Servo - August 2016

so if you're only building your Viper as a basic wedge, now would be a good time to use some zip ties to do some wire management. You want to keep everything out of the wheels.

At this time, everything should be ready for a test drive. You want to plug in the charge plug (which doubles as the mechanical kill switch) before plugging in the battery. Place it on something to keep the wheels off the ground. You always want to have the radio on before you turn your bot on. You can now remove the charge plug and the right stick on your radio should drive the robot.

There is a nice troubleshooting section in the back of the manual if it isn't driving correctly, but if you're not using the optional radio offered by Finger Tech, you might have the mixing done incorrectly so this will require some further investigating.

Now you have an almost complete driving little robot. The final step is to screw on the armor; in this case, Lexan. You'll want to use threadlock on all the screws to make sure they stay in tight during a fight,

but I'd also suggest putting in all the screws loosely before tightening them down. This makes sure you have the plates all lined up correctly. Make sure to drip the threadlock into the inserts instead of onto the screws. This way, you won’t get any on the Lexan. Threadlock severely weakens Lexan! You now have built your Finger Tech Viper kit. If you had any issues, you can contact Finger Tech at the email address on the back of the manual, as well as check out the links towards the back of the manual.

Now What?

Now that you have a complete working combat robot, you're ready to compete. That said, at this point it only weighs around 11 oz, so with many events running the Antweight class (or 1 lb class), you can still add 5 oz of awesomeness to your new bot.

You can do this many ways, but the easiest way will be one of the Add-On kits Finger Tech offers. They have both a Spinner Add-On for those that want to spin to win, as well as a Lifter Add-On to flip the opponent. I opted to go with the Lifter Add-On and found it to be as straightforward to assemble as the base kit.