Motorama 2018!

Our fleet of robots coming out of Fred's car for this year!

From left right we have: This Robot is Also the Cuban, DxDDt, Son of Wasabi (top), Marathon (bottom), and my two entries, Rebound, and Ricochet.

I entered Ricochet because I had a spot but focused entirely on the 12 because it's much more exciting and requires more attention.

Of course my first fight was against Jamison and Attrition. Attrition is a multi time Motorama champion so I knew I would have a tough fight, but I also knew Jamo had been having issues with the heat treat/material for his drum (because I helped test!). This proved to be the downfall of Attrition because after a few hits, his drum exploded.

I hotglued it back together to give to Jamo at a later date lolz.

Unfortunately, even after his drum exploded, Attrition did what it's best at and continued to attempt to fight, by throwing his face into my fists (blade). This was a good test for Rebound but ultimately was the reason for my loss in the finals! The bolts holding the weapon motor on got hot enough (due to the hot motor) to break the loctite bond, and allowed the motor pulley to get too close to the blade, resulting in very sad bearings at the end of the match. I did win by knockout before the blade stopped though. No video yet.

Unfortunately, I didn't have any spare parts at the competition so it was repair time from there on!

My next fight was against another drum spinner from my friends over at WPI, Odin!

We were pretty evenly matched tip speed wise but after a few weapon collisions there drum started to bog down and I broke their drivetrain.

At one point, one of their drivers looked like he tapped out so I spun down my blade which was the first time I noticed an issue with Rebound. When I realized their driver wasn't ready to tap out yet, I tried to spin up my blade again and it wouldn't start! Turned out that the outrunner can had warped in my previous fight in Jamo (when the bolts backed out, allowing rubbing and keeping the motor locked up. Luckily the Odin guys tapped out so I still got the win.

That was our last match for the day so Mason and I had time to do some emergency epoxy repair on our only motor at midnight in the hotel. Good times...

My next fight was against a wedge called Nothing Special who I'd fought the previous year. It was nothing special. Rebound through him into the ceiling a few times and then his drivetrain broke.

My next fight was an interesting one. It was against another WPI robot, but one that was inspired by Rebound! Danny's Tiny Whoop. His wedge was also thinner and very sharp so I wanted to avoid a head-on collision.

With some miracle of luck, I was able to outmaneuver him and hit him straight from the side.

From there one of his drive wheels cracked off and I won by tapout.

Onto the semifinals!

Against Disko...... The previous year's champion.

At this point I was ready to say bye to Rebound. It worked as expected, but the motor was sad and I had no spares. Plus the driver of Disko, Don is amazing. Disko has a ridiculous record of something like 60 wins, 5 losses.

Somehow the wedge gods were shining on me and I managed to get under him in my first hit which set the stage for the rest of the match. I aimed for the same torn up area repeatedly and at some point clipped his weapon motor, resulting in a tapout!

On to the finals!

Which is where my luck ran out.

I was fighting against Don's brother Joe with Steel N Shock. We were both extremely crippled but in different ways. My weapon motor barely worked up to this point, and he cracked his beater bar and had to reweld it. As goes every finalist (except Jamo~ haha).

Unfortunately my weapon motor wouldn't spin up in the match and Rebound was flipped over pretty quickly. 

A small amount of bananing of the frame.

Overall, Rebound finished 2nd for it's second outing at the biggest 12lb competition in the world which was pretty good! Now it's time for the fun part, building a new one!