We’ve reached the end of the build!

I (Chris) am quite frankly exhausted, the machine shop I use are wondering what’s coming next (and not everything quite fitted together when I was over there on Wednesday), and I could do with a break.

We present – Catch Me If You Can – the fastest featherweight we know of topping out at an impressive 18mph!

Catch Me If You Can – nearly ready for Manchester!

What started out life as a CAD drawing 10 weeks ago, has now been made a reality thanks to the exceptionally talented people at GSD Tech in Havant.  They have simply been awesome – we basically sent them the full model, and went “build it” – and it happened, with them fixing a few minor issues along the way.

We have a few little bits still to do (back plate, weapons test), but we’re basically there.

With just a few days until we head to Manchester – I (Chris) am really proud of how well it’s turned out for a project where I had no idea what I was doing when I first started.  I’ve had to learn Autodesk Inventor from scratch, work out gearing ratios, belt lengths, etc.  All of this has been new territory – I don’t normally do mechanical engineering.  It’s not come out badly considering!

A few other people who also need thanking (in no particular order):

• Annette at Hoffers Bakery in Southampton for scrounging the tyres from her husband’s bike shop.
• Ellis of Team Pulsar for his extensive brushless motor knowledge.
• John from Roaming Robots for building a spinner-proof arena and keeping up the encouragement.
• Trevor from Roaming Robots for helping us out with transport to Manchester.

We’ll hopefully be battling this machine in all 4 shows in Manchester, then quickly reworking bits of it before Portsmouth two weeks later.  We’ll see you there.