Proudly designing with SolidWork's OUTSTANDING CAD software!

CURRENT BUILD STATUS 7/26/04:

Well, the Move from Hell is finally over.  I'm still digging out from under all the boxes, but I've managed to clear one half of the garage so the truck can be backed in, and bots loaded.  The driveway in the new house is steep enough that attempting to load or unload a 220 lb fighting robot is just asking to be squashed as it tries to roll right back out.

Shiva goes to Brentwood this weekend; we'll spend a day testing out batteries and seeing if some new spin motors will fit; then we're off to Castle AFB to help build the WCR box for the event August 14 & 15th.  With a bit of luck the only really fried thing will turn out to be the battery packs, and should that be the case, Shiva is a go for the Nationals in October!

Anaheim Post Mortem:

Shiva got two byes and three fights in.  Despite another wonderful run-up in the box Friday night (note to self: do not try to dust floors with a full-body spinner; all you do is dust-up the Lexan), Shiva snoozed all weekend.  First fight against Vicious Circle was incredible; we only got full spin twice, the second time in the middle of the pits.  We did leave a lovely nice gash in the pit itself as we tried to ricochet out about two seconds too late.  Vicious Circle tore off a foot long section of 1/4" titanium skirting, sheared off several bolts holding the teeth on, and put some stunning gashes in the outside of the shell.  From the looks of it, they aimed for every sticker on the side of the 'bot!  The worst damage by far, however, was one of the Bosch drive motors, which basically shattered its housing and bent the central shaft.  And you know what?  The Vicious Cicle team drove two hours home and brought me one of their spares and gave it to me!!!!!  THIS is what robot combat is all about.  :)

Greg Gibson, James Arluck, Rick Russ, Randy Eubanks, Mike Phillips and far too many other people to mention (indeed, some of you I only know from your back view!) voluntarily pitched in to help get Shiva running, clear down to completely pulling and replacing the EV Warriors and welding the sprockets on.  Despite that, Shiva still refused to spin, and in a fight against Psycho-X that was mostly a pushing match, actually ended up *winning* the match.  See, Brian, your bot is a pushybot too!!!!!  So I finally got my coveted pog.

Unfortunately during that match the mini-MOB blew out.  We discovered this during testing when the spin motors spun up instantly upon powering up the first killswitch.  This required ripping the lid back off and pulling all the power leads to the MC-1/mini MOB and the EVs, then wiring the chains so the lid wouldn't move.  It was a disappointing match vs. Particle Accelerator; Tom, I still owe you a play date.  I wanna sink my teeth into that car bumper contraption you rigged!

Had an awesome time doing a comp 'old school style', clear down to sleeping on a bus for several nights and building in the parking lot till 2 am.  Even more awesome, Shiva managed to qualify for the Nationals in October.

Previous status reports:

  Shiva's paint job from ROBOlympics.  Matte acrylic paint doesn't mix well with enamel spray paint; next time I'll use proper model paint and take my time.  This was done in the pits on Friday night in about two hours.

After analyzing the failures at RO, here's what we think happened:

Shiva vs. Compressor:  the "sit 'n spin" forfeit.  Operator error!  I neglected to turn the radio on BEFORE the Vantec, with the predictable result that the Vantec refused to talk to the radio.  *ALWAYS* turn the radio on FIRST.

Shiva vs. Tobor:  The spin drive tensioners all popped loose after the first big hit on the I-beam.  The nuts have been replaced with brand new nylon lock nuts, and I'll get someone to tighten them down before the match for me.  The loss of drive after the second I-beam hit was initially thought to be due to a tweaked RX connector...testing this past weekend may have revealed the true cause!  Power in Shiva is soooo tight that you need ALL the cells at full charge to last the fight.  One pack of 20 cells was known to be bad at RO, and after the second I-beam hit we found that the power connectors to half the power had popped loose.  Under those situations the 'bot will spin just fine, but won't drive!

Logo & Name Info:
Chaos:  (kay*os)  The disordered state of unformed matter and infinite space supposed in some cosmogonic views to have existed before the ordered universe. 

The Chaos arrow logo:  Originally created by Michael Moorcock in the Stormbringer series (highly recommended reading), the symbol has eight arrows radiation concentrically from the center, representing infinite possbilities.  The symbol is sometimes used in physics to represent the four dimensions of matter (length, width, depth, time), and thus also represents the extension of a point to a line, square, cube, and tesseract.

Gretchen Helms  Team captain, builder, and primary driver.  Gretch can commonly be found on the BattleBots forum, as gretchdragon in chat.  She has a wide array of interests, from drawing to photography, ice hockey to home brewing, Bengal cats to knitting.  She can frequently be found knitting socks at robot events.  Her interest in combat robots started in Season 2 of BattleBots on ComedyCentral, and she decided she had to get on a team after spectating at Season 5.  The South Bay RoboWarriors picked her up as a team member, and she helped Kim Knollenberg work on Mauler 5150/Hellfire 666 for both Steel Conflict 3 and 4.  She has built and competed with her own antweight, is building a beetleweight, and currently owns and operates Shiva, the heavyweight formerly known as Team Logicom's Phrizbee.  She can commonly be found hassling Brian Nave at BattleBeach and Steel Conflict.