April NHRL Recap with Supernova builders Jaaron Leibson & Ezequiel Solano!

Summary

Behind the Bots Podcast – April NHRL Recap with Supernova Builders Jaaron Leibson & Ezequiel Solano!

Episode Date: April 23, 2026
Guests: Jaaron Leibson and Ezequiel Solano (Supernova builders, WPI Combat Robotics Club)

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Overview

This episode dives deep into the journey behind Supernova, a 12-pound combat robot built by WPI students Jaaron and Ezequiel. The hosts and guests recount the blood, sweat, and (almost literal) fires involved in designing, machining, and competing with Supernova at the April 2026 NHRL (Norwalk Havoc Robot League) event. From turning a robot project into class credit to frantic last-minute repairs and the camaraderie of the combat robotics community, this episode is packed with hands-on technical details, build stories, fight recaps, and insight into the culture that keeps combat robotics ticking.

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Key Topics and Discussion Points

1. The Origin Story of Supernova

• WPI’s Combat Robotics Club Structure ([01:23]–[09:49])

  • Historically, WPI had few visible 12-pound robots; Teleport (2022) was the last big one before Supernova.
  • Ezequiel wanted a collaborative project and found a way to turn building Supernova into an Independent Study Project (ISP) for class credit. ("Someone mentioned on Discord at one point...that I should get the 12 pounder as class credit. I thought about it and was like, wait, there's a thing called an ISP." – Ezequiel, [03:00])
  • Jaron joined for the extra class credit and robot-building fun but both quickly realized it was much more work than a standard course.

• WPI Club Onboarding for New Members

  • Use of plastic ant kits and competitions to train and foster new robotics talent.
  • Regular design reviews, workshops, and a structure to ease freshmen in (the "newbie vs. experienced" bracket system).

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2. Design and Machining Challenges

• Machining Techniques, Mistakes & Lessons Learned ([10:18]–[24:51])

  • Painter’s tape and superglue: Useful workaround to avoid clamps, but must let the glue cure fully to prevent flying parts. ("Make sure to let the super glue cure for a full 24 hours before you try doing anything with it." – Ezequiel, [13:00])
  • Build pitfalls: Several machining errors (misprobed axes, squaring round stock, forgetting to mark parts) resulted in wasted time and “beater bars gone wrong.” ("We messed up twice. Don't worry about that. I explained the other one, the one that we ended up..." – Jaron, [19:10])
  • In-house machining: Polished results but sometimes not the most practical (e.g., the steel beater bar "should have been sent to China," but was built in-house as a skill challenge).

• Making Do With What You Have

  • Supernova’s team often used suboptimal materials or tools due to budget constraints.
  • Lots of long machine shop hours led to “old men” fatigue: "We went in there all starry and bright eyed, going like, we can actually just do this in seven weeks. And then we come out as like old men and we're like, holy crap." – Ezequiel, [95:39]

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3. First Runs, Event Preparation, and Growing Pains

• November Event – The “Not Ready” Debut ([25:09]–[32:25])

  • Rushed build: "Sit in the machine shop and slave away for, like, 10, 12 hours a day..." – Ezequiel, [05:13]
  • The first event was mostly about getting Supernova “in the box,” and despite weapon ESC challenges and lack of spares, they pulled it off.
  • The robot’s first few events highlighted the importance of robust electronics—wrong ESC (VESC under spec) left the weapon lethargic, and spares would have been invaluable.

• Major Repair Stories and Community Spirit ([33:57]–[41:50])

  • NHRL event punctuated by major parts failure (e.g., beater motor mount destroyed, no spares on hand), “atrocity of a repair day.”
  • Park bench repairs with borrowed/modified parts (e.g., boring out holes for phase wires, hammer-and-torch fixes) were essential.
  • "There were so many people that helped us that we have to thank...It was like, God knows everyone that just came and tried to help us out." – Jaron, [69:07]
  • Memorable moment: Mass group surrounding their pit station, cheering when weapon finally spun up after a marathon of chaotic repairs. ([76:32]–[77:12])

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4. Fight Breakdown and Technical Drama

• Notable Fight: Versus FTP ([33:57]–[38:48])

  • Supernova unexpectedly fights FTP due to another team's forfeit (“Bonk”).
  • Scary matchup (FTP much larger, awkward geometry), but Supernova survives initial exchanges until FTP lands on its weapon motor, causing a “mountain in it.” A perfect storm of luck and durability, but catastrophic for the motor. ("FTP comes down on top...I get to cut straight across the weapon motor." – Jaron, [36:01])

• Notable Fight: Ragebait ([42:51]–[47:19])

  • Both teams frantically grinding off metal to make weight before the fight. Comical shared college experience.
  • Fear of wedge failure ("I was so scared that thing was going to tear the wedge off." – Ezequiel, [46:40]) but it held up.
  • Shout out to the quirky engineering choices on both sides (e.g., wooden bandsaw cleats for traction).

• Notable Fight: Torrent ([56:25]–[61:45])

  • Torrent—“not a robot you take lightly”—delivered bone-crunching hits. Supernova’s shaft bent into a “banana.”
  • Double knock-out confusion ensued: simultaneous immobilizations led to unclear judging, but ultimately went to judges for resolution.

• Survival, Repairs, and Drama Preceding Infrared Match ([64:46]–[78:38])

  • After each fight, seemingly everything had to be rebuilt: "Every time I looked at your all's table, the robot was in like, yeah..." – Jake, [64:36]
  • Frantic ESC swaps, "hack job" wire repairs, and massive team/community help.
  • Both teams (Supernova and Maximizer) found themselves panicking for different reasons (weight, repairs)—but shared a laugh about the tension and relief once the weapon finally spun up before their match.

• Endurance and Event Reflection

  • Supernova ultimately qualified for December finals, with the team finding comedic relief and camaraderie in survival. Jake notes: "I like coming in second, man, because you get the same amount of fights and you get to learn a lot." ([89:08])

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5. Reflections, Lessons, and The Bigger Picture

• Key Technical Takeaways ([97:59]–[99:16])

  • Large reach verticals are dominating, making combat “tougher for small horizontals to deal with such an intense vertical spinner." – Jaron, [99:16]
  • Reliable electronics and sufficient spares are not optional at this level—repairability is vital.
  • Building a 12-pound robot is a unique “worst of both worlds”—huge hours, limited team size, and parts not as easy as beetles or as manageable as 30-pounders.

• Why We Keep Doing This

  • The grueling nature of event prep and fight-day drama is offset by the community support, the thrill of seeing the robot working, and the learning/pride from every incremental improvement.
  • "It's a testament to how awesome this community is." – Ezequiel, [69:37]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• [03:00] "I thought about it and was like, wait, there's a thing called an ISP—which is an independent study here at WPI—and essentially you can get a professor that enjoys working with you, and you can do a project that counts as a certain class. ... I managed to get them to do Supernova as a dynamics course." – Ezequiel

• [05:54] "You got one class that you tried to do for free, ended up spending more time than all the other classes put together." – Host

• [13:00] "Make sure to let the super glue cure for a full 24 hours before you try doing anything with it." – Ezequiel

• [19:10] "Oh yeah. We did mess up twice. Don't worry about that. I explained the other one..." – Jaron

• [41:50] "I can't believe it was parallel." – Jaron, on hammering back a crumpled faceplate with a torch and rod

• [69:07] "There were so many people that helped us that we have to thank. ... God knows everyone that just came and tried to help us out." – Jaron

• [76:32] "You guys. The weapon spins up and we just absolutely go insane because we're like, there's no way the weapon spun up because...we had to go, well, maybe it works." – Jaron

• [95:39] "We went in there all starry and bright eyed, going like, we can actually just do this in seven weeks. And then we come out as like old men and we're like, holy crap." – Ezequiel

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• [01:23] Supernova’s beginnings; turning robot building into college credit
• [09:49] WPI’s methods for onboarding new members and growing the club
• [10:18] Machining stories and in-house manufacturing
• [13:00–21:00] Machining mishaps: beater bar saga, probing issues, and remaking parts
• [25:09] November event: fast build, missing spares, ESC drama
• [33:57] April NHRL fight breakdowns: FTP, Ragebait, and community repair stories
• [64:46] Repair marathon post-Torrent; ESC saga and heroics
• [76:32] Emotional moment as weapon spins up pre-Infrared match
• [92:16] Collaboration insight, machining burnout, and robot fundamentals
• [99:16] Reflections on combat meta (big reach verts vs. horizontals)

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The Future & Closing Thoughts

Both Ezequiel and Jaron look forward to the December finals, potentially refreshing their beetleweight (3lb) projects and considering new designs. The episode wraps with heartfelt thanks to the community and a few jokes about Wawa locations and team rivalries, reflecting the blend of technical drive and friendly competition that characterizes the combat robotics scene.

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Summary Statement:
This episode is a raw, detailed chronicle of what it takes to design, build, fix, and survive with a competitive combat robot in 2026. Beyond technical challenges, it’s about how community, grit, and persistence allow teams like Supernova to grow and succeed—one frantic repair, banana-shaped shaft, and group panic at a time.

Transcript

[A]

From Cincinnati, Ohio and Bowie, Maryland, this is behind the Bots, the podcast that brings you the stories of the people behind the bots. I'm Jake Hoffman.

[B]

And I'm Brandon Young.

[A]

And today on the podcast, WPI members Supernova builders Jaron and Ezekiel from wpi. If you like our show, please rate us and review us on Apple products, Google Play, Spotify, TuneIn, Castbox Player, FN and Podbean and and follow us on our Instagram and Facebook behind the Bots. And tell a friend we appreciate your support. Love coming out to the stream. Brandon, what's going on in the world of combat robotics? What's going on out there?

[B]

A lot of things. Apparently there's events all across the world. In fact, there are events happening in the us, uk, Sweden, Norway, Germany, Romania, Latvia, Italy and Poland. Dang, it's like most of Europe right now. Yeah, they're, they're out there, they're playing the game. Notably, the largest event in the month is the Charlotte Robot Rumble where there'll be 82 robots in the beetle weights, plastic ants, collegiate ants, public ants and junk bots classes. Get details on this event and more at robotcomidevents.com builders db.com and bristolbotbuilders.com and now our interview with Jaren and Ezekiel. Hey guys, how's it going?

[A]

Welcome to the podcast, guys. So I want to talk about Supernova as a. It's a, it's a WPI bot. It's kind of. You guys have had 12s before, but this is the one that we've seen come back. What kind of started. What made you want to break into 12 pounders and, and what, where does this story begin?

[C]

I guess, I guess I can start.

[D]

So

[C]

the BPI has, I guess you've mentioned it before, historically only had like one 12 pounder. That's like been really visible. I think that was Teleport back in 2022 and since then there hasn't been that many 12 pound robots. Back in 2023, after I debuted Blink I, I wanted to have a robot where I worked together with more than one person. I wasn't on Waddles yet, so I wanted to build a robot with some of my friends. And the only way I could think of doing that is to build a 12 pound robot. And I floated some pictures around on discord of like the initial fork modules and other things that were like just some subsections or thoughts of a robot. And I didn't really get around to it. I got caught up in other things and eventually in, like, late 2025, around there, I managed to get Supernova as an. Is like, okay, you guys don't know what an ISP is, but essentially I managed to get it spun off as class credit. So I.

