Heavy rotating weapons

Heavy Rotating weapons were weapons which featured throughout Robot Wars. They were large and powerful rotating weapons which were capable of causing damage. They consisted of Vertical Flywheels, Horizontal Flywheels, Drums, Full Body Spinners & heavy Rotating Weapons

Flywheels
"Since Hypno-Disc has come on the scene, people have started building very powerful spinning discs"

- Martin Smith

Flywheels were very large discs spun at very high speed with the intention of shredding a robot rather than cutting into them. They were extremely powerful, capable of causing huge amounts of damage. Flywheels were pioneered in Series 3 by Hypno-Disc, and have been used both horizontally and vertically.

Horizontal Flywheels
The original type of flywheel pioneered by Hypno-Disc was the Horizontal Flywheel. With their high strength, they were easily capable of destroying other robots, as Hypno-Disc did to Robogeddon and Stealth among others, and Disc-O-Inferno did to Velocirippa. There were not too many robots with horizontal flywheels, and newer ones often suffered from a lack of experience.

List of Robots with Horizontal Flywheels
Robots are listed alphabetically. Robots that are not heavyweight are listed with a green background.

Vertical Flywheels
Vertical Flywheels were also capable of causing immense levels of damage by shredding the opponent. They were also able to flip other robots over, or clean out of the arena, in the case of Cyclone and X-Terminator. Several robots equipped with vertical flywheels achieved high amounts of success, for example the incumbent Dutch and German Champions PulverizeR and Black Hole.

Machines armed with these weapons, however, often got stuck or couldn't self-right in certain positions if they weren't invertible, as 259 against Fluffy, or indeed X-Terminator's scare against Tsunami showed.

List of Robots with Vertical Flywheels
Robots are listed alphabetically. Robots that are not heavyweight are listed with a green background.

Drums
Spinning Drums were large cylindrical spinning weapons mounted to spin vertically. They offered a greater range of attack than the traditional spinning disc, and had the potential to be tremendously destructive. However, the massive weight of spinning drums meant that they required a great deal of battery power, and the recoil from impact could cause the robot to do damage to itself.

Drums would become a lot more notable after Robot Wars in the US, Combat Robot Hall of Fame honourable mentions Solaris and Totally Offensive both equipped with them and showing their true potential.

List of Robots with Drums
Robots are listed alphabetically. Robots that are not heavyweight are listed with a green background.

Full Body Spinners
There have been several kinds of full body spinner in Robot Wars. These involve a robot equipping blades or weapons of some sort to their body, which then spins up to speed. Without a doubt, the most successful full body spinners were Typhoon and Typhoon 2, three time middleweight and last televised UK Champion respectively. The Full-body spinner design offers many advantages. The weapon protects the robot on all sides, making it virtually unapproachable at high speeds. Also, the size and weight of the weapon gives it the potential to cause very high levels of damage.

Weaknesses of the full body spinner are obvious: it is very difficult to tell which way the robot is facing while the weapon is spinning. Corkscrew suffered from this, as it fell in Series 6, unable to avoid the pit. Full body spinners tend to be smaller than other robots, cannot utilize any pushing power from their round shape, and are often unsafe (Warhog and Typhoon 2 have both shattered the arena wall, and Mauler was disqualified from the First World Championship altogether). Also, most of them were unable to self-right when flipped, as Typhoon 2 and Typhoon Cadet, among others, both proved.



List of Full Body Spinners
Robots are listed alphabetically. Robots that aren't heavyweight are listed with a green background.