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About 72 hours to go before Apologies in Advance makes it's combat debut at RustyCon and things are still quite busy here at SpamButcher Combat Robotics.
Here's a fresh photo of the bot:
The blades are now titanium / lexan hybrid.
I blew up a motor yesterday. I think it may have had something to do with overheating considering all the smoke that was coming out of the bot. This is something like the 4th motor I've killed.
I've come up with a novel way to address the heat issue though. Note the aluminum strip underneath the main blade - it's pressed up against the motor shaft. The idea is that it acts as a heat sink for the motor - but instead of fan blowing on the heat sink, the heat sink effectively fans itself as it spins. Too my surprise - it seems to work really well.
Actually measured the top speed of the blade - came out to about 2900 rpm - which works out to a bit faster than 100mph at the tip.
The bot is still about 1/10th oz overweight. Not too worried about this - I have plenty of lexan I can shave off. I also have some other minor technical issues to address.
To recap the event info (the cover is ridiculous - I promise my feelings won't get hurt if you don't show up - there will likely be other free events in the near future):
I'll be entering my bot - "Apologies in Advance" (http://www.spambutcher.com/bot/aia1.jpg) in a competition Saturday Jan 11th. The actual fighting should start about 1pm.
Event will be located at the Doubletree Inn in Bellevue (300 112th Avenue SE - http://www.rustycon.com/20/hotel.asp)
as part of the "RustyCon" sci-fi convention.
Unfortunately the only way to see the robots is to pay to get into the convention - they want (gulp) $35 for Saturday.
-Rich
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