[A]

That's pretty good.

[C]

Yeah, that's great. So someone. Someone mentioned on Discord at one point. I don't remember who it was, but. But they made a joke saying that I should get the 12 pounder as class credit. I thought about it and I was like, wait, there's a thing called nisp, which is an independent study here at wpi, and essentially you can get a professor that enjoys working with you, and you can do a project that counts as a certain class. And I managed to get them to a. I managed to get a professor to do Supernova as, like, a dynamics course. Okay. We're not going to get into how that works, but. Okay.

[A]

I thought you were going to say, like, manufacturing or like, DFMA course, but. Okay.

[D]

Well, that was the second half.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

There's a lot of levels to this.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

So there were two ISPs, but we can get into that in a minute. So. The professor was like, you can have more than one person on this isp. And I messaged Jaron going like, hey, do you want to get some credits? And that's how that started. You want to talk about that, Jared?

[D]

Yeah. So at wpi, we have this thing called an nqp, which is the major qualifying project. Yeah. And basically the previous year, I had helped Ezekiel out with his mqp. That was through the same professor. And the professor seemed to like me because I had known the slightest idea of how to program a quadcopter. And so Ezekiel hit me up and he was like, hey, you want free credit for building a robot? And I was like, count me in. Like, are you kidding me? Free credit?

[A]

And it turned out to be a lot of work. So it wasn't free at all.

[D]

Yeah, I mean, we probably spent.

[A]

You guys sure? You guys sure got him. I mean, you guys scammed him. I mean, it works.

[C]

We sure did. It was a lot of work. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

It was probably kind of on us. So this robot wasn't supposed to compete until this competition, the one that we just went to. But we had a full design and. And we figured, oh, we can build a 12 pounder in seven weeks, right? Totally. So we were like, all right, we're signing up for November. We sign up for November and then, you know, hell starts, right? Sit in the machine shop and slave away for, like, 10, 12 hours a day and figure out how to do that with classes, which is it's whole separate issue entirely, man.

[B]

So you got one class that you tried to do for free, ended up spending more time than all the other classes put together.

[C]

Yeah, pretty much.

[A]

But it was a cool thing that you did.

[C]

Oh, yeah. I mean it was awesome. We got like a full. We got a completed robot at the end of the day. It got in the box. It didn't do fantastic the first time around, but, you know, it got in the box.

[A]

So. So before a lot before we dive in into like, like building it for November. How is WPI structured

[C]

in terms of

[B]

how does WPI work as a club?

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[D]

So the way our club is kind of structured is we have a set budget for the three pounders for the year and that will get divided amongst X amount of builders. That is kind of that X number is figured out based on how many people, how many prospective students, how many returning students, etc. Etc. And then that amount gets split out to other Beatles and then for the £12 and larger, the £12 basically at this point run off of a system where they will ask the school for money through something. Through something called a funding request, which basically comes from outside of our budget. If that doesn't get approved, then some amount of money will come from the club from within the budget to help boost what the 12 pounder gets if it doesn't get everything it needs from that funding request. And then for the £30, it's a pretty similar, a pretty similar setup where it's basically funding requests from outside of the club. But Waddles has an initial budget that is allocated every year from the club. So it has a little bit to go off of. Even if stuff really goes wrong,

[B]

it's still pretty cohesive.

[A]

Yeah, one thing that like, you know, Illinois does is they have teams for every, like every age group. How do you guys get younger members into the sport and how do you kind of onboard them?

[D]

Plastic ants? Yeah, they're awesome.

[C]

Pretty much that.

[D]

The club has a deal that gets plastic amp parts for cheaper than what you'd get from the storefront. And so that allows us to get a large amount of kits, give them out to the new members, let them explode the parts, let them get hooked. And we have a fast but not too fast schedule. I think it's been pretty good about, usually about a month to a month and a half between competitions for new builders to get in, design a robot, explode said robot and then make a revision.

[C]

Yeah. And I Guess to give a little more con.

[B]

More.

[C]

A little more detail into that. Like at the beginning of the year, we like have our big like general body meeting and then we go. Have we split the first term so wpi. I don't know if you're familiar. We do like a quarterly system where it's like seven weeks and then per rotation of classes, so two terms a semester. And during the first term, we. We spend a lot of time doing a bunch of presentations where we teach people like, what is the concept of byte? What kind of archetypes of robots exist, what kind of construction styles exist. We help people one on one with like design reviews for different. Smaller for their different robots. Leading up to the competition, we hold several workshops, like soldering workshops before the competition. And we. Then at the end of the term, we hold our internal plastic ant competition where we have all of those new members compete against each other and we have an experience bracket that competes against themselves so that we don't like, destroy the freshman. And then eventually when the winner of both of those brackets, like when we run the grand finals where we have the winner of both brackets fight each other, and that's how that goes. That's how we all work, people.

[B]

There's like a mix of the. It's like honey trials, like they're open and xp.

[A]

They started up.

[B]

So you basically have freshmen, which is like the XP open, which is like the normal one for the pros. You put them together and that's. That's a big difference though. That's like if you have the coughing baby hydrogen bomb kind of scenario.

[A]

Like.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

Aka AKA Whoopsie Daisy, which is mini blunder versus any freshman plastic ant.

[A]

Yeah. All right, let's. So this is. Is this the first build?

[D]

Yes. So this is the first one that we made for the independent study. I actually have the rails right here. So this was the first pair of rails that we made. I believe I made both of these.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

Yes. And so these were. If you want to show that like super glue thing that we did, basically where you take this bottom surface and you stick it onto a piece of stock with an interface of painters tape, super glue, and then painters tape to your fixture plate. And then that allows us to use that sheet underneath as a spoil board so that we can cut into it without having to have any sort of like vacuum table or like, it makes it a lot easier for us to do it. And that way we don't have to have any toe clamps. We can get the whole profile out all in one Go. And then just flip it over, do the features on the back, call it a day.

[C]

So the.

[A]

What's really doing the holding is the paint, not glue itself. I thought.

[D]

Yes.

[A]

I thought it was super glue, like aluminum to aluminum. But you're saying that there's. There's painters tape. What sort of feeds and speeds can you get away with?

[D]

Pretty standard.

[C]

Yeah, pretty. Pretty normal feeds and speeds.

[B]

Maybe.

[C]

Maybe slightly less. Less death of. Less depth of cut if you're. That's a good point. Feel like it's going to throw.

[D]

Yeah. So for like, slightly smaller parts, like a motor mount or something like that, it's. We generally run slower, but for something as large as the drive rail, because it's not. We don't just go, bam, painter's tape. Good enough. We will take the parts. If we want to be really precautious, we'll take them, put them in the mill, face them down with the face mill, and then we'll scotch Brite them, clean them with denatured alcohol.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

Do that like two or three times, put on the tape, scrape it on with a dowel pin so we get all the air out of there, and then we super glue them together. So it's not as simple as just like painter's tape. Painter's tape. Super glue.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

Send it.

[A]

Right.

[D]

Otherwise parts would get. Be getting thrown everywhere.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. Interesting.

[B]

That's pretty good. I like that a lot.

[A]

I've never used this before, and I'm totally. I'm totally jazzed to like, have a part where I can justify.

[B]

Have you ever had a. Ever had a failure with that? Ever had it fly off once. And you're like, man, what happened there?

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

I know one person that does.

[C]

Oh, boy. I was making a set of parts for a fellow club member, and I didn't let the super glue cure long enough, and I kind of just flung the piece. It didn't really last very long. So make sure to let the super glue cure for a full 24 hours before you try doing anything with it.

[A]

You let it sit for 24 hours, all right.

[C]

Yeah, yeah.

[D]

If we're really pushing time, we'll do like four hours minimum. But, like, usually it's going to the shop. Put it in the vise for, like, leave it two hours, take it out of the vise, and then shove it in. We have, like, little drawers in the shop that we can leave stuff in.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

Pressure.

[C]

Oh.

[B]

Is there any, like, removal residue when you're peeling it off, like, from the painter's tape or.

[C]

No, no, not really. It kind of just comes off and if there is any, you can scrape it off pretty easily. Yeah, yeah, that too.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

I like context. When I did throw that part, it was like 20 minutes of letting it cure, not anything crazy. So that's probably why.

[A]

But it failed pretty good. The glue, not at the.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

So you. So you ended up having tape on hard tape on board, but the two that.

[C]

They were just apart. Yeah.

[B]

So, yeah. Okay. Pretty good. Did you ever done multi ops with that method or is that just for first pass? Like, one side machining, other side doesn't change?

[C]

So most of the parts I've done that are all super glue parts. It's just a single op that's the super glue. And then you flip it over and then do your other ops if you design your part so that you can clamp it. I've never really done multi because I'm not sure if it would make it harder because there's no real good way to align them unless, like the spoil board to the super glue part. Unless you have, I don't know, some tool to line it up with.

[D]

Yeah. So like, for. Because the. The super glue method for us is mainly just so we can get the outer contour without having to do shenanigans with pausing the op, moving toe clamps, et cetera, et cetera. The problem with, like flipping it over and re. Super gluing it is you'd have to take your fixture plate and like, put some dowel pins in it or something like that to get it aligned perfectly. Otherwise you're just kind of eyeballing it. Because, like, when we're putting the initial super glue on, we just take like a speed square and make it roughly square to the fixture plate and then chuck it in the vise. But for, like, precision stuff, it's going to be a. It's going to be more of an involved process.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Gotcha. Fun times. And very shiny. These all look very good, by the way. This is made in house mepi, but people have had stuff from outside machine shops which haven't looked as good as this, so it's already pretty good.

[C]

That's a compliment. Thanks.

[B]

Yeah, it gets destroyed, like, immediately after.

[D]

Do you want to talk about the part we made in house that shouldn't have been made in house, probably.

[C]

Oh, the. The freaking beater bar.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

How's it like to machine a beater bar?

[C]

Yeah, it's kind of hell, honestly. That part should have been sent to China. I just. I wanted something very difficult to do.

[B]

It Help you, like the grading for the class or something? Like, do you get to flex that? Me? Like give me an A plus?

[C]

No, I just, I got to make a beater bar.

[D]

I. I don't, I don't think the professor would have cared. I mean, we made, we made a pair of drive rails and he was like praising us like we had just like cured some disease. And it was just like, we're not even halfway there yet, man.

[C]

No, no help in terms of grading. It was just. I wanted something difficult to do and I've never machined steel before. And I was like, I want to machine steal at some point. Point. So we went through that process and I. I don't. So, okay. Square stock of 4140. Square stock is a lot more expensive than like round stock for 4140. But obviously like you, you have the trade off of money versus time spent in the shop. But we didn't have the money to spend on it. So so we. Instead of buying a square stock like a sane human being.

[B]

Oh, no.

[C]

I bought cylindrical stock and squared it out.

[D]

It was like, like a big lake, 7 inch cylindrical stock or something like that.

[C]

Yeah, it was crazy. It was like. I don't even know how much it weighed, man.

[D]

And I think like half of the time spent machining was just taking it from round to square and then doing it again. Because we. We got two cylindrical pieces of stock.

[C]

Yeah. And I messed up one of the beater bars.

[A]

No.

[C]

So it's not on my table. But you know, I'm gonna get up and grab it.

[D]

I can explain it while he grabs it. So basically, right, we do. There was like 10 offs or something like that.

[B]

So, man,

[A]

you gotta, you gotta, you gotta square up.

[D]

You gotta square, right? Squaring off is. Is a full op because you can't. You can only get half depth if it's fixtured flat down. And so at one point he. So he got to that rectangle, I believe, and then put it in. And there was some weird like mounting geometry that made it hard to probe. And so what happened was we probed off of that bore in the center. But the problem is that bore is not centered. So our beater bar was off in one direction.

[C]

So I am back. I have two beater bars in my hand. Well, I have one and a half beater bars in my hand.

[B]

One and a half.

[C]

But essentially you have your very nice completed beater bar on this hand and you have half a beater bar here. So I think. I don't Know how much Darren explained it, but. So here's. Here's both. One of them's still kind of square.

[B]

You said the other one didn't center properly, so it was.

[C]

Yeah. So this. When I machined the square out this side, it, like, square, but it's not really a square.

[D]

Oh, this was the rotated one.

[C]

Yeah, it was a rectangle. It's a rectangle. Oh, yeah. We did mess up twice.

[D]

Don't worry about that. I explained the other one, the one

[A]

that we ended up.

[D]

We'll get into that after this.

[C]

All right, so, yeah, this is not actually a square. It's, like, slightly rectangular. So this isn't, like, the length here, and the width here isn't the same, but I had it so that it would have milled. Let's assume that this is Y. This is X. This orientation is correct. But I had it like this, and I forgot to mark. Like, I forgot to mark it with an arrow. So when I probed it, it's, like, shifted. I don't know. I don't know if, like, the stream can pick it up, but there's, like, a rib in the center where, like, the entire center of the beater bar is profile shifted up or in. So it's not really savable because it's. It'll end up being the wrong diameter.

[B]

I see, like, the line there, for sure. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[D]

There's like a nice, like, shift line where it all changes the wrong diameter. And then also, the, like, the slightest sides would have been too thin because, like, the. The sides were also different thicknesses.

[C]

Yeah, they were different thicknesses. I had to recap the thing.

[D]

Yeah. So for the actual beater bar we ran, this was the one that we probed shifted, right?

[C]

Yes, this was.

[D]

Yeah, this one was the one that got probed shifted. And long story short, essentially we had to salvaged what we could out of what we had already machined, which resulted in us going down, what, a quarter of an inch in diameter?

[C]

Yeah, it ended up being a quarter of inch in diameter because I had to take what was essentially the square with the square cut out of it, put it in cad, and then cat a beater bar into it based on the size restriction.

[B]

You had the CAD within the cad.

[C]

Yeah, I had a CAD within the cad. It was so annoying.

[A]

Oh, dude.

[B]

So you.

[C]

So you.

[B]

So you are grinding out this for the class. You had to square, and to make something that was round to a square, you had this square shift on you. So I had to remake the square anyway and Then you had to recap the cad. All this. Any electronics in there?

[C]

Yes.

[B]

Dang, dude.

[D]

And so while this is going on, I'm like, desperately trying to tear through all the other parts of the robot because I'm like, oh, God, we're not gonna have enough time to get all these parts done because he's busy with the beater bar.

[C]

Yeah. God bless this, man. I don't. I don't know how we would have gotten there. I'm not gonna lie.

[D]

Yeah. I mean, it was so much machining. I don't know how I managed it.

[C]

Yeah, you're crazy for that. It's okay. I made up for it the second time.

[D]

You. You made up for the second time? The rolls reversed, kind of.

[C]

Kind of.

[B]

That's teamwork. Dreamwork right there, dude.

[C]

It's great.

[A]

So here we are doing pulleys.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

So these are all pre November?

[C]

Those are all pre November.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

Most of the pictures you have are from the pre. The first time we saw it.

[A]

Okay, cool. Cool.

[B]

Well, it comes out very shiny, though. Like, it's. It's definitely a really well machine robot. Nice TPU for the wheel guards as well.

[A]

Thank you.

[B]

It looks sweet. Easily one of the most. Was it, like shaped robots. It's not like a square. It's kind of like hypershock, where it has a lot of fairly interesting shapes going on there. That's pretty cool.

[C]

Thank you. We tried making sure it wasn't a square.

[D]

We took a square and we made it fancy.

[B]

Yeah. That's how you do it. Make a fancy square.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

Okay, so here's.

[A]

Is this. Okay, I see what's going on here.

[C]

We also had a machine. Two separate soft jaws on two different occasions.

[A]

Those are.

[B]

So you made it even harder.

[A]

Those are your.

[C]

Yeah. Because once you get to that point, the way we decided to do it was we decided to ball mill it from the top and bottom because none of the tools that we had were, like, long enough to actually get it. Just the whole profile out on the sides. So the. The problem with that is when you flip it over to do the backside, the bottom's not square anymore. So we need custom soft jaws to, like, make it square.

[A]

Totally.

[B]

And.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah, because I. I've done that before where you reach an end, mill down the side. And it just. The only reason why I could get away with it when I did it is because it was. It was a. It was a robot with two spinners, and so they were both half size. Right. But yeah. This is interesting.

[C]

Yeah. There was a Club member that previously tried doing it the other way I described. And end Mills kind of exploded.

[B]

Yeah, man.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

If you look at the final beater bar, there's actually like a seam halfway down where we had to come in from both directions because, I mean, the counterweight is what, like two and a half inches, like, tall if you put it on its side or something like that.

[B]

So how'd you heat treat it? Did you have, like, a kiln in house?

[C]

So Evan from Blunder found a local or he. He got passed down, like, the information for a local heat treating company called County Heat Treat. And they seem to really, like the club, seem to be very chill with Evan, and he offered to have this thing heat treated. He actually drove me there, like, at 8:00am, like, five days before the competition. Wow. And we managed to get them to heat treat it within a few days and it came out great. But I like. It's. It's taken some crazy, like, hits. It's been. It's fine.

[B]

Wow. That's solid stuff. I like it.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

So viewer question Julian asks, so you're going through all this stuff, right? What was the biggest design disagreement you guys had with Supernova? And how did you figure out. And because he's evil. Who was right in the end?

[C]

Oh, boy.

[D]

We. We really didn't have that many, I think, mostly because I ended up not doing. I. I did very little CAD on the robot because Ezekiel had done a lot of work leading up to before when he asked me to join the. The isp. So I think it's been mostly just, like, minor things about how to do config this or config that.

[C]

Sorry, Julian.

[B]

The answer is it was Kumbaya and everything was perfect. Perfect and great.

[C]

Yeah, it was pretty chill.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

Well, you're, like, freaking out so much, like, trying to get the robot together that it, like, doesn't matter.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

I mean, when you've got. When you've got a week left and your beater bar isn't done, there's not a lot of time to have disagreements, you know?

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

You could say it was forged in fire.

[C]

Oh, yeah, it was. What a speed run.

[B]

What a speedrun. So you did all of that. You had the beaters made right into the competition. So then did you really make two of them or is it just one robot? Like spares? Were they an option on the table at all?

[C]

Just one of them? No, we had no space.

[D]

I had, like, a single spare motor mount or something like that.

[A]

Was it.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Your first fight doesn't exist.

[C]

Someone took a video of it in the club. It was, it's on YouTube somewhere.

[A]

But,

[C]

yeah, we fought blackjack first. I was really worried going into that fight because I, I mean, you don't know what to expect. It's a brand new robot. You just finished it. You have no spares, so if you take any damage, it kind of, and you know, you never know what to expect.

[D]

One thing, a big issue that we had encountered before the event. We completely skimmed over this. The ESC we had originally. Oh yeah, a fly color 120 as like a hand me down from someone. But it was like, mostly brand new and it had bl heli on it. And when we tried to spin the weapon motor, it got so hot so fast that we just went, this isn't gonna work. And we freaked out because it's like, I don't know, it was like Tuesday or something like that. And we're like, what are our other options? And literally the only other option we have at this campus was a vesc from Waddles. We put the wattles vest in the robot and we started spinning it and we went, oh, the robot's not spinning as fast as it should be. Turns out we are a hundred thousand ERPM over the limit of a vest.

[B]

So we're over the limit.

[D]

Over the limit. 230,000 out of 150,000 erpm or something like that. So we were so, so poorly throttle limited because we just, I, we couldn't have another solution in time.

[B]

Like, the ESC could not think fast enough to make it spin faster. That's so funny and sad at the same time.

[C]

For context, this robot at the time was geared for 400 miles an hour.

[B]

That's on you, though, that one.

[A]

That's on you, though. That is on you. So your, your first event is November. It goes okay, but the biggest thing is you got the robot in the cage.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

So how, how did you feel after that? And like, what made you want to, like, come back and like, keep bringing it back? Was it just sunk in cost at this point? Point?

[C]

Well, no, I mean, the, the robot was very fast. I, it had a lot of potential in the test bus. I, I, I don't know. I, I, I just thought it, like, deserved another go because there were a lot of things that could just get fixed if we had more time. And I wanted to put a little more time and care into the robot to make sure that, like, had a proper, like, I guess, proper first event. Not really first event, but you know what? I'm saying, yeah, right.

[D]

It was. It was very mechanically sound. I mean, I think very little changed mechanically from first to second event. We just changed like the material of a few things. But other than that it was. I mean, all of our like belt tensions and everything like that were great. It was just kind of. We got really unlucky with the timing

[C]

that we had because we gave ourselves seven weeks to make the robot.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I mean, we did it to ourselves.

[D]

We did, yeah.

[B]

We were the enemy all along.

[A]

We were the timeline.

[B]

Yeah. So, like right now we have this, the match where we had the match against. That's a lot of tpu and that was pretty rough.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like you mentioned before, the spinner was a whole thing. It was difficult because the speed. Was that a big point that you were seeing in the beginning? Like, were you able to still do stuff with the weapon even with the ERPM limit going in?

[C]

I mean, we were able to initially spin up, but if we were like to want to self. Right. Like off. Off the floor, like with the weapon hitting the floor, we probably couldn't do it because the weapon probably couldn't get up to speed. So if you notice watching the. That's a lot of DPU fight when we get upside down, we just kind of die in the water. Like, it tries to get up, but it just can't.

[D]

Yeah, There were some issues with the Vesc, basically. Vesc, the motor controller, has what it's like three censored modes. There's three different modes. There's a completely uncensored mode, then there's a mode that uses a physical hall effect sensor and then a mode that uses smart sensing. And no matter what we did, Connor, who is the person on our team that really knows the most about Vesc, just we couldn't get any real torque out of the VESC at low speed for some reason that we just could not figure out. And so the weapon was super lethargic

[C]

on spin up and that's rough. It was. It was definitely mostly because of the vest, because it's in theory this, this robot's using a like TP power 3640, which is pretty large compared to a lot of other robots. Like, I think psycho runs a TP 29 or was it. I don't know the specific. It's like a 29 series.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. Smaller than this one.

[C]

Yeah, it's like a 36 series motor or something. And it's geared for like hella torque, so it shouldn't really.

[A]

Technical term.

[B]

Technical term, yeah.

[C]

It's like, it shouldn't really have torque issues, but it did because the vest couldn't spin it up.

[B]

That's annoying.

[C]

Yeah. And so that was one of the first things we tried, like, fixing as soon as we wanted to run the robot again.

[D]

Yeah. The first thing we went was, hang on. Somebody said, there's an AM32 target for the fly color ESC. Let's put that on. We can change the pole count. It won't get hot. And we put it on. It took very little effort. Evan, who's my other roommate, just had an ST link, flashed the ESC to AM32. We tuned it, and it just had copious amounts of torque and spin up. I mean, we had enough torque to, like, climb a kick plate with the weapon. It was insane.

[C]

Yeah, it was. It was crazy.

[A]

Allegedly.

[D]

Well, no, I mean, we. We did it at Norwalk.

[A]

Oh, yeah, right? Oh, yeah. I guess you. You got it to the. The fight eventually. Okay, so after, we're going to take a quick break, and when we come back, we will talk about Supernova's experience at nhrl, the drama that was going on behind the scenes. I want to know all about it, because it was like, 20 people scrambling over a robot, and I want to know the full story. So. All right, thank you, guys. We'll be back in a minute. And we are back with Supernova. I'm getting a little bit of echo. One moment.

[D]

Oh, it still says intro, bro.

[A]

Oh, should I. Okay, okay, okay, okay.

[B]

April.

[A]

Nhr. Okay, we'll. We'll save that one out. All right. And we're back with Supernova. So let's go into April nhrl. You got the robot. We got. We've got the weapon spinning for the first time. It's working well. And your first fight is here with FTP. What's going through your head going into this?

[C]

So I guess to preface this, we weren't supposed to fight FTP first. We were supposed to fight a robot called Bonk, which was a two wheel drive drive power drum slash beater. So if you want to think noob tube, essentially that. But they had some problems getting into the cage, and they forfeited their first fight. So we got to fight FTP. And this was. This is a. This is a match. We got to fight Drew again. It's always nice to see him in a cage.

[A]

And

[C]

it was a little scary because this robot is a lot bigger than Blackjack and not an ideal form factor for super Inhuman to fight at all. So it was a little worrying getting into the cage. And I was a little worried into this mess that I would just lose weapon. Weapon engagements.

[B]

Yeah, like looks like largely classic slash tpu. So it's got the big fat TBU for the front. I think like its front end is wider than Supernova is long.

[D]

Yeah, it's not even close. It's kind of insane.

[B]

Yeah, it's like, like 30 size compared to Supernova is what you're. Yeah, kind of alluding to.

[C]

Yeah, interesting. But yeah, that, that big comb and well, not particularly comb, but those four big prongs in the front. I was just super scared of them like that he would just be able to turn into me no matter whatever I did. But we managed to win the first two weapon weapon exchanges. And in those weapon weapon exchanges I decided to follow through on the second exchange and it's really hard to catch on stream. But we went through it, we went through one of the camera angles and we found that FTP on the second engagement jumped up, landed. What was it on top?

[D]

Yeah. If you, if you imagine both robots like this Supernova like hits FTP and it bounces up and we're following through and FTP comes down on top.

[B]

Crazy.

[D]

I get to cut straight across the weapon motor.

[B]

That's crazy.

[C]

Yeah, I know.

[A]

Gosh.

[B]

Robot combat is nuts.

[D]

It's one of the most insane hits I've ever seen. And so it just, it lands on top, just obliterates the motor. I mean Jake has a picture of it of just like the, the, the front face of the motor and the back face of the motor are like no longer parallel to each other.

[C]

There's like a mountain in it.

[A]

Yeah, like it's like bifold by FTP

[D]

coming down and cutting like through the motor face plate and just like punching it into itself and it explodes everything related to it.

[A]

That's why the belt, it was like

[C]

three hits in that hit is insane.

[B]

The big punch and then a landing.

[C]

You got the heat sink, the front plate, and then he sniped the belt all in one go.

[B]

Oh my God. Was that like it? So I guess to go with that, it's like when you decided to put the weather motor up there with like unenclosed. Was that a concern you had in mind?

[C]

Like, yeah, that was definitely a concern, but we did not design a guard for it. That may change.

[D]

Yeah, we talked about it a little bit. We're kind of back and forth. It depends on how much heat we're generating in the future. Because I mean, clearly based on those heat sinks we're generating too Much heat with the weapon motor. But that's also because we're still geared for 400 plus miles an hour. So hopefully fixing that will fix our heat generation a little bit.

[A]

So.

[B]

Yeah. So then in that case, going with the rest of the fight. So FTP is having a little bit of drive issue. Has weapon. You have great drive, but no weapon now. So then how are you? So how does it feel going from like beater bar bot to pretty much control bot?

[C]

I'm not really used to driving control bots at all. This, the shape of this robot doesn't really help me. It like, likes to. Well, I like to overturn a lot when driving this. You'll notice I do that a lot. And I was a little worried because his spinner hits pretty hard and he's, he just has those four forks in the front. I was worried that like, I, I, I could try getting around him, but that he would just turn into me, scoop me, and eventually hit me and I would be there in the water. But which, which he managed to do. And when we called the unstick, he just stopped functioning. I, I'm not sure quite what happened there, to be honest, but yeah, we managed to get the win off of that.

[A]

So it's your first pounder. What was your goal going?

[B]

That's all it takes. You survived and that's what you need.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

And then begins the, we'll call it an atrocity of a repair day because once again, despite our past experiences, we didn't bring any spare parts. Well, we made a spare part, but one of those spare parts that we needed happened to be still at wpi. So, yeah, the aftermath of that fight and essentially ended up in the whole weapon mount and weapon, like, front plate all being completely crumpled with no spare parts. Except for, I think we had a spare face plate and then another spare face plate that wasn't compatible. No, no back motor support. And so, yeah, so basically what happens is we take it all out and we go, we don't have any butt supports.

[C]

And then, but we do have two front plates and they happen to be compatible.

[D]

Yes. So, and so at the same time, I've, I have taken the robot front plates, like the large plate that spans across, which has been crumpled into what looks like an earthquake fault line. And I, I get that out of the robot and I'm going to the shop to straighten it out. And I just see Ezekiel, Don and Claire, and Ezekiel's got this big drill, like one of the biggest drill bits I've ever seen, and he runs it through the face plate. And then he just pulls the drill out and goes next size and gets an even larger drill bit and just keeps going straight back in to drill it out bigger.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

I went through every single size drill bit that they had at nhrl trying to bore a hole through the center of the phase plate of the spare place plate so that the phase wires in the back could actually come out of the. Come out of it and go down. I ended up going through every single size. I. I think I remember requesting like the next size up. And Claire looks at me, was like, that's all they have.

[D]

While this is happening, I've got the. The robot front plate in a vise and basically we have some pocketing at the top where the motor mounts and it's been hit and parallelogrammed inwards. And so I'm trying to unparalleled gram it so that we can get the front and the back plate parallel to each other. And so I've got like a matte gas torch and this like, I don't even know, like, two foot long rod for some reason, because it's the only thing we could find punching on the inside of the pocket with a hammer while it's hot. Punch the pocket outwards. And it was, I mean, it was just a mess. We. We ended up like, just having to ream the holes out because the holes were destroyed and just. I can't believe it was parallel.

[A]

So it was just, it was such a small hit. But this was like, this like, set the tone for the whole day of like, the robot is just like, it gets hit once and then like, all hell breaks loose.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

Is that how it's going?

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

Yeah. He managed to hit the one part of the robot you don't want to get at all.

[B]

This is the canon event. This is spider verse. Like, all right, definitely you can't go back from this. They just like send you down the line.

[A]

And what was your goal going into the event? I mean, did you expect that you needed to qualify? I mean, what, what. Or did you just want to take it out for, you know, for fun? Is.

[C]

Is that I wanted to make round of 16.

[A]

Okay. Okay.

[C]

Some people, yeah, pretty much.

[B]

I respect that.

[C]

Yeah. I don't think we expected it to make it that far, but after it started making it that far, we kind of walked in and we're like, okay, I guess we're taking this all the way.

[B]

I guess we got to be good now.

[C]

Locked in for the ride.

[A]

All right, so these are my boys. Very close to my heart. Rage bait. They built this at shop,

[D]

so every fight's got to build up to it. Every fight's got to build up. Okay, leading into this fight, I. Oh, no. Okay, go back to what the. Sunday before the competition, we get everything together. The robot is egregiously overweight. With the wedge, like a hundred and something grams overweight. We're like, well, we gotta. We gotta figure out where to pull this weight from. And I. This is when I'm, like, actively, like, just suffering. So I'm like, okay, Ezekiel, here's XYZ idea. And then we just kind of go through it. We show up to the competition. I don't think twice about it. The robot is in weight. It's only like 20 grams overweight with the wedge. We'll find out later that we have, in fact put the hollow shaft on the robot instead of the solid shaft, which is significantly weaker. And we find that out in the torrent fight, which we'll get to. But essentially, the wedge was still like 40 or something like that. Grams overweight. And so I've spent the past hour with the wedge on the bench grinder just absolutely mutilating it to try to cut 40 grams out of this huge titanium wedge, like the biggest wedge I've ever seen. And I'm just shooting sparks. I'm pretty sure the ragebait guys, like, saw me off in the corner. It's like, like literally melting the rubber mat under the bench. I was grinding off.

[C]

So.

[A]

So that's. That's actually pretty funny because the rage bait guys. So this is. So in my day job, I'm a machinist at University of Cincinnati. So these guys set up their robot rage bait, and they can weigh, you know, 18 pounds because they're a walker. Here they are weighing it in for the first time, and they weighed. I think it was 19.5 pounds the first machine weighed it. So they were a full pound and a half over. So they spent like two days. I. I don't know if you can see this, but, like, grinding this entire area off, like, that's what that is. Yeah, it was insane. I had to sweep up a pound and a half of grinder dust off my floor after they were done. All these holes. You see all the holes in the. The self writing. Self writing? Yeah, dude, it was insane. This. This clamp here had five bolt holes, and then it went down to four, which, hindsight, that didn't fail. So, yeah, dude, the self riding stick

[D]

cracks me up because I can't believe it's threaded on.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. So this is them weighing it in after, like, a day and a half of grinding at 18, too. So that's funny that you had that. Your. Your 40 grams is really cute.

