Chip

"What'll happen when the chips are down?"

- Jonathan Pearce

Chip was a Welsh competitor from Series 7 of Robot Wars. It was an invertible, black box shaped robot, made from polycarbonate, which was broader at the back than it was at the front, where the weapon, a 1500RPM horizontal spinning disc with two cutting blades, was situated but was not too reliable. A previous design for Chip was a more conventional-shaped blue invertible box made of titanium and macrone, where the disc (that the team claimed to be 10 times stronger than Hypno-Disc's) was interchangable with two ramming spikