x Bosch's, and I would have liked to have been able to incorporate 4 of them into the robot, but we have decided that the weight penalty would simply be too great to justify it. That leaves us with two main options, we can go for 2 x 1.2Kw Iskras (as used by ST) or would could go for 2 x Bosches, but run them at 36v rather than 24v (as used - and pioneered by Tornado). Both robots have a lot of power, and having seen them head to head at a live event (Debenham) before, the choice is hard. I think I'll post to the Robot Wars forum (oracle of all knowledge) to see what people recommend. 11/02/00 Yesterday I popped down to Brighton for "Brighton Model World" where there were a collection of Robots being demonstrated and drooled over. I travelled down and met up with the Suicidal Tendencies team and chatted about their Robot, how they got on making it, and where they were going next. I was quite glad that even though I haven't spent much time being involved in roboteering. Anyway, grabbed lunch with the ST team... met the most power crazed woman I've even come across in the canteen - Charles (ST Team) wasn't wearing his exhibitors badge, the pin had broken - but this woman was determined that he had to wear it anyway - even though he'd impale himself or she wouldn't serve him. She even offered to put it on for him before she served him.... mad woman. I had a bit of time to chat with Vinny (Razer Team) in between him being a celebrity and signing autographs.... he was loving every minute of it. Though he did break Razer in the arena - don't tell Ian though ! 17/02/00 The build starts this week, everything is designed on paper now and just needs to be committed to metal. Sponsorship arrangements are coming on well, and hopefully we should have some copy that we can put up on the site soon. It is amazing how many companies are willing to help when you take a professional approach to sponsorship - but we'll wait until we have it in writing before we celebrate too much. Anyway, hopefully we should get a good update on here next week, along with some pics of the build ! 27/02/00 Went out shopping yesterday while I was down in Southampton working. Picked up a Futaba RC control PCM set and had a look at some gyros (they didn't seem to have any decent ones in stock though). Still got a discount from them when I said I was in Robot Wars - so can't complain. Have also ordered the motors..... However... Crisis has struck us on our batteries. Our supplier cannot get hold of the batteries that we wanted, the manufacturer has had problems producing them. We have spoken to both supplier and manufacturer but it looks like for now we aren't going to see them. So that leaves us with the Hawker Genesis or the SAFT NiMH solution. Having spent ages chatting to Andrew at DMS Tech we've decided that the SAFT's aren't going to provide enough current. Anyway, the end of the story is that I've just ordered us a set up Hawker Genesis's as well as a charger which should see them SAFELY charged up to 95% in about 40 mins :o) 03/03/01 We have borrowed a digital camera (Sony Mavica for those who are interested in such things) off Ed's other half's (Dannie) parents (thanks Chris and Barbara, its appreciated) so that we can get some picture of our purchases and of the build as it goes on. The Debenham event is starting to look very close now - only 6 weeks away and the pile of component parts that we have is going to need assembling very quickly into a robot ! It looks like I'm going to have to take a couple of weeks off work (they owe me loads of leave anyway) in order to get this done, hopefully my other team mates will also be able to help here too. Popped into Galaxy Models yesterday, our local model shop. They are (and have always been) very clued up on the requirements of Roboteers. I'm looking for a Gyro for the control system which I can reverse the 'polarity' of when the robot is inverted. They have one with a switch that could be hotwired onto a channel on the RC, or better still connected into the computer on board the robot. The Vantec's were also ordered this week - have to say I'm not overly impressed with the level of customer service. I requested that they email me to confirm receipt of my fax - and two days later I still haven't heard anything from them. Perhaps I should have gone the 4QD route after all. 07/03/01 Chased up Vantec today - they still haven't confirmed the order that I faxed to them, despite requesting confirmation of receipt via email on the fax. I'm a bit worried as we don't have a lot of slack in our build schedule to get this all put together in order to be ready for our first event. I guess its fingers crossed - and if Vantec are reading this, please get in contact !!!!! 13/03/01 Great news today - I have just come back from a meeting with a part of the East Anglian Press group (the media company who own The East Anglian Daily Time, The Evening Star etc) about a tie in with them. I have another meeting with their brand manager on Friday to discuss branding possibilities but hopefully we should see them step in to the role of Robot Sponsor. Hopefully this should enable us to have an easy way of requesting help from local companies, as well as giving readers of the paper a regular update on what's going on in the Storm camp. Don't worry though - the diary pages on the website are safe - they'll be staying as they are now. Mental note to self - need to chase up chassis construction. 14/03/01 Vantec eventually managed to get in contact with us and said that they had received the order (which is a good thing) but still couldn't give us a delivery date (which is a bad thing). The worst thing that can happen now is we don't get the controller in time for Debenham at Easter. If that happens we'll resort to plan "b" which is to drive up to Cambridge to 4QD and get hold of some of their controllers. Then when the Vantec does arrive, the 4QD's can be a standby speed controller. Some good news today on the weapon front. Atom Hydraulics have agreed to design the hydraulic systems for us to our specifications. They are a company based in East Anglia and are going to be a valuable team member for Storm. They are going to draw up some generic designs that could be incorporated into other robots so if you're interested, drop us a line and we'll get in touch with you. Once Atom have these generic designs and costs - we'll put them in the sponsors section of the site. Also spoke to the company who are providing our aluminum chassis. Turns our they are also supplying Mortis. One of the receptionists let slip that some other people had been in from "Robot Wars". She said there was a small "plump" fellow with a huge beard and a taller Chinese guy - it couldn't have really been anyone else could it. Anyway, things seem to be going well, they are all fans of Robot Wars and have agreed to help us. Hopefully we'll be able to sort out a sponsorship arrangement soon and we'll have more information about the company on the Sponsorship page. We also started to sort out that all important team wear. A company in Colchester is willing to do no minimum order on embroidered clothes (most places seem so have minimum orders of 50 for items like coats and fleeces). We should be getting quotes back from them today, we we'll have to see what happens there. 16/03/01 Its all go here today, have had meeting with Andy the guy at Service Metals who is going to be building or chassis for us. We spent the morning going through the design and looking at various options for the construction, various grades of ally as well as pondering the decision between box section and tube. In the end we decided to go for box section as it will be easier for us to work with. In future I think we'll be going for tube - simply from a strength point of view. Anyway, they have said that they can turn around our chassis in 4 working days (which is v.fast) which means that we should have the finished chassis for the middle of next week. Yesterday we started to make a wooden chassis design to get a feel for the size and where we could place components. We had a few teething troubles (such as wheels not fitting properly) but everything is back on track now. We have put lots more information up in the Chassis design section as well as some picture of Service Metals and Atom Hydraulics. I also popped into Atom while I was down it the area to see how they were getting on. At the moment we have the rams sorted out and potentially the valves. The problem at the moment is finding a power pack or motor and pump combination that is small and light enough - but these guys seem to know what they are doing so I think I'll leave it up to them. The final piece of news that I have today is that I had a meeting this afternoon with the brand manager for a very large regional brand. They are interested in sponsoring Storm in a big way and could make the difference between Storm doing well, and being a massive success. I'm not going to say any more at this point, nor am I going to give away their name until we have finalised the agreements, but it could be worth a great deal to both Storm and to them - so fingers crossed ! 18/03/01 Last night I went along to the MFL meet in Stafford, it was a bit of a trek across the country to get there, but well worth it. Bigger Brother and Killerhurtz were there running. Suicidal Tendencies would have been there running - however they blew 2 x RDFR38E Vantecs the day before, so couldn't run (expensive day for them !). They are now in search of some new controllers for ST before Battlebots - it looks like they might be trailing the new Powertrac controllers :o) Drove back from the event this morning (over 500 mile round trip) chatting with the rest of the team in the car about Storm and how we are doing. We're still very positive and got good feedback from people at the MFL meet which has spurred us on even more to come up with a class leading robot for our first entry to Robot Wars ! 