[B]

So it was a shared college experience.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

Two college teams both cutting weight.

[A]

They're like, dang, I guess we've got

[D]

to mutilate the robot they called Supernova up to weigh at the table. And I was like, okay, that means I've got two more minutes. And I just went absolutely to tap and on the bench grinder. Well, Ezekiel's like, getting all the bolts ready so we can just shove it on the robot.

[C]

Yeah. Because the front ends weren't even. The, like, mounts weren't on the robot at all. They were like, back at the pit table. So I had to rush and rush back and get them. And we couldn't get all five bolts. You'll notice that there's, like, a few missing on the wedge itself. We managed to get those on, and it got in the box.

[B]

Well, congrats on that.

[A]

My beloved Rage bait.

[C]

I was so scared that thing was going to tear the wedge off.

[D]

Yeah, we were pretty worried about it because we had soft wood inserts that go in the back, and they just would not stay. We would. We would put the. The screw through it, and instead of screwing into the insert, the insert would just go bye. And just run away at the back of the. In the wedge mount.

[C]

Yeah, I thought that, like, as soon as, like, rage bait would hit us, that, like, the wedge would just pop off. Like, all the inserts would pull out. But I. I don't know. God's strongest, like, mount, I guess

[B]

you were the favorite for the day.

[C]

I guess so.

[D]

By the way, the. The bandsaw cleats on Rage bait are so such an interesting idea.

[A]

Oh, yeah, Yeah.

[D]

I just. I wish they used a wooden bandsaw blade for the wooden floor, you know?

[A]

Yeah, yeah. The problem, the wooden bandsaw played way too much because it was, like, thick and wide. And so it's a metal bandsaw blade because it's like a thinner set of teeth. So that was. I think that's why they did that. But yeah. Yeah. The only thing that was bad about it was they super glued the. The cleats onto the uhmw. So they, like, they slotted it, and the super glue just did not bind to the uhmw. So there's a picture floating around somewhere of you guys hitting Rage bait and it going up into the air, and then there's like, two or Three cleats that are, like, lying behind it that look hilarious. So, yes, they did work for a time. I think, like, the refinement of that idea is like somehow clamping those in position.

[D]

Yeah. I mean, ragebaits was terrifying.

[A]

It was a super smart idea.

[B]

It looks really good.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And you did crumple the shell a bit.

[A]

Yeah. The show was crumpled after this fight, so. Okay, so after this fight, they took it to the hydraulic press and gave it to Ed, and apparently Ed was cackling as he flattened it back. They're like. They came to me. They're like, yeah, that guy is really. He's interesting.

[D]

Ed, I.

[B]

You haven't gone to NHL. You need to meet Ed first.

[D]

He's one of the most machinists of all time.

[A]

Yeah. Ask Ed about his garage. He will. He'll stun lock you about his garage. Like an hour and a half. I've hit a midday stun lock and I'm like, oh, wow. Are my batteries charged for my next fight?

[B]

Speaking of your fights, you were also at this tournament, Jake.

[A]

I was at this tournament. We'll talk about it a little bit. I did fine. All right. Okay. All right. I'd like to share my first fight because this was probably. This unfortunately will make. I think it will make the. The top fastest knockouts because it's going

[B]

crazy over this one.

[A]

Yeah. The count out started instantly, so this one was very sad. But I'm glad that Hot Dog made it to the box.

[D]

Was Hot Dog supposed to be a multi bottle?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Oh, it's a seven pound, eight pound flame, something like that. It's basically mini Kaza in short.

[C]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

Like in the photo for its profile, actually, you see two robots. It was definitely supposed to be, but I think they just got cooked.

[A]

So the. The max lore for this event was building the motors.

[D]

So.

[A]

And I've been making. Been meaning to make a video about the drive system, and it's many, many iterations that it's gone through in the past. Like, it's been two years since I made a video. So what I wanted to do after what failed in November was the motor came off the back plate of the gearbox. So there's those like. Or there's those four M3 screws that it's all blurring together. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So, yeah, here's what failed in November against. Oh, it wasn't. These didn't shear, but they stripped. And so my theory is like, that motor just clicking back and forth. Aluminum has a fatigue limit, so when you're switching back and forth and loading those threads over and over and over again. You're going to wear them out. And then eventually it's going to take an impact. And these screws didn't fail, but they stripped. So you can see the threads are gone on that. So the solution to that was that I would integrate the motor and the gearbox. This is something that they do on the three pounders, and this is something that Zoe's going to be doing with her gearboxes soonish.

[B]

Spoiler.

[A]

So I. Is that a spoiler?

[B]

I don't think she's announced it quite.

[D]

I.

[C]

Don't worry.

[A]

Don't worry about that. Zoe's been thinking about this. Zoe was thinking about this at the same time that I was support going stems.

[B]

They're pretty cool.

[A]

Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I reached out to Lucien from Badass and I was like, hey, I need to get the motors disassembled because I tried to remove this coil myself and it just, like, didn't work out. So he was like, yeah, no problem. And I'm waiting. I'm waiting. I'm waiting. I'm like, I'd like to fight it. February, you know, it doesn't really happen. So, you know, and I wish I could, like. Like, the stress is, like, building up. And then, like, after Chinese New Year, I'm like, okay, let's lock this down. I got the bases machined. Shout out. Husky machining. They did the bases for me. I didn't do them because I don't have a 5 ax. So that. That made me confident in what I had. And so flash forward like a month. I'm still waiting. There's a lot of waiting involved here. And I'm like, hey, Lucine, are these gonna come before April or. April. Nhrl. Like, late March. He's like, we can do it. I'm like, okay. Like a week before the competition. I'm like, hey, what are we doing? And he's like, they'll be here next. Next Friday. I'm like, great. I'm like, that's plenty of time. That's still a week before the comp Friday comes around. He's like, they're not here yet. I'm like, dude, what's going on? So I. I went ahead and I just apologized. Oxy. These are the old motors. And I JB welded them to the back because I'm like, I gotta have some sort of plan, like, if this goes, like, totally sideways, right? And so I did that over the weekend. And then I came in on On Monday, I gave him a call. I'm like, you know, where are these at? He's like, they're on weather delay. I'm like, no way.

[C]

Oh, wow.

[A]

And, like, I'm like, where are you located? Drive to Michigan. I'll get them. I'll build the motor. Okay. I'll let you know as soon as I have. They don't arrive Wednesday. I leave for the competition on Thursday. So I'm like, all right, fine. I'll just drive to Michigan directly, pick up the motors, and then drive straight to nhrl. So I spent. So I hit the road at. Here I am at five in the morning. So I'm leaving Cincinnati, Ohio, at five in the morning. I get there. That's Mr. Lucien from. From Badass Motors. Look how that. That is the front of Innovative Design. It's like a garage. You know, if you're wondering what this place looks like, it's like a shack, like, in the middle of Michigan. It's, like, not obvious what it is. So I'm in the car. I'm in the car. I'm like, great. These are gonna go together perfect. I'm looking at them, and I'm like, I should, like, try to put the can together, right? Like the magnet, right? I should look at how this works together. And I'm looking around for him. And I left. You know, I had been driving for about 45 minutes, and I stopped to get gas, and I realized I left without the can. So I had to turn all the way back around. So it took me 15 hours to get from. From Cincinnati, Ohio, to Norwalk, Connecticut. And here is me and Gwen Thursday night, building the motors. Exhausted, like, but they came out beautiful. And I didn't have a single one fail during the event. So I'm super stoked about that. So that was Maximizer's event summary. Was just getting these motors built. Oh, we epoxied the. We epoxied the bearings in, and then I came in. What was it? Friday morning? We went on a little ham with the old green loctite. And we green loctited all the bearings shut. So I had to go through and replace all the bearings. But that was. That was like, the easiest thing. So there you go.

[B]

That's. That.

[A]

That was Maximizer's event. And then my. And then we did. Okay, so. Yeah. So wait. Back to Supernova. Okay. Sorry. That was a rain.

[C]

You're all good, bro.

[A]

I gotta calm down. That was a.

[B]

Building the story up. Building the story.

[A]

Building the story. I'm gonna bring it back. I'M gonna bring it back. So you fight Tornado Torrent. And I'm looking forward to fight Fighting Torrent because it's a rematch and I just spent all the time building these drive motors to beat Torrent, so I'm kind of cheering for Torrent in this fight. See, I brought it back. I brought it back. Crazy rant. All right, so what are you thinking about going into this fight?

[C]

I'm scared out of my mind, honestly, because this. This thing is insane. Tor is not a robot that, like, you take lightly at all. It hits. It hits like a semi truck. And I honestly, I. I was a little worried that, like, I would just lose all the weapon to weapon exchanges against it. But we managed to go head to head one time. It seems to have evened out at. So at 20, like, weapon speed, My robot likes to, like, gyro over so it, like, spun all the way down. I flipped myself over and we try to self right. And this robot isn't mixed. Like, my three pounder is like, on the transmitter at all. So I don't like, on my three pounder. I have like, a thing that, like, lowers the drive speed for me or the weapon speed for me so that I can self right a little better. But I don't have any of that mixing on Supernova. And you can tell because it just can't get up. It looks. It just. It just can't.

[B]

You both spent a great. Less than a great deal of time being inverted. Like, Torrent figured out, what if I just attack them while inverted and see what happens.

[C]

He managed to bump me up in such a way that I could just, like, wiggle my way back and forth back up for hate.

[B]

If it looks like you got the whole drive style, Torrent. So, like, now it's got one side and weapon, but you just killed the weapon.

[A]

And you are. I guess not.

[B]

Maybe not. And you're now inverted. And you just. Oh, my God, absolutely.

[D]

You.

[B]

You snipe the iPhone and then you snipe the iPhone in the corner.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

Got yourself stuck.

[C]

We.

[D]

We have. Ezekiel and I have met and discussed that we need to talk about his follow through problem.

[C]

So, yeah, I need to, like, learn to, like, back off when I hit things like that. So the main problem was I was so scared of Torrent, I thought that, like, any chance I gave him to, like, come back up and hit me, like, the match was over. So I wanted to just. I wanted to end the match there. And I tried to get him on the follow up where if you, like, fell down, I Wanted to get another hit on him, but I just. I just missed and hit the kick plate.

[B]

Yeah. So you end up in, like, an almost double knockout kind of situation, because now Torrent on its head spinning in a dead circle, and you're halfway up the wall.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

This fight. This fight.

[A]

Because it turned into a controversy, right?

