Hey everyone! We are 120 Slugs, this year’s freshman combat robotics team. As we wrap up our first season, we’d like to share the successes we’ve had this semester.
We started off the semester strong and immediately ordered parts for both robots. While FSH underwent the final stages of its CAD revisions, the minibot team assembled SHRMP at a rapid speed, finishing all the electrical in one night and printing all needed parts on a fixed-up ESPL 3D printer. By the end of February, SHRMP had a working version. However, this version had several significant issues, most notably the fact that its heat inserts kept shearing out of the TPU. To fix this, the minibot team did a full reCAD of the robot using captive nuts. After a cascade of further, smaller issues, the minibot team finally got SHRMP fully functional ten days before Robobrawl.
After we finalized FSH’s CAD, we waterjetted parts throughout February, starting with our weapon and chassis before moving on to uprights, side rails and other additional parts. Throughout March, we continued assembly of the robot and worked on getting our weapon stack together. This took considerably longer than expected, and we ended up with a partially-built weapon assembly at 2 AM on the day of the competition.
We had three matches during the competition. Our first one was against Helsing, a large eggbeater robot that promptly punted FSH out of the arena and dealt SHRMP the only damage it would receive in the whole competition. In our second match, however, we managed to get a double-pin on Harold, knocking it out and keeping us in the bracket.
We arrived on Day 2 with a new weapon pulley and an assembly that managed to spin consistently for the first time all year. This is what we used in our third and final match against Blades of Glory. Things went well at first in our match, with SHRMP getting a pin on BOG in the first five seconds of the fight and FSH hitting it multiple times with our weapon. However, disaster struck when FSH ran into a wall, causing the left side drive to fail. SHRMP valiantly tried to push BOG towards FSH’s weapon in an effort to score damage points, but it could only get the job halfway done before both robots were counted out.
Overall, we are pleased with our performance as the freshman team. We have done better this year than any freshman team in at least the last five years at Robobrawl. Over summer and next semester, we aim to fix up FSH for NHRL and build a brand-new robot for Robobrawl, capitalizing on our success in these past two semesters.
FSH lands a rare hit on Blades of Glory.
SHRMP pushes Blades of Glory towards a half-dead FSH.
FSH and SHRMP before our final match.
