New Era

"New Era was slowly brought to life in Paul's garage over about 4 months on and off. It was really an excuse to get out of the house then go for a curry, but as time went on we actually thought we might have a good chance of getting into the wars."

- The Team on New Era

New Era was a robot that failed to qualify for the Fourth and Fifth Wars of Robot Wars.

Design
New Era was made a welded frame chassis using 15mm box section steel bars, armed with a battery powered flipper which was later converted into an axe as a multifunctional use. The robot's drive was 2x 24volt dodgem drive motors with drive train while the main robot was powered by 4x 12Volt dry cell batteries. New Era was capable of speeds of 22 mph

Qualification
"Well where do i start. Yesterday i worked for 23 hours on the robot as at midday we had to change the drive motors due to problems with speed controlers, then get everything mounted in it was a rush and we finaly finished at 3.15am and then had to get up at 5.30am to drive to the wars without having tested new Era. This is where the problems started first when we switched it on we had a small fire in the wireing for the axe so we had to replace that. Then we could not get the radio gear to center, then the speed controler stopped working and then so did the axe, but to make things worse we ran out of c02 gas for the ram and that as they say was that. This is a fair well to New Era mark1 after failing at the last hurdle."

- New Era Website on the Fourth Wars qualifiers

New Era was not tested by the time of the Fourth Wars qualifiers, thus the team rushed to get to the studios. However, upon getting to the studios for qualification, numerous problems occoured. Firstly, a small fire started in the wiring for the axe resulting in the wires being replaced on the spot then the CO2 gas for the ram ran out. It is unknown who or if New Era fought in the qualifier battles after this incident but it failed to qualify regardless.

The team went on to begin work on a successor for the Fifth Wars, it is unknown whether the robot was finished in time.