[D]

Yeah, well, controversy, but, like, basically the double knockout. Well, it's. It's very confusing because during the fight, I wasn't sure if. If Torrent was getting counted out, and I actually had to run over to the ref and be like, hey, is. Are they getting counted out? This should not be considered motion under, like, the new motion rules or whatever. And I think what happened was Torrent got counted out after both of the unsticks were used. And then. And then it went to, obviously, like, the end of the fight, and then there was, like, a group of, like, three or four people that were meeting between the cages and the bull, and they were, like. I think they were deliberating if it was supposed to have been a double knockout or not. And then there was also some confusion on if Kevin had used his unstick or not, I believe, because he thought that torture. Torrent was moving, but the ref thought the Torrent wasn't moving. And so Kevin, like, was forced to use his unstick by the ref or something like that. It was. It was very confusing. But eventually it got determined that it was a double knockout, and then it went to judges the standard way.

[B]

Okay, so more chaos on the floor, but in reality, kind of straightforward. Like, the resolution made more sense. Okay. Yeah, that was. That's pretty violent.

[A]

It looked like it.

[B]

Especially the.

[D]

So this is.

[A]

Where's one.

[D]

This is when we have discovered. No, no, the previous fight is when we discovered we had put the hollow shaft in because at one point, we had put the beater bar back together, and I took a screwdriver, and I poked the hollow shaft, or I put. Poked the shaft in the center, expecting to bottom out and be able to push it out. And to my surprise, the screwdriver goes all the way into the shaft. And I turn to Ezekiel, and I go, did you put the hollow shaft in the robot? And he goes, oh, that's why the robot was so much light. Lighter. And so we go into the Torrent fight, and we're like, we. We literally don't have the time to find, you know, the 30, 40, whatever grams we need to run front ends or anything like that. And so we just go, well, we. We have to run the. The hollow shaft because we didn't have time to swap out the weapon or, you know, find that weight or anything like that. And we were just like, well, it got us this far. It can get us through another fight, basically. And so we made a banana. Probably one of the worst shaft bananas I think I've ever seen in combat robotics.

[B]

It was very, very bent.

[D]

So, yeah, I think it was. It bent on both ends where it goes into the uprights. Both uprights have some minor wallowing, I believe, because of how the shaft bent. I mean, they. It was like, if Jake can pull up the picture, it was like, you know, like a 20 degree bend on one side of the shaft. It's insane, man.

[C]

So, like, oh, sorry. So.

[D]

So.

[A]

So you got stuck and Torrent stopped moving. Simultaneous is what it was.

[B]

So it was the same action that drove to the status of each robot. Like, which was. Which was the follow up. Like, as you punch the mate throughout, you're also sucking the wall in that process. So therefore it's simultaneous. Dang, that's rough. That. Because, I mean, impressive though, because again, like, looking at it from like a spectator point I was watching from all day. I was in competition. I saw Torrance, half his drive go away, and it's hovering by its own drive torque, where it's weapon torque. And you had like the most unlucky position possible for an unstick. You're just being shoved into the corner more by the Brett or again, because you're so big.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so I was thinking, man, you. You feel like you're winning, though.

[D]

It's not leaving circle of influence, I think, is what it is. I don't remember if that's.

[B]

There's also like a. There's also like a translation in the safety check. Anyway. I forget the exact number, but you have to travel across the box, which obviously.

[D]

And so we get stuck on the kick plate, and we're trying to spin the weapon, and the weapon is just going. And we're like, okay, it's probably overheated. So I have Ezekiel turn the weapon off. And right as the other unstick is ending, I tell him to try to rip it again. And it's just doing that same thing. And so we just assumed fly color died on us. It did us a good service. It died approximately two days ago. I asked for the fly color so I could do some analysis on it because another robot was planning on running it. And I opened up the. The heat or not the heat, shrink the electrical tape, and lo and behold, one of the connections has in fact not become a connection anymore. The cold solder joint is what did us in.

[C]

So this would explain the weapon just cogging.

[D]

Yeah. And so it's just cogging, and we're like, what's going on? The ESC must be dead. You know, we plug it in after the fight, we. We give it some throttle, and it's just clogging the motor. And so we're like, okay, there's a dead face. We don't have another motor, so we're just going to yolo it and try another esc.

[A]

So you're coming back upstairs after. I think this is the first bit that they do.

[B]

So.

[D]

Yeah, so we're coming back upstairs, and by this point, the shaft has come out of the robot shockingly well. Like, I. It took almost. Almost no effort to get the shaft out. I just kind of plucked on it and it fell out. Oh.

[B]

And Sam and I look at the

[D]

shaft, and I go, oh, this is the most destroyed shaft I've ever seen. And we go, okay, well, we need to find weight for the solid shaft. And that's the end of that conversation as the rest of the robot comes apart.

[A]

Every time I looked at your all's table, the robot was in like, yeah, like, it.

[B]

It feels like palpable panic looking at this, whether, like, in person or not.

[D]

It was really tough because there's. There's a few things that line up badly. So, number one, the weapon ESC is tucked directly underneath the weapon motor, which means the bottom plate has to come off to change the weapon esc. Number two, obviously, the shaft had to come out of the robot, and so that meant that the drive rails had to come apart. There was no way it was coming out all the way through. And it's a plus and a minus because it meant we could split the sub modules up and work on them separately. But it also means there is a bajillion robot parts all over the table. And so we go, okay, test the weapon motor. We go onto the table behind us where Kevin just was with Torrent. We try to spin it up, and it just goes. And it just cogs. And so we go, okay, dead esc. We don't have another esc. What are we going to do? And one of our teammates, Josh, who runs Chaos upright, comes up and is like, I got a Rhino 80amp if you want to really try it. And we go, well, we've got no other options. And we.

[B]

Right on.

[D]

My beloved. Fun fact, the pins on an Mr.30 sort of fit into a three and a half millimeter bullet connector. This is sort of what if you put. If you put a male bullet connector into.

[A]

Yes, yes, but.

[D]

But the weapon ESC that we've been given has female bullet connectors, and the weapon motor has a male Mr. 60. So it's not a tight fit. And I put it on, and it's just kind of flopping around. And so we just tape it tight, and we just. Whatever. We've got no time. And we twitch, send it, we twitch test it, and it's just going beep, beep, beep. And I've never heard these tones before. And I somehow I managed to, through all the chaos, realize the ESC is boot looping. And so we rush back to the table, and we're. I'm. We're like, what do we do? And I turn to Derek Tran and I say one of the dumbest sentences I've ever said. And that sentence is, derek, how do I fix a boot loop? And Derek goes, you've just asked me. I don't even remember what he said. He's like, you just asked me to cure cancer or something. I just said the most ridiculous thing ever to him. And he goes, but I have an F100. And we go, sure. It's all we got. Sorry.

[C]

Okay.

[D]

Before the rhino, we tried putting a mava in, but every time.

[C]

Wait, I thought the mamba worked.

[D]

No, no. The mamba would trip the short stopper every time. So, like, we plugged it in without the motor, turn it on, it's fine. We turn off the shortstopper, plug in the weapon motor, turn it on, it trips the shortstopper immediately. My theory as to what it was. And I don't know much about Castle, but the theory was the mamba was in censored mode and the phases were plugged in like ACB instead of abc. And what I've been told is if you plug in ACB to a censored motor that's supposed to be abc, it will just blow up the motor. And I'm guessing that's what was happening, but we didn't know that at the time. So we went, mamba's out. Rhino in. Rhino's out. F100 in. At this point, we've been basically told, like, yeah, you have negative 10 seconds. And so we're soldering the power joint in, and SRI is, like, trying to flow the solder, and it's not flowing. And I just go, screw this. I strand the wires together, I wrap it with electrical tape, and let's go shove it in the robot. Let's Go. And it worked.

[C]

Oh, my gosh.

[B]

But I love it.

[D]

It's one of the most hacked job repairs, I think that's, like, ever happened. It was. Was insane. I don't even remember how we got, like, the Mr.30 on the weapon ESC. It was. It was horrible.

[A]

And the original ESC worked fine.

[D]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Because

[D]

it was wrapped with electrical tape,

[A]

so we didn't check.

[D]

I mean, there were so many people that helped us that we have to thank. There was. It was like, you know. Yeah. There were so many people every. Every Ayush, Don, Claire, Derek. God, I. Derek out of Narnia with the mini computer. Like, I mean, there was. It was like, team members that. From us. There was some more people from Robo Jackets. I mean, there was like, God knows everyone that just came and tried to help us out.

[B]

So I love that so much. That's so good.

[C]

It's a testament to how awesome this community is. Yeah.

[D]

I mean, we wouldn't have ever gotten

[A]

a massive group of people going over the test.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Everyone's like, we need to see it going.

[C]

Shout out to sting off for getting stuck.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

It's a few more minutes.

[B]

4D chess, 4D chest. We love it. There's the camera guy trying to get in there. Like, box in the box. Everyone's sitting there. Tents.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

Focusing very tightly.

[D]

I was talking to the camera guy after everything was over, and I was like, you must have had a lot of fun filming that. And he's like, oh, yeah, I live for the drama. Because he was like, there's like, I think two or three separate clips of us on stream, spaced out like, five or 10 minutes. He was following us the entire time. I mean, that camera was glued to us. I need to see if I can get the footage from that because it must have been incredible.

[B]

You heard the story.

[A]

So what is going on right now? So you just. I just went up to.

[D]

We put the Rhino 80amp in. It's not. I tell Ezekiel, Twitch the robot, it's not working. I open the cage and I hear the AM32 ESC just beeping repeatedly. And I've got. I go. I've never heard this tone before. And I just go, derek. And he comes running over and he goes, yeah, I have. I've never heard this before. And I go. In my head. I'm just like, we're so screwed if he doesn't know

[A]

what he's supposed to do.

[D]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

He's the whisperer.

[D]

Yeah, yeah. And so we just happened to get lucky enough That I realized it was probably.

[A]

There you are holding it like it

[D]

was a consistent tone the ass.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[D]

To carry like a fish.

[A]

Look, here he comes.

[D]

And he comes running over.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

And then, you know, after all said and done, we put the F100 getting

[A]

stuck twice to help you guys.

[D]

Thank you so much. Thing up.

[A]

Yeah. Because that bought you guys another like the raw F100.

[D]

And we put like a, like a 40amp current limit on it because it's got no heatsink and no programming.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

We just go, please don't die.

[A]

So, so all this is happening and I, so I, I've been running a, like a hardened steel on my disc or I, I actually cut new weapons for this event. Both of them cracked. And I'm honestly, I'm done with the steel that I've been running. It's too hard. But both of them cracked against riot and infrared. And I didn't want to run. This is my disc. Right. Because the disk, I can't run for three minutes at 100%. So when I did my configuration sheet, you know, I didn't do any of the, like, I didn't weigh anything for the disc. So I put my robot together, it's sitting on the table, and I'm like, I should weigh this robot real quick before, you know, before we go to fight supernova. And I put it on the scale and it's 12.11 pounds, man. Oh, no. So you guys are rushing in the background and I was chilling for like 50, like 45, 50 minutes, right? And all of a sudden I'm like 0.1 pounds overweight. So I go into total panic mode because I've got a 1800mAh battery and a 1550mAh battery, which is the difference in weight between the disc and the key. So I'm like, okay, I got to get a 1550 in here. Well, it wasn't charged. It was just on storage. So I'm watching you guys put the robot back together and I'm like, go see, go see how good of a shape there. We might need more time. I put it on my battery charger. Charging at 15amps, brother. Totally your responsibility. The full. That's like a. I'm like, I'm like, so when you guys came over to the desk or to spin up and you guys had your spin up problem, I was like, oh, thank God. They need more time. Because I was, I was grinding, rooting

[B]

on your downfall in real time.

