The Killer Sandwich was a 12 pound bot with a 7 1/4" saw blade in the front and a pair of hinged wedges in the rear. Its frame was wood, which held up very well throughout the competition. It had some thin armour screwed on all around. Going into this match I was somewhat confident as I thought the maces would hit the saw blade, deflecting their attack. However, the blade would go through the bucket like butter if I wasn't careful.
The Match: Well, the buzzer rang, and I tried to spin up the maces, but the motor just kind of twitched a bit. It was the exact same problem I was having during testing that day...the homemade mechanical speed controller wasn't contacting right at first, so I was unable to spin up. However, later on, I could see the axle spinning, but not the blade. The nut on the drill shaft had come loose. The match quickly became a pushing match as their sawblade wasn't as effective as I had thought. Although The Killer Sandwich had more drive power, they lacked traction so I was able to push them around a little. This continued until the end of the match when the buzzer rang again.
Battle Damage: A few deep scratches in the bucket from their blade, but thats about it. The nut on the drill axle was heavily tightened, and the homemade controller was tweaked a little.
The judges scored the match a 6 - 3 decision in favour of Obelus, but I'm sure this match could have gone either way.
Mr. Shadow was an extremely well engineered robot, built by Ilya Polyakov, the creator of Blade Runner. Mr. Shadow had a spinning blade in the front powered by a Jensen motor. It had two large, grippy wheels powered by harbor freight drill motors. It's armour was kevlar. I knew one hit from the blade and the bucket would explode. I just hoped I could get the maces spinning...
The Match: The buzzer rang, and the same thing happened again. The motor twitched a bit and thats it. Mr. Shadow made its way over with its blade spinning, and one hit to the bucket ripped it right in half. Obelus was dead in the water, and the match was a KO for Mr. Shadow. It was all over in 8 seconds
Battle Damage: The bucket was ripped badly, which pulled apart the receiver wiring, which was secured to the bucket. The servo for the weapon controller was also torn out. Not only did the blade go through the bucket, it also ripped through the base plate, which warped it a little.
Edward Spinner Hands was a very low spinner with a lawnmower blade on top. It had a quick drivetrain and a fast weapon. I had just duck taped the bucket together for this fight and hoped it would hold up against this spinner.
The Match:The buzzer rang, and I spun up the maces, however with all the time I spent fixing the bot I forgot to charge the 12v battery for the weapon. The maces were spinning, but not with near the speed they should have had. After a couple of hits from Edward, one of the maces were ripped off from the chain. This match was soon over, and Edward had won.
This was the last match of the day for me, so I spent the rest of the night and most of the morning repairing the bot for Sunday. A quick trip to Home Depot yielded some armour, in the form of steel straps and duct metal. Luckily the bot was underweight. I spent much time with the homemade controller, and eventually got it working right. Onto Sunday...
Looks like I got a rematch, which is what I wanted. The mace assembly was now working well, and Obelus was now well armoured.
The Match: The buzzer rang, and I maneuvered Obelus around the arena to give me time to spin up, instead of just sitting there. The maces spun up to full speed within a few seconds and I attacked Mr. Shadow. The maces hit his blade repeatedly, deflecting his bot away each time just as I had hoped. However, he managed to slow down the maces enough to get in close and hit Obelus with the blade. The blade caught one of the steel straps, the impact flipping Obelus upside down. The end result of this rematch was the same as the first, but this time I think I proved that the spinning mace assembly is an effective weapon.
Battle Damage: A slight tear in one of the steel straps was soon apparent. The maces took most of the damage, but they were 1 pound of solid steel so they took the abuse well. The spikes on the maces were a little dented, but were still fine.
This battle was to decide who faced Mr. Shadow in the final. Although I wouldn't have been overjoyed to face Mr. Shadow again, I gave it my best shot in this match. TNT was a very quick, and compact thwak bot. It used two Makita drill motors for drive and two grippy caster wheels.
The Match: The buzzer rang and I spun up the maces immediately. Unfortunately, when the maces were spun up, they were just slightly to high to consistently hit TNT. During the course of the match I constantly shut the spinner off and started it back up to keep the rpm's lower, thus the maces would be lower as well. I managed to hit TNT about twice or the three times the whole match, ripping off the lexan plate on the rear. The match became more or less a pushing match, where TNT had the advantage.
The judges scored the match for TNT, but I thought it was a very close match
Battle Damage: A couple of dents in the duct metal armour, nothing else. Found some scrapes on the top plate of TNT, due to the maces just hitting the top of it.