23/03/01 Things have been busy this week with Storm - which is why I havn't really had time to write up much on here, so my apologies for that. I'm still trying to get through all my leave at work so have been taking days off here and there where I can - and fitting in work on Storm where and when I can. Oh, and my other half hasn't been feeling too well, she's got a nasty cold, so I've been busy tending to her. Hmm.... think that's about it - oh and my car broke down twice in one week. I'll have to put up some information on the hydraulics in the design section, but we've got a full system, two rams, pump valves etc all built for under 20Kg which we think is quite an achievement. We still have to put the weapon metal on top of that, but I don't think its going to weigh that much. On the chassis front, its all been welded up in Ally with silicon welds (allows a small about of flexing in the chassis). Our sponsors have done a stunning job with it, and have taken a great amount of time and care building it to ensure that all the welds are as good as they can be. I tested it this evening by throwing it around my garden and hitting any bit of it that looked weak with a large hammer. Didn't even bend - so hopefully we've got something suitably robust for the event :o) Over the weekend we should get all of the drive section arranged, and the weapon prototyped - enabling us to have the rams built next week. In theory that should give us a driving robot by the first week of April, which is 2 weeks ahead of schedule :o) 31/03/01 So much to say, and so little time to say it on - that's always the problem when trying to keep this up to date. I guess the big news is that our tie up with the Evening Star is now official, and they will now be appearing on the "Sponsors" page on the site. This is great news for us as it gives us a window out to the world as well as this website to report on how we are doing, and to ask for any help we may need along the way. On the build front things are going well. The Vantec speed controllers should be arriving from the states within the next few days - once we have them we need to make some modifications to them, but they should be able to slot straight into the robot. I have been informed by Atom Hydraulics that our hydraulic system is coming on well. Our custom built power pack as has arrived back in their workshop and is being put through its paces, and our lightweight aluminum valves are also being manufactured. All that is left to do it sort out the claw - which is down to me, and I haven't done yet :o( just not time ! The wheels are being sorted out now at last, we should have a delivery day for them by Monday - and we hope that we'll be able to get them within a week. Once we get everything sorted on the wheel front we'll put up some information about who we have helping us out - yes, another sponsor has stepped into the line of fire to help us out. I must take this chance to thank the guys at the Evening Star for the excellent article that they wrote on us. I have to admit to being a bit apprehensive about it, I wasn't sure what angle they were going to take or how they were going to cover us. In the end it was great, a good balance of us and Chaos 2 (who is also from Ipswich !). If that first article was anything to go by, the relationship between us and the Evening Star should be a good one ! Anyway, I have to go now - my other half is off to the Red Sea on a diving holiday tomorrow (I'm not going - long story, might tell you if I get the time) - so we're sorting out all the bits and pieces she needs to get together before heading off tomorrow. Still at least it gives me a clear week to work on Storm - I've taken the next two weeks of work to get this finished. So if you're reading this and think you can help us out, get in contact ! 02/03/01 The past few days have been so busy I just can't describe it. Dropped my other half and her family off at Gatwick to fly out to Egypt. Drove back to Ipswich (via Bluewater - well I couldn't miss a shopping session). Swapped cars and then drove to The Belfry hotel just outside Birmingham for a team building event Monday and Tuesday. Didn't get to bed until 4:30 in the morning last night, but never mind - I'm still going (just). Anyway, back to the purpose for this diary entry. We stopped in at Atom Hydraulics on the way back to have a look at our new pump that had arrived. There are pictures of it in the DESIGN section under Hydraulics. Its very well made, very solid, yet hardly weighs more than the motor would do on its own.