[A]

So it went from like, I was very chill, like, okay, I'm Ready for supernova. My robot's sitting on the table to. Oh, my gosh. I need to lose, like, you know, tenth of a pound immediately. Right? So, no, it. We were equally panicked going into that fight, and I didn't tell you that at all because I didn't want to even know about it because you guys seem so stressed already. I just did not want to add to it. So we're behind the bleachers, and we're both, like, coming down from this panic, and you tell me about that experience, because it was, like. It was very emotional.

[D]

It was very. I want to say that was like. I don't even think. I don't even think my charger could do 15amps.

[A]

I just. I just turned it all the way up and then just set it.

[D]

But so we're. We're behind the. Or standing at the, like, the cage to queue or cage 1 queuing area, and we're kind of all settling down from the panic, and it's kind of crashing down on me and Ezekiel, both of, like, how much everything just happened. Like, how much help we got. The fact that we, like. I. At this point in my mind, I have no idea that we've qualified. The robot torrent just exploded us, and I'm just like, okay, we're. We're in panic mode, and it's all just coming crashing down on us, and we are. We are in shambles, for lack of a better description.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

It's like all the emotions hit us at once. I didn't know what was going on before.

[A]

I think at one point, I programmed your all's Mamba, and I go, okay, are you ready for our fight? And you go, wait, we're fighting you? That's when I realized you guys were so out of it. You guys were so lost. I was like, yep, yeah, but we'll get it together.

[D]

I forgot about that.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

I was like, we gotta fight the next fight.

[A]

I think it's infrared, maybe.

[D]

And then Jake is like, are you

[A]

ready to fight me?

[D]

And I go, oh, my God.

[A]

So that. That's incredible that you guys were that lost in the sauce and. Yeah, it speaks to how great the community is. It's just like, okay, we're gonna. We're gonna see this robot all the way in the cage. And. And so by the time, like, we got to the cage, and you're all's weapon spun, I was so happy for you guys, because I know, like.

[D]

Yeah, I don't think it's on camera, but you guys. The weapon. The weapon Spins up, and we just absolutely go insane because we're like, there's no way the weapon spun up because, like, we. We didn't have time to test the F100. After we put it in, we just went. We had to go, well, maybe it works.

[C]

It was definitely on stream, if I remember.

[A]

Oh, yeah, yeah. No, you can see.

[D]

There it is.

[A]

The fight hasn't even started yet.

[D]

Yeah, the people behind us, I have no idea what are you seeing, but they're like, what are these people freaking out about?

[C]

They had no idea. We just spent the last 40 minutes going through absolute hell.

[A]

So

[B]

that's like, POV.

[D]

I. One of Ayusha's friends asked me earlier in the day if I wanted to do a headcam. And I was like, sure, why not? And I got the link for the footage, but I haven't had a chance to look at it yet, so.

[A]

So this fight kind of sucks for me, but it sucks because I'm at 80% battery, or I. I don't know how much battery I have, so I'm just like, yeah, very afraid. So that was my weapon down, because I'm like, they're, like, wounded and, like, I don't want to lose at all. And, like, you guys, like, gyroed over top of me twice. I'm like, all right, this is. I'm not having this at all.

[D]

And so we load the robot into the cage.

[A]

Crash fight.

[D]

We load the robot into the cage, and it drives to the corner. Great. We're like, oh, yeah, everything works. And then immediately, one of the revits just, like, kicks the bucket and we're down to drive side, and we're just like, well, weird.

[A]

Yeah, okay.

[D]

We're like, well, this is the second time this has happened. So.

[C]

Yeah, it's the second time a revit has just completely died on us. It just happens randomly, too.

[A]

Yeah. The only part, funny part, is fire.

[D]

Oh, that's a little too far.

[A]

Too far, Too far.

[C]

That's.

[D]

But so the current. The current theory as for the fire is that the revit decided it wanted to explode. And we're not sure how smoke came out the front because there was no, like, charring or anything at the front. So I assume it's just like the. The smoke got ducted forward. And so the theory is the revit catches on fire, and then it takes, like, one of the lipo cells with it, if even. They're just, like, really badly charred. And so when we're taking the robot apart, the reason I know the lipo still has charge in it is because I've been left outside with Ezekiel. There is nobody with us, and we have been given zero safety tools. And so I grab the battery and I rip it out. And as it's coming out, there's a little spark and a little fire that just appears inside the robot. As I'm ripping the battery out, you

[C]

just looked at each other, started laughing.

[A]

Yeah. The only funny part was Fluffy, like, pushing you into my weapon full speed. Yeah, you got full feed.

[D]

I did not.

[A]

I did not mean to hit you guys. I was just sitting there waiting, and Fluffy just shoved. Shoved you into my weapon.

[B]

That's right. The fire after that, too. Yeah.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

I have the robot on me.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

You should show them how bent the drive rail is.

[C]

Oh, yeah. All right.

[A]

You didn't mean to.

[C]

Oh, you're all good. So I have the robot right here. So. Look at this. It's, like, not even square anymore. This left side is peeled out. The motor is still spin the war wound there. I thought they'd get, like, demagnetized or something, but they're fine. But eventually, I want to take this rail out, and I think you deserve this rail.

[A]

I really don't. You should give it to. I just have.

[D]

Is this. Is this like when Gwen was supposed to get the dumpster?

[A]

Yeah, exactly. Well, congratulations on qualifying. Welcome to. Welcome to the 12 pound weight class. I cannot wait to see Supernova back machined in all of its glory this December.

[B]

I mean, you still have one more fight yourself, though. You still had to fight.

[A]

I do have one more fight myself. I guess our paths have converged. Okay. Is we finished the Supernova Arc. So I go back upstairs after this fight, and I don't have any. So this is. Let me crank real quick. Okay. Hang on. Let me change small crank. Okay. The way. So I find myself in a. In a fair amount of 12 pound finals. Okay. And the dynamic dynamics of. Of how that is, like, shaping out right now, like, as far as, like, sporting is concerned, is if you go first in the semifinals, you have a huge advantage going into finals because you get. You just get more repair time. Right, Right. So I. And actually, the last semifinals that I've been in, I think I've gone first almost. Almost every single time. So out of the past five events, I've made finals four times. So I'm kind of familiar with the game at this point. If you go. If you go second, you have, like, no repair time. Well, it's not that you don't have your guaranteed repair time. It's that Your opponent has more. So when I went up, I saw Xenomorph like in pieces. He was configuring with like this massive baleen. I don't think he could have put that baleen on in 25 minutes, which is all the time that I had. You know what I mean? So I'm thinking about like, like as the sport progresses a little bit, like you're gonna have that highest level where people are trying to like min max and be super competitive. If someone has a configuration that they can only throw on, but it takes 30 minutes to disassemble and reassemble their robot. Like, it's not fair to the person who goes second, you know what I mean? So I don't know if the solution is more repair time. In my mind, the weigh in time should be 25 minutes after you get upstairs. So, you know, person should meet you at the door as soon as you come up. They should. Or at your pit desk they should say, your time starts now. And then you gotta weigh in by 25 minutes. That way it's fair between the two semifinals. But that's someone who, you know, that's kind of. That's like a very crank opinion from someone who's made an absorbent amount of finals at this point. And just like, you know, I'm just like, yeah, yeah, yeah, as a. Yeah, as a professional winner. But, you know, you see what I'm saying, it's like, yeah, yeah, I made the finals enough now that it's like, come on. Like so, So I think. I don't know.

[B]

Yeah. Nerf.

[A]

Jake. The question is, do you want repair to be part of the game? Because like, for me, like before slam plan, I had a slam plan config that took a lot of time to convert to. It was under 25 minutes. I knew it was under 25 minutes, but it was tight. But I requested that my semifinal be first because Tor was ready and I was ready and. And I knew I would get more time on the back end. Like, so it's kind of like this

[D]

feels like old man yells at Cloud.

[A]

This. This might be. This might be too. This might be. And I. Again, that's. And that's why the title of this segment is Small Crank. But so, so anyways, I go upstairs that he's throwing on this insane thing. And as soon as I saw it, that's really. That's hats off to David. As soon as I saw it, I knew I had lost the final because it is so perfectly well engineered to fight my robot. It Is like. Like hellish. I don't know what I'm gonna do about it yet. I have a solution for fighting Balenes. I actually left it at home. So that's. That's skill issue on my part.

[B]

So Xenos is like juggling.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And getting that fight for sure.

[A]

My mentality going into this was the longer the fight went on, the longer the fight goes on, I think the better I was gonna do. I almost. Oh, I almost got really lucky there. And he almost went. I watched the lender there. Yeah, I know. I got really sad there.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, you're fighting. You're fighting Xenomorph. Really big vertical spinner. Big Bailey. It's designed for you right now.

[D]

Yes.

[A]

This is. Yes. Yeah. It's everything that I'm bad at fighting. But I know that the longer the fight goes on, the better my chance gets.

[B]

Right.

[A]

I put on my small, like, TPU cutting blade. So my robot only weighs 11 pounds in this fight, which is kind of insane. Gives me overhead as far as, like, thinking about fighting this robot in the future and fighting Baleen's in the future. I've got a full pound to play with to configure against this going forward, which is nice to know. I think you'll need it because I think I will.

[B]

Like before, you said before, before supernova, you fought infrared other back.

[A]

Yeah. Yep.

[B]

Also big, wide vert.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I was punching you for a while before you managed to shred it a bit more. Yeah, that got the W there. Xeno is like a more prepared, bigger version of it.

[A]

Yes. Had infrared had this config, I would have been totally hoes. At a certain point, I am winning, and that's because I. There's like a tiny chunk of TPU that he gets stuck. Like he gets stuck on himself. And I say, let me help you with that, big dog. And then I. I pick his teeth for him. He's getting stuck on himself there. And I'm like, oh, I'm sorry, big dog. You're getting getting stuck on your own.

[D]

Like.

[A]

Like, here, here, here, let me. Let me. Yeah, let me extract that chunk that you're getting stuck on. And then I immediately I realize what I did. And then I get just punished in the corner. I lost pacing after that. And then it was after I got stuck in the wall. I. I lost pace. I think for £12, it will just help with pace of play. Like with verts getting stuck on it. It's like your fight had pace of play.

[C]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

My. The final. Had Pace of play issues because I got stuck. Any ideas for fighting a baleen?

