User blog comment:Diotoir the son of nemesis/Robots that need information about them/@comment-27945184-20160609073627

Here is a diary of a robot called Glint. The team didn't have a great time...

We had all just started at St. Paul's School in September. A couple of weeks into term one boy, Harry Emeric, wanted to set up a team to build a robot for the famous TV program on BBC 2 'Robot Wars'. The team was started with 3 members. Harry Emeric, Amar Radia (myself) and Navneet Kokri. We started planning and thinking about a robot.

Harry, a big fan of Roadblock, wanted a simple wedge shape with a flipper. This was our initial idea. The team grew, with Robert Miles, Robert Haigh, Conrad Von Stempal and John Mellor all joining. After a few more meetings we dismissed the idea of a wedge shaped robot in favour of a more interesting an original design. After his idea had been dismissed Harry Emeric left the team. Another reason for him leaving was that he had recently joined the rugby team, and had practice every lunchtime and no free time.

Our first major breakthrough then came. A friend of mine knew that many aircraft building companies gave away free offcuts of Titanium. he found a place in Hounslow and gave me their phone number. I spoke to this company, ATC, a few times and in the end agreed that they would give us some offcuts of Titanium and Aluminum. Navneet, who lives in Hounslow, went to pick this up. We got in total 4 metres squared of 1.6mm Titanium and about 3 metres squared of 3mm Aluminium. All this metal was split up into several parts.

Tim Motz joined the team. Then we came up with the idea of a spinning robot with weapons working with the spinning force. Jimmy Kent also joined the team. Our ideas developed a lot with many meetings. We worked out technical details and the overall external design. We had made a model, many designs and computer designs. Then we sent our application off to Mentorn. We had previously planned to send off a big package to Mentorn, but in the end we just sent off the application form itself. At this time I e-mailed Mentorn a few times to sort out some details. They replied saying that it is ok, and we can build. However, we were told that we cannot commence building until we receive a copy of the rules, which were to be sent out in January. We are now looking at components, and have decided many of the components which we are going to use.

Our newest member, Tim Motz then left the team. He could not commit to the project, and did not want to take part if he was not going to be on TV.

By now we were already in December and nearing the Christmas Holidays. We had to get sorted for the holiday period so we could continue to make progress. We assigned tasks and made some important and crucial decisions. We were then set for the holiday period! Now it is the holidays, and I am working on the site more and hope to make it great!

Back to school! Arrghh! Our sponsorship money will be in soon and we can soon start to buy and build. We have done quite a lot of internal designs, and have sorted out most of our problems. Hope to be building soon.

Conrad Von Stempal left the team. Although he was an important member, musical and other commitments prevented him from taking part in the team.

We made a cardboard model of our chassis to see the dimensions and the fittings. We have almost everything worked out, just a couple of problems to sort out still.

We split our building into three stages: Drive, Spinning and Radio Control. These will be built separately, although all the radio control gear will have to be added when needed.

We have finally got the rules from Mentorn. We have worked out most of our supply list, just a couple of things that we need to sort out.

One of our main problems so far is we need a teacher to supervise the project. Both to give us help and to oversee what we do. There has been a problem in this department, as the teacher in charge of the project has recently changed. Now we may not even have a teacher at all. Another problem is we need a letter from a member of staff at the school to our sponsor before we receive any member. We can not send this letter out until we have a definite member of staff in charge. We have had some major problems on this front, perhaps delaying our project too long. This means it may tour into a tow year project, for Series 6 of Robot Wars.