Tomorrow we are spending the day (the first time the whole team will have been together working on Storm as one) down at Service Metals going through the final welding tweaks. We have the drive train components (they arrived yesterday while I was away) and they need welding onto the chassis. I need to chase up the company producing the wheels - or rather I need to get them the sponsorship info they want before they can start casting them. I guess I should do that rather than sitting here writing this ! Hopefully we'll get some pictures taken of the drive train and the chassis tomorrow while we're out - so we should have a good update for you tomorrow. 04/04/01
We spent the evening building the drive train up. It runs so smoothly I can't believe it ! We also worked out all the ram sizes for the claw and arm mechanism - they will be ordered tomorrow. Overall a good day - ate lots of pizza ! Tomorrow we are having the motor mounts made up and I need to find someone who can help us out with manufacturing the claw - I think I know the perfect company..... but I'll save that until I've spoken to them tomorrow. Its 2am now and I'm sure I should be asleep ! 05/04/01 06/04/01 Not such a busy day today, or at least not quite as much driving involved. Spent the morning sorting out odd bits that had been piling up and needed to be done - ordered loads of polycarb (thought I'd get some 12mm stuff) - though having seen people like Dominator 2 last year, I wonder if even that's enough ! Spent a fair amount of time working out a project plan for the next 6 days. The clock is ticking and we have an awful lot to do before Debenham. I can hand on heart say that we are still on track to finish, and having counted back the days, this will have meant a start to finish build time of 21 days which I'm quite proud of.... which brings me on to my next point. There have been a number of comments made in the forum, and through email about us making poor (or less than brilliant) choices about hardware to go into Storm. We have been very much at the mercy of what we can lay our hands on. Much of the hydraulic work has been condensed into a 10 working day period from start to finish and that includes the lead-time for equipment to arrive. We have been constrained by what companies have in stock and how quickly they can get it to us. Anyway, its all good rivalry at the end of the day. Something that the other hydraulic robots out there might fancy is joining my "Hydraulics Inside" campaign. I'm getting logos printed up on stickers (similar to the Intel Inside logos) to stick on robots, as well as logos to put on your website if you have Hydraulics Inside to link to a website all about hydraulic robots.... watch this space (have more important things to sort out at the moment). Nothing else much to report today, Anglia Karting have donated us some idler wheels (bit of machining to do on them first though) but still useful parts. Oh and we've sorted out our 'corporate' clothing for the Debenham event. We have ordered our batteries from DMS Technologies - have sent them a postal order by registered post (at vast expense) to ensure that we get the batteries for Tuesday morning as we should have a rolling robot by Tuesday evening. Just need to source a charger next ! The next week is going to be tough, I've just finished the project plan for the work. Hopefully we will get everything done - there isn't a lot of slack in the system. Just wish us luck ! 07/04/01 I suppose I shouldn't really use this website as a forum to moan about companies that aren't being helpful - but on this occasions I can't help but have a winge. FedEx have shipped out Vantec speed controller over from the states. The guys over at Vantec emailed me to say it had been sent and gave me the consignment number. Having used their online order tracking service I 'watched' the Vantec arrive in the UK, work its way through customs and end up in the Stansted cargo handling depot. Now its Saturday today, and they aren't due to deliver it until Monday. As the order wasn't showing as having left Stansted - and coupled with the fact that I'm not going to be around on Monday (ie they will fail to deliver Monday and I'll get the bits on Tuesday) I thought I'd see if I could pick the package up from the cargo depot at Stansted. A 4 hour round trip, but would give me the Vantec 4 days earlier, which would make all the difference for us at the moment ! I checked their website, and lo and behold, it says you can pick up goods at Stansted airport on Saturdays before 1pm.... yay :o) I thought I should give them a call first to check it was there, but their customer service center doesn't operate at weekends, so I couldn't speak to anyone. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I jumped in the car, drove there - to find that they have been shipped on and were somewhere in Enfield.... en route to me. Suffice to say I was VERY annoyed with FedEx. Not only was I told that even if the Vantec's had been there they couldn't get them for me (despite the website saying they could) but they wouldn't give me the new consignment number it had been assigned (hence it was not logged as having left Stansted !). So looks like we're not going to see the Vantec till Tuesday :o( The rest of the day went ok. Sourced a load of parts for the Armour mounts, drilled out some holes in the chassis before deciding that they needed to be bigger holes, found ourselves a nice 24V solenoid to power the hydraulic pump. On another note, I have just spend a hour and a half on the phone to Martin from Anthrax (called him on his mobile so his ear must be fairly warm by now). Firstly I would like to apologise to Martin for the fact that his chicken kievs got cold while he was chatting to me (this was after he had burnt them though !) and secondly, I'd like to thank him for taking the time to chat about life the universe and everything with me. A thoroughly decent bloke, who like me is desperately rushing to get their robot ready for Debenham. Oh, and if we do get Storm running for Debenham... Martin - remember you owe me a drink ! Tomorrow is an early start (yes we work on Sundays here !). I'm off to Debenham to do a site survey for the lighting for the Robot Rumble next weekend...... and then I guess I'll have an 18 hour day working on Storm. 08/04/01 Just a quick note - I will update more tomorrow as I'm just off to pick my other half up from Gatwick (see entry 01/04/01). Suffice to say a good weekend despite yesterdays setback and we are currently ahead of schedule (somehow!). It looks like we will be able to run at Debenham next weekend, despite the fact that we still don't have much in the chassis. Also spent the day cutting the rest of the holes in the chassis. Done some quick maths and we make it about 500 - 600 holes, and at 2grammes each we reckon that's saved us about a kilo in weight. Not a lot, but if we could save a kilo off every component we put in the robot, we'd soon see a MUCH lighter beast ! Over the weekend we have also sorted out our claw design. We mocked it up in MDF and then trialled it against the robot to ensure that the linkages would work and the pivot points were in the right place. All looks well ! A bit of a setback though, we have had some go kart clutches modified for our motor sprocket wheels and some of them have got very damaged teeth on them upon closer inspection. Looks like we're going to have to go back to Anglia Karting in Ipswich to see if they have any more burnt out clutches ! 10/04/01 Busy busy busy busy. Had some setbacks today, mostly communication errors. Had a busy morning with branding and sponsorship meetings before heading down to visit our sponsors and see how things are getting on. We stopped in at Service Metals to pick up some more ally plate (you never can have enough). I did get a call from Ipswich Plastics who are supplying our Armour who informed us that despite ordering the polycarb last week, they can't get hold of it and the soonest it will be in will not be until the 17th of April - which is way past the Debenham event. Luckily they managed to source some from elsewhere - just have to hope its up to the job. There wasn't much on the project plan for today, partially because we are running ahead of schedule and partially because we had to leave some slack in the system in case something went badly wrong - which luckily it hasn't. The neoprene has arrived for the Armour mountings and our wheels. Last year there was a smooth plywood floor at the Debenham event and lots of robots had problems with too little grip. Hopefully these neoprene tyres should get us around that problem. I was a bit worried that the batteries didn't turn up this morning - we ordered them from DMS Technologies back on Friday. If they are not here tomorrow I will probably give them a call, I'm guessing that they missed the Monday afternoon shipment which is disappointing to say the least given how much effort we went to on Friday to get them the funds so they could ship them. Still, these things are all sent to try us. The biggest trip of the day was driving down to Adam's place in London to pick up the controllers for the hydraulics, Adam had to head off for a meeting with Mentorn but we got hold of the parts left in his dustbin for us (thanks Adam!). Also popped into Maplin at Lakeside to buy parts for the electronics. We have had the hydraulic control circuits designed today and they should be made up later in the week. 11/04/01 Well there were still no sign of any of those batteries from DMS Technologies this morning so I thought I'd give them a call to get the consignment number to chase up the courier. You would not believe my amazement when I was told that the batteries