DREADNAUT XP1

'The FOURTH War'

We didn't sustain much damage in the third wars and so the bodywork was pretty much o.k. So we put it to one side and concentrated on the 'gubbins'. One major job was a complete rewire to simplify the wiring and make it look alittle more tidy and proffessional. The reason we went out in the third war was because we lost power to both the wheels, and we dreaded the worst. A quick inspection of the motors however, revealed that it was a simple task of tightening up a couple of grubscrews which connected the drive cogs to the motor shaft. So that was sorted.(Our downfall as it turned out!)

The major thing to sort out was the fork motor.
So far the forks had been a big dissappointment in terms of their effectiveness and so we wanted to make them more powerful, without resorting to using pneumatics, which we knew nothing about.
We decided to use motor cycle starter motors, as they were cheap (around £15 each) and quite powerful. They are also series motors which we know from the first wars are difficult to reverse, and so we used two opposing motors with a large cog between them which was connected to the fork drive screw. We did however have to do a rewire after blowing a relay, due to current flowing through the drive cog. It was noisy, but it worked. All of the electrics were rewired and higher rating relays were used. We decided not to use a speed controller,
a; because of the cost
b; the technical knowhow needed
c; they are susceptible to interference.
This makes the control of the robot more difficult, but not uncontrollable. All we had left to do was put in the extra bits and peices that were required for this series such as failsafes and power switches and we were done. A lick of paint on the frame, a bit of patching on the fibreglass, a respray and we were ready for action, with plenty of time to spare - at least ten minutes!

The War

The Winner

The winner this year was

Chaos2

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