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May 15, 2006

June 2, 2005

June, 20, 2005

Xhilarating impaX 2.0

After to loss of the original Xhilarating impaX at Battle at the Beach III, we needed a new bot for my son Andrew to drive at the upcoming event in New Orleans. It would have been nice to build our planned new 12lber but we did not have enough time or money to to build that more complex design.

We looked at what we had available and found the basis of may prove to be an even more effective bot than its predecessor.

The basis of the drive train will be two Mini-Ev's mated to Chris Barons new all metal planetary gearboxes. We received the gearboxes as trial units so this bot should prove a perfect vehicle to test them out. We plan to run the Min-Ev's at 18v which should give us very similar speed and power to the original without hopefully over stressing the motors. This combo should also weigh less than half what the big A-Packs did saving at least 4lbs.

I also recently got hold of a large quantity of scrap 3/8" Lexan so that made a easy choice for the majority of the chassis. The 1/8" S7 had stood up well on the first version under normal fighting conditions but the  back and sides had remained vulnerable.  It was decided that we wanted to give all around protection when required with as thick S7 as we could afford. The minimize the amount of armour required its was decided to  build the bot as small as we could. That dictated a reduction in height, length and width.  I tried placing the major components required next to Cheep Shot 3.0 and it was clear that by lengthening the wheelbase by  about 2.5" inches everything could be fitted in.  A quick spreadsheet check showed that we could have all around 3/16" S7 and still have weight to spare!

One last requirement was to allow the rear wheels to  remain in contact with the floor even when the front of the bot is lifted up.  The new design will allow the rear, sides and bottom of the bot to be quickly replaced with different panels that  will allow more  access to the rear wheels.

I intend to do this report in a series of separate pages to allow folks to get straight to the new information without having to download as much.

First report is here.