were still sitting in their offices. They had "forgotten" to send them out to us. The problem was this was now having a major impact on our testing - we still couldn't test anything due to no power. I spent most of the morning trying to get DMS to resolve the situation. We had paid on Friday for next day delivery, they received the postal order as expected on Monday morning (it was sent registered pre 10am delivery). They should have shipped the batteries on Monday and we should have got them on Tuesday. I simply explained to them that we needed them, and the person at the end of the phone sounded very apologetic about the situation but his sales director was saying that all that could be done was to put them on a standard shipment which meant we would get them on Thursday. I didn't think much to this level of customer service and suggested two options. They could either ship them to me same day (which they said was too expensive) or I said I would get someone to travel down and pick them up and they could pay the fuel, but their reaction to that was that it was an outrageous request (personally I think it was quite a reasonable request given the lengths we went to, to ensure that we got the batteries when we wanted them). Still they wouldn't budge and say they will ship our batteries out for delivery pre 9am tomorrow. We will have to see if they manage this I suppose. They took a new delivery address (the location the robot is being built as opposed to my house) and fingers crossed for tomorrow. Andy came over to help Tim this evening (I am having a night off as it is Danie's birthday today) - however Andy first went via Dartford to buy some chains for the sprockets. We measured them up and I had a call to say that the pitch we have bought was correct (we were a bit worried we would not get the right pitch). 12/04/01 Today has been the most manic day of my life. Tomorrow is a bank holiday so we lose the help of our sponsors, from tomorrow we are on our own ! First, its gone 9am and there are no sign of the batteries I've spoken to DMS Technologies who have checked with the courier who say that they should be here within the hour. Hardly pre 9am delivery but at least we know they are on the road. We spent the morning going through the project plan and working out what needed to be done, and by whom it could be done. 10am - No batteries still. Called DMS Technologies who said they would chase up and get back to me. They are adamant that they sent them. 11am still not batteries, called DMS again (we are getting somewhat frantic by this point). DMS say that the batteries have been delivered. We thought that was impressive given that we had been working in front of the house all day ! Turns out that DMS or the courier (don't know which) managed to screw up the delivery address. They delivered to the OLD address, not the address I gave them yesterday which meant I had to drive all the way back to my place to pick them up. Suffice to say we are NOT impressed with them at all, and when all this madness is over I shall be calling them to sort out compensation. I would at least expect compensation for the postal order's we paid for to get them payment as soon as possible, as well as the same day delivery charge and the registered pre 10am delivery charge for my postal orders to them. I think a call on Tuesday is in order. Stopped by at Galaxy models to pick up some Polycab paint and also grabbed a gyro from them on "use or return". We don't know how the robot will handle once we have built it, but we don't want to take the chance. I also grabbed some fuel tanks for heli's which should make good hydraulic tanks. Tim and Jamie have taken the robot down to the hydraulics team at Atom to have the parts put in whilst I sort out all the loose ends up in Ipswich. Once done I'll head down to Atom. Jamie is being a star today and is going to drive over to near Swindon to pick up the cast ally wheels which are being manufactured today. Hopefully we should have them by about 9pm tonight ! When we got to Atom we found that the chains that Andy had bought from Dartford Karts on Wednesday weren't the right length. We had asked for chains of length 75cm and 110cm. They had sold us chains with 75 and 110 links. This left us with a problem, where do you get karting chains at 4pm on a Thursday afternoon when the next day is a bank holiday ? The team swung into motion, systematically calling every karting company in the area. We also had an appeal go out on Vibe FM via their online message board for anyone with the correct chains to come forward. In the end we managed to persuade Dartford Karts to leave some chains for us at Tilbury Karting - so we will have to send someone down to pick them up tomorrow morning. The afternoon went well for Tim at Atom - I was busy masterminding our chain problem. They had the hydraulic system hosed up and ready to roll - all we had to do was put the claw in place. fill up the system and connect the control electronics. We did have a photo shoot planned for this evening with our sponsors the Evening Star, but it had to be cancelled - we were running late and weren't going to make it, and they were having problems with their presses. The wheels arrived at about 10pm, as did our corporate clothing. We worked late into the night however tomorrow will be crunch day ! 