Hercules
Hercules's first fight was against a horizontal spinner that was made out of some sturdy aluminum channel and had a FingerTech Chipper blade as its weapon. Hercules tanked a lot of the hits and flipped AES a couple of times. Half way through the lifter got stuck in the upright position. I out drove AES to win a judges decision. Unfortunately the reason that the lifter was stuck in the upright position is that the servo for the lifter had become dislodged and partially stripped the gears only allowing the lifter to go up and not down. Meaning for it's next fight I only had one lift before I was forced to rely on my drivetrain to win the fight
Hercules vs The Cuban
Because of the large number of competitors at the event, Hercules had about 5 hours in between its first and second fight. It's next fight was against a horizontal midcutter. At the start of the fight I rushed across the box to try and prevent The Cuban from spinning up. After some grappling and a couple of blows back and forth the belt came off of The Cuban allowing Hercules to win a judges decision using its one good lift to carry The Cuban across the arena and slam him into the wall.
Unfortunately this would be the last fight for Hercules. This fight didn't start until 6:30pm. Being that I had been at the museum nearly 12hrs at this point and was running on less than 5 hours sleep I was exhausted and decided to forfeit the rest of the matches and go home to get dinner.
I'm excited about how Hercules performed. I only have some minor things to fix for the future. It needs new wedge guards which is necessary after almost every event anyway. Since it's 1oz underweight I may make some out of steel next time to make it even sturdier. I plan on 3D printing some sort of servo mount to hold the servo in place better than the tape I have been using. I hopelfully will get around to making a tougher lifting plate this time. Whether that's out of titanium or heat treated steel, either of which will likely require stronger hinges rather than the hardware store ones I have been using. Other than that Herc is ready for it's next event since it took very little damage this time.
Barrel Roll
Barrel Roll vs Mondo Bizzaro
BR's first and only fight of the tournament was against Mondo Bizzaro, one of the newest incarnations of Weta kits from kitbots.com. I never really realized how massive these things are. Barrel Roll is very dense, being made from all aluminum with a large steel wedge up front. Mondo Bizzaro dwarfed BR in comparison. I was confident going into the fight. I finally had control over my bot for the first time at an event. The fight started, we both rushed at each other. Mondo got under Barrel Roll and flipped it onto its back. In the process of trying to flip it back over Mondo Bizzaro got one good hit on the back corner of Barrel Roll and that was it. I lost all control of the bot. It was dead. I tapped out, defeated. Taking BR back to the pits it was pretty obvious what had happened
Barrel Roll is gong to have to get a redesign. I have been babying this original flawed design for too long. I will likely have to remake all of the body rails. The new one will have more space for the internals this time around because that is what has been causing all of BR's issues so far. I have plenty of ideas to work on for now including ways to keep the wires in check and reduce the weight so that is no longer an issue. But for now it's back to the drawing board for this one.