Horizontal flywheels

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

- Martin Smith

Horizontal flywheels were a type of rotating weapon. They were one of the most famous and destructive weapons, pioneered by Hypno-Disc in Series 3. However, despite the power of the horizontal flywheel, very few were used in Robot Wars, and, aside from Hypno-Disc, only Destructive Criticism, Botwork, and to a lesser degree; Disc-O-Inferno and Supernova, achieved a very high standard of success, whilst others suffered from inexperience.

Definition

 * A  flywheel was a comparatively heavy disc weapon that spun at high speeds. To cause damage, welded "teeth" were attached at places on the weapon to gouge enemy robots.
 * They were mounted horizontally, to slash across a robot's armour.

Advantages and Disadvantages
Advantages
 * Horizontal kinetic flywheels are the most destructive weapon. They are capable of slashing opponents to pieces, tearing through strong armour with its strong blows. Hypno-Disc's debut series was indicative of this: Robogeddon and Stealth were completely destroyed by Hypno-Disc.
 * Horizontal flywheels were capable of such damage, that several robots were retired after a battle with one, and forced to surrender a place in future battles - Atomic 2, Bulldog Breed 3 and Steg-O-Saw-Us were all examples of this, all of whom were defeated by Hypno-Disc.
 * This weapon can provide a large degree of protection for a robot, as an enemy robot is often unable to attack the disc side of the robot.
 * Capable of knocking out an opponent in one blow, as Hypno-Disc showed in the battle with Firestorm 3 and Barber-Ous 2.
 * Compatible with an invertible design. Indeed, only Hypno-Disc, Trouble 'n' Strife and 13 Black did not feature invertible designs.

Disadvantages
 * To make flywheels powerful, it was necessary for the disc to take up a significant amount of the robot's weight. As a result, the robots became unreliable as the overworked electronics burnt out (as demonstrated by Hypno-Disc and Disc-O-Inferno in Series 6).
 * Armour was also necessarily light, and this could result in the robot being vulnerable to attacks.
 * The robot often had a flawed design as a result of allowing the large flywheel (Devastator's open "mouth" was vulnerable to being hooked and Top Bot's body had to have holes drilled into the bodywork, leaving the electronics exposed).
 * Often the robot had to remain still in order to power the weapon up to full speeds.
 * The flywheel was vulnerable to overhead weapons (as shown by Shunt's severe damage on Hypno-Disc).

Trivia

 * In Series 7, seven of the ten horizontal flywheels lost in Round 1, and only S.M.I.D.S.Y., featuring the smallest flywheel, made it to the Heat Final stage.

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