13/04/01 I was up at 7am this morning (couldn't sleep) tweaking bits of Storm before the others arrived. Jamie went down to get the chains from Tilbury first thing and returned at about 11 with new lengths of chain. He quickly set to work sorting out the lengths and taking them apart. The rest of us worked on mounting everything that was left in the robot. There was a bit of a setback as we realised that there were problems with the electronics that controlled the claw - this coupled with the fact that the rams were much larger than expected has caused us to drop the weapon from Storm for the weekend. We could have probably got it working, but not to its full potential and more time spent on it will make a far more impressive first appearance some time in the summer. To be honest I haven't had much time to write anything today - I have been that busy. Storm ran for the first time at about 2am Saturday morning. It was cold and wet, we were scraping frost off the tools as we worked but we had got there. We will probably miss the morning session on Saturday to make totally sure that Storm works, but we would rather turn up with a working robot, than one that is just for display. Whilst the rest of the team worked on the robot, I went over to Debenham to setup the lighting. I have no idea why I said I'd do the lighting when we had a robot to build, but at least Eddy and Roy are going to make a contribution to Storm's finances as a thank you ! 14/04/01 As I said yesterday, we spent this morning working on the robot and just checking the chains ran freely. The last sections of Armour were bolted into place and Storm was placed into our truck and driven to Debenham. When we got there we went and checked in and went to see who we were up against. We had been picked against Onslaught - not a fight that we would look forward to. Whilst we can run both ways up so their flipper wasn't that much of a worry to us - they are very quick, and we still hadn't tested Storm properly and had no idea how maneuverable we were. 3...2...1...Activate the crowd counted down and we were off. Tim who was driving launched Storm at Onslaught at full speed. There was an almighty bang and Onslaught jumped back a foot. Tim, backed off (having sat on their flipped for just too long - though they didn't flip us.... not that we would have cared, it would have simply meant reversing into them next time rather than doing it forwards. Back off their claw Tim rammed them again, bouncing them off the arena wall. This was too easy we thought, Onslaught was not putting up a fight. They were out away from the arena wall now and Storm was happily pushing them across the arena and into the walls. Alan from Onslaught did not look a happy man and called a halt to the fight. It turned out that Onslaught's flipper had not been working because they had forgotten to connect it back up (oops) and that we had dislodged one of their battery connector cables, rendering them immobile. Still we won and were through to the next round - not a bad first outing we thought. We checked Storm over for damage but couldn't find any, everything was fine. We put the batteries on to charge with our mammoth 40A (2 x 12v 20A) charger and watched to see who our next competitor would be. We were against Axe Awe, a nasty robot with two weapons, a flipper and a very nasty looking blunt axe with an acceleration linkage on it like Shunts. The fight started and we found that like Onslaught we had no problem bushing them about the arena, they tried to flip us but our low profile and low center of gravity meant that they couldn't. However then disaster struck, we hit the arena wall and our recover battery pack came loose and we were immobilised. The fight was halted and Axe Awe allowed us to reconnect the battery and continue with the fight. They started using their axe which was very powerful but was just bouncing off the Macrolon Armour until they got one hit which shattered the Armour sending shards and lumps of Macrolon everywhere. We continued the fight until the end, but Axe Awe went through on damage. We took Storm out of the arena and inspected the damage, nothing other than cosmetic Armour damage, however we (and most other people in the pits) were not sure as to why our 12mm polycarb had been breached. Some suggested paint, some suggested the cutting. It was the Stinger boys that