hurting the bot if he blasted it. He
held it up as if offering me a hors
d’oeuvres. I yelled “yeah, hit it”
which spurred him into action. He
blasted the speed controllers a couple times with the fire extinguisher.
It continued to flame and smoke for
another half-minute or so. Finally,
the extinguisher won and Terry
looked up at me and said “The
switch is on.” So, we took quick
action and shut the switch off,
which was moot at that point since
any circuit that might carry current
had burned away.
So, we carted the smelly thing
outside and figured out what happened. Basically, this screw-up was a
team effort. First of all, Steve and I
hooked the batteries up backwards
before the weigh-in. That’s right.
We connected red to black and
black to red. Simple as that. He
hooked them up. I screwed them
down and gave it the “thumbs up.”
Without the switch on, this was not
a problem, except when Terry lifted
the bot off the scale and onto the
cart, he stepped on the string used
to power-up the rear drive motors,
delivering 24 volts of bass-ackwards
electromotive force to a pair of
speed controllers.
They simply aren’t designed to
handle a reversed power supply
and, after a few seconds, gave in to
the massive current running around
in all the wrong parts of the speed
controller. The speed controller
probably didn’t carry the current for
too long, but the capacitors exploded and the plastic case lit on fire.
That’s what burned so persistently.
From what we hear, photos of the
burned speed controller were all
over Twitter. So, this is how we
established ourselves as the
underdogs at BattleBots, Mare
Island. Not only did we have a pink
bot, we also had the bot that lit on
fire. Many people were certain our
competition was over. For the next
two days, we heard lots of “Are you
going to be able to compete?” and
“Jeez, that’s too bad you came all
the way out here for nothing.”
34 SERVO 07.2009
In reality, the overall impact on
the machine was minimal. We
found some melted copper, so it
was a pretty hot fire, but the
damage was limited to a small
space immediately around the speed
controllers which acted as a pair of
$180 fuses, protecting any other
parts from damage. Donald Hudson
loaned us two speed controllers
from Diesector; we soldered some
new wires and that was that.
The worst part was everytime we
opened the machine up, we were
hit by the nasty, lingering smell of
electrical smoke. By the time we
repaired everything, it was time to
pick up the parts from the heat
treating shop. That meant another
trip down to the Oakland airport
and back. Oh, joy.
As it turned out, we were the
last professional team to make it
through the inspection process,
although our tardiness had nothing
to do with the fire. Getting those
parts late on Wednesday really set
us back. We barely got them
installed and ready for weigh-in on
Thursday. In fact, I had to leave
Terry to go through tech inspection
by himself so I could make one last
trip — my fourth — to the Oakland
Airport to pick up my family.
Story 2: The Kids
from Bradley
University
On Tuesday night after dropping off parts from the heat-treater,
we checked into the hotel and were
heading out for a late snack. It was
about 10 p.m. or so. As we drove
away, we noticed a group of people
gathered in the parking lot — some
standing, some kneeling, some
sitting on the ground. All were
focused on something sitting on the
ground, illuminated by a bright
light. We immediately knew what it
was. This had to be a college team
working on a BattleBot. We made a
U-turn to go see who it was. As we
approached, we noticed a long
extension cord running across the
parking lot. It was plugged into
an outdoor outlet hidden in the
landscaping of the hotel, providing
precious power for the light and a
hand drill that was clearly critical to
the operation at hand.
Thus, we met the kids from
Bradley University who provided us
with multiple quotes that made
our week, including “We just got
funded a week ago,” “Our top-gun
is asleep so we are trying to get
something done before he wakes
up,” “We made it entirely from
found parts,” and “We weren’t sure
the weld would hold so we put a
bolt through it.” I might add it was
a carriage bolt.
Anyway, these kids were way
behind and working their butts off
to get this bot finished. Unlike many
of the teams there, they had no
professional mentor. They had just
started this thing about two weeks
ago and it appears they went long
on plane tickets and had little
budget left for the bot — hence the
“found parts.”
As we left them to go eat that
night, it appeared hopeless for the
kids from Bradley, but somehow we
knew they would get it done and
get that thing in the battlebox. For
the next two days, we were really
pulling for them. We kept a
watchful eye, offered advice and
tools whenever we could, and didn’t
give up hope. We would have
helped more, but they only had 48
hours before the tech inspection
deadline and we weren’t familiar
with any of the electronics they
were running (they wrote their own
“C” code for their speed controllers)
so we were really afraid of slowing
them down. They had to do this
themselves, in their own way, and
that they did. Those kids from
Bradley were everything the college
competition should be. I can’t wait
to see their next machine.
Paul Ventimiglia’s
Story
Our team, WPI Robotics, had an