Chameleon 2.0 Progress Log
October 28, 2001:
Yup, it is now 1 week until we pack up and leave for the next battlebots tournament and this is the first build report... We've been busy with a little project at work called Command & Conquer Renegade. If we weren't playing the multiplayer C&C mode so much maybe the bot would be actually finished by now!
This is a picture of some of the innards of Chameleon for the November 2001 tournament. Still ToDo: weld big nasty teeth to the drum weapon.
October 28, 2001:
Chameleon 2.0 will have a new weapon constructed from a piece of 3" diameter steel pipe. You may notice from the pictures that I am currently using CARDBOARD as part of the construction of this weapon! Yikes! The reason is that I had some hubs machined to attach the pipe to its axle and assumed that 3" pipe had a 3" inner diameter... Well it has a 3.1" inner diameter so my hubs are not quite big enough. This cardboard from my son's new car set seems to fill the gap nicely though. I've ordered some rubber to use as a lining from McMaster-Carr to replace the cardboard but I'm so busy these days, I could see the cardboard actually making it into the box...
Oh yeah, you can see my new toy on the right of the first picture :-)
October 28, 2001:
Probably the biggest upgrade for this tournament is the switch from "el-cheapo" gel-cell batteries to another "battlebots standard" NiCad battlepacks. This picture shows the three battlepacks which will power Chameleon 2.0 along with the two astroflight chargers. In addition, the power supply for the weapon is now independent from the drive train power supply to avoid the problem we had in May.
October 28, 2001:
One of our upgrades for the November 2001 tournament is new wheels. I actually like the old wheels better in some ways but I was unable to find spares when the store I bought them from went out of business. These wheels are almost standard at battlebots so now we have something like 8 spare wheels in case we break any wheels on the way to the giant nut. heh heh
The axles have been upgraded from the old mild steel axles to O1 tool steel. We purchased these axles and the hubs which attach the colson wheels to the axles from Cruel Robots.