[C]

Just break the.

[D]

Break the weapon, dude.

[B]

Only stiff part, I guess only ways like the energy can go through.

[D]

I. I think the most shocking part about the Xeno everything to me is that it's all high speed cpo. I really, really refuse to believe that.

[B]

Yeah, so more so the answer is just more everything.

[D]

Yeah, I. I mean like, yeah, the. Because Comet also got a trophy from Xeno. And I picked it up and I looked at it and I went, this is high speed tpu. And like I beyond shock because every experience I've had with high speed TPU in combat has just been it shreds and it cracks immediately. And that's exactly what happened to this. But because the armor on Xeno is just so thick, it really seems to actually work out for it.

[A]

I felt like the high speed GPU helped him because it was stiffer on the ramp rake of the baleen.

[D]

Yeah, I. I think maybe it's because like high speed TPU as conventional armor is terrible, but if you design around its properties, it's seems to actually be really good.

[A]

I go, how long did it take you to print those? He goes, two days each side. Shout out David for. And he didn't even get. Oh my gosh. He didn't even get into the competition until Lord Legolas dropped out. Shout out Lord Legolas.

[C]

Oh my God.

[A]

You would have won a dump.

[B]

That was your 40.

[A]

That was. This was your fight to win. This was your fight to win.

[B]

That's the irony.

[A]

I think Legolas would have made it to the same position and beat me had he been. It would have been a direct one. 1. He gave up a dumpster. Really?

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

I'm just happy I made another finals. Honestly, it feels really good to have four, like out of the past five events, four finals. Feels. That feels amazing. And no drive. No drive problems. Shout out Gwen for building those motors with me. So I like coming in second, man, because you get the same amount of fights and you get to learn a lot. You get to lose to a really strong opponent. So I don't mind second place at all. Shout out David for winning. Shout out Supernova for qualifying.

[C]

Yeah, you know what?

[B]

Shout out to prime header. Prime header. Beat up my killer, Joel.

[A]

Everyone was too mean to kill a Jewel. And now we're all hosed. Now we're all dead.

[D]

Rest in peace. Kill a Jewel for its sacrifice.

[B]

Everyone else could die for it.

[A]

What?

[B]

Oh,

[D]

man.

[B]

It was you.

[A]

It was my fault.

[B]

You were part of it you were part.

[D]

I was part of the problem circle.

[A]

Why was I so mean me? Be careful who you bully, guys. Be careful who you bully because he put killajoul and made it a vert and now it's terrifying. Why does he eat the wall there?

[D]

Why do you eat the wall, bro? Come on.

[A]

Kilojoul was really so cool. I like the orange blade. I was a huge kilojoul head when I was like first starting out here. Wait, have you seen that really old photo with me and David? It was the first fan photo that I took at nhrl.

[B]

Really?

[A]

It was a big. Oh yeah.

[B]

There's a lot of circle moments that happen here in this xeno maximizer rematch.

[A]

You know, the. The older we get, Brandon, the more full circle.

[B]

Wow.

[C]

You were so young.

[D]

It's such a good photo.

[A]

Such a good photo. Look how confused I look. I have no idea that three years later he'd be kicking my ass.

[B]

That's good stuff. Congratulations again, David. Excellent work. Oh, wow.

[A]

Remember the bot museum?

[C]

Oh, yeah. Rest in peace.

[A]

Yeah. RIP.

[B]

Yeah, that was cool. Outside of this, there's also a lot of what is it questions in the discord and I hit a couple of them already just by talking through n the event like a couple other other ones here too. Like about the future primarily for. G her. Gwen's question is the mini bot mercenary days and recent escap. What would you say has been key to matching so many driver part both in terms of match strategy and robot fundamentals. And then for Ezekiel. You can think about this one too. I hear you spent quite a lot of time in Washburn, but Darren is not working yourself machining parts combat. That's a new going into it.

[D]

Yeah. So for. For being I. I think part of my adaptive driving style has just come from. From the amount of fights I've been around for and like drive coached. And I think it might also come a little bit from high school driving because I drove like I drove my high school FTC robot. So I got used to kind of working on somewhat of a team and I think a little bit of that has carried over. But also I think when I'm driving a multibot with somebody, it just usually happens that I get lucky. And I have a similar ish driving style, especially like with Julian. I think we're both more aggressive drivers, but I'm usually, I think the first one to take the step back and let my co driver take the brunt of the engagements and stuff like that. And I think that has been really valuable and it ends up with us getting tangled in each other a little bit. Bit less.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

And I guess to talk about machining. So we. We did spent a long time in washroom. I. I can't even count the amount of hours that we spent in there for I guess both runs of this robot just. It's crazy, but I guess going into it, I had machined some three pound parts. I had machined some parts for Wall Street Waddles. But, you know, the difference here is that like on Waddles, you have a team of people that's like more than. More than two people working on a robot at once. And on a Beetle, a lot of the parts are small. You can kind of crank those out. But on a 12, it's like this kind of perfect medium where you. Well, not perfect in the sense that like, medium.

[D]

It's the worst of both worlds.

[A]

Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[C]

It's the worst of both worlds in that you have to do a lot of machining. Since there's only two of you, you have to split all the parts of the robot up in half. Or I guess in our case, how that shook out with the beater bar. And then Jaren having to machine the whole half of the robot. And then this time around, me having to machine a lot of the robot, it just strikes. It's this kind of thing where it's like you. There's just a lot more work that goes into it from an individual, like, perspective as opposed to like, like on, like a 30 pounder, we have a lot more people on. Well, specifically our 30 pounder, there's a lot more people on. It's interesting.

[D]

Sorry.

[C]

No, you're good.

[D]

I was gonna say with Supernova, you know, I've had my hands on every single part of the robot in some degree or another. And same goes for Ezekiel, but with like the larger, like, Waddles, you know, I pretty much stay kind of stuck in my own little area. I do like a little bit of work on the undercutter, like a little bit of work on the drive, but it's so much more distributed with these larger robots. Whereas with us, you know, we've got to do. We're. We are everything of the robot, basically. So

[C]

I guess the time. The time commitment is the surprising thing about it.

[B]

Yes, it always is. Like, I think this means, you know, ex distance. It's like double that easy every time.

[D]

Yep.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

It feels like we went in there all, like, starry and bright eyed, going like, we can actually just do this in seven weeks. And then we come out as like old men and we're like, holy crap. All this, like 50 hours in the machine shop.

[B]

Good rope. You know, you made like a square box. I'm sure you could do it like a night. But this is like very cool machine, so want to get prop to that as well? Yeah, you're good.

[C]

Thanks. Thank you.

[B]

Yeah, sure. Sort of going. Coming.

[A]

What is it?

[B]

Putting a couple different questions together, like Connor and Alex and Anthony and others. What's the future for your Beatles? Red Panda in Blink?

[C]

I guess since Blink is competing at this next event. It's competing at this next event. I was originally going to do rce, but I want to graduate, right. So I've been putting a little bit more time into that. And in terms of Blink, I've had my ups and downs with that robot. It likes to not particularly work. So this. Depending on how this goes, this may be its last event and I want to try a different Beetle going forward. I don't know what that is yet, but we'll.

[D]

We'll see.

[C]

We'll see what happens at the end of May.

[D]

Red Panda is kind of on hiatus indefinitely. It's dependent on a lot of things. I think one of the big ones right now is with Supernova qualifying for finals. If Blink also qualifies for finals, it's. I mean, it will make finals a nightmare if I also qualify with Red Panda. And so, like, I think part of it hinges on that. I think part of it hinges on, you know, staying with the prioritization of like, school and life and stuff like that. I have been floating around the idea in my head of like a cheap 12 pound robot to just kind of mess around with or like a few other beetles that I've looked at concepts of. But, you know, Red Panda went out last time. It fought in essentially a pair of fires. And that was not the cheapest way to get knocked out of a tournament. So it's kind of like at a low volume of parts and motivation and whatnot like that.

[B]

We're taking other couple questions together really fast. What are some big takeaways you notice for it coming out of it? So, like in demand here about infrared is, you know, more big reach work versus your bars. You have in a smaller, tighter form, diverse that most WPI tends to have. What do you see the future for them being like, change away from birds?

[D]

I think Reach verts have always definitely had their, like, certain matchups where they're like super dominant. I mean, we've definitely seen it with like Prince, because I I consider Prince one of the more like original like big reach parts that have been around for longer. And so it's definitely shown how big reach for can have a huge upper hand. But on the other hand, at least for like small like beater bars like supernova. Sometimes it's just like hard to beat that like high speed, low to the ground, super high inertia beater bar and some of the engagements. I think it's really a toss up. I think unfortunately reach forts are just going to start making smaller horizontals extinct or not extinct. But like it's going to be a lot harder for them to deal with such a intense vertical spinner.

[B]

So small reach horizontal, you say? Maximize it. Anyway, I've used that to reach you to think about it, but also. All right, all right, the last question to both of you. Then we'll probably end it out there since we're going pretty long question from Gwen. You have 20 budget, what do you get?

[D]

Is this where I could use my 1F bomb? You go Ezekiel.

[C]

So mine's gonna be a little boring because I've never actually been to a Wawa before. So I. I'm not really sure. That doesn't. I don't think there's one up hereby. I don't think so. So I've never. Not even on like my way down to Norwalk or any.

[D]

I think the only time I've ever been to a Wawa was with Gwen at a G scroll where we sprinted across the four lane highway to get to it.

[A]

They're primarily located in New Jersey and Florida. So that's quite. So they serve the worst people and they just. That's a crazy ball. Come on. They just. We just got one here in. In like Cincinnati, Midwest. So there's a couple in Indianapolis, Cincinnati. So okay, three areas.

[D]

I would get the same smoothie that I got when I was around with Glenn because that smoothie in the. The insanely hot greenhouse that Ideal Farms really hit hard.

[A]

Look at that map.

[D]

Yeah. Jake, I hope you don't dox yourself by doing this.

[A]

What do you mean? I. I live in Cincinnati, located near the Wawa. Yeah. This is what I mean when I say it's. It serves the worst people in our country. Cincinnati, Ohio, Louisville, Kentucky, Indianapolis, New Jersey and Florida.

[C]

Yeah, I don't see any of.

[B]

So you're right.

[C]

No, no, unfortunately.

[A]

Well, because like this is. She's territory over here. This is Sheets land.

[B]

That's true.

[A]

And if you're.

[B]

It's like team defectors, like whole thing.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's Sheets territory. And if I stop at a Valero, you're way off the tracks, dude. Never stop at a Valero. I got a Valero that I stopped at on my way back to Louisville. It's called Cowboys. Anyways, all right, I think that's going to close out the stream. Thank you for being on the stream Supernova. A fraught event. That was amazing to see you guys pull through with the power of perseverance, teamwork, and all that positive stuff. Congratulations on qualifying from all of us here at behind the Bots. Thanks. Have a good night.

[C]

Thank you guys having us.