came up with the answer. The original polycarb that had been ordered was interior polycarb (not treated for UK). However, if you remember this couldn't be supplied so some other Polycarb was sourced. Though it came from the same company, this new polycarb it turned out was exterior grade and therefore had a UV coating on it which weakened it and turned the structure more crystalline than polymer. Overnight we renewed the broken section of Polycarb and were back ready to fight on Sunday, 15/04/01 Today was a good day. Today was a very good day. We arrived for the afternoon session and found that we had been drawn against our pit neighbors Tornado. We were sure that this would go their way, we didn't think we had the power to damage them, so we sat down with them and showed them how we were built and which bits we would like them to avoid totally trashing if they could. We said we would fight as best we could, but if we started waving frantically could they back off a bit. 3...2...1...Activate. Again as per yesterday Tim launched Storm at Tornado and we clashed mid arena, we flew up their new ramp and crashed down onto them before sliding back down and backing off. We were just getting ready to ram them again when we realised that they had stopped ! A halt was called to the fight and Team Tornado went to investigate. Their controller had failsafed and Tornado was immobile. They fiddled about in the back of Tornado and they were running again - a removable link problem I think. When the fight was restarted Tornado started pushing us about the arena as we suspected they would do. That was until we got locked against the arena wall.... or rather they got locked against it by us. We were in a head to head pushing match with Tornado (not something we wanted to be in at all). However our super grippy tyres which had been giving us problems with drive all day suddenly paid off. The arena surface was coated with sand paint to make it grippy and our neoprene tyres were digging in. We were both stalling out motors trying to push the other, us trying to hold them in place and them to push us back into the arena. Suddenly smoke was noticed coming from Tornado's Armour.... this was not tyre smoke either, this smelt like motor smoke ! The fight was called to an end, and Storm announced the winner. We couldn't believe it (and neither could Tornado I think). Tornado went back to the pits for repairs (Rex went back to his workshop to sort out a new motors for them). We found that Tornado had bent some points of the chassis that we already knew were weak and it took a 6ft wrecking bar to get them bent back. One of the welds broke in doing so - but that wasn't a problem. The other one was successfully pulled back into shape without dissecting the robot..... however that was the least of our worries, we were up against Chaos 2 next :o( We knew that our weakness was our chains. We knew that as they were sourced last minute we hadn't had time to fit tensioners and that they were liable to come off if we were flipped too much. George made the same agreement with us that he had made against Tornado earlier. If we wave... he backs off. 3...2...1...Activate. Its pretty daunting lining up in the arena against something like Chaos 2 - especially when all the crowd are chanting for Chaos 2. Still, we used the same approach that had worked against Tornado and Onslaught..... full power charge towards them. Sod the flipper, we run both ways up... all we could be worried about was a chain coming off. In the end, all hell broke loose. The Iskra pump motor that was the only remaining hydraulic part in the robot broken a cable tie holding it in place, it shunted across and hit a piece of gaffa taped polycarb protecting the back of the Vantec that hadn't been removed when we mounted a proper door in the back of Storm to allow access to the removable link. This bit of polycarb then came loose and knocked out our link. On top of that both the front chains (the ones were were worried about) had come off. Chaos 2 went through. Tornado fought in another first round match and later went on to avenge us against Chaos 2 - they won the Sunday afternoon event in the end. Leaving Bigger Brother second, Chaos 2 third and amazingly us fourth. Not a bad weekend, we came back with a fully working robot, no damage caused and a joint fifth (Saturday when we got knocked out in the quarter finals) and a fourth place (Sunday when we got knocked out also in the quarter finals, but with fewer robots taking place). We have learned a lot, and have many changes to make to Storm, but as Andrew from Tornado said on the Robot Mayhem forum, we're going to be one to watch. We beat a lot of other robots without our weaponry, just as a box on wheels. Yes we were helped by luck, but a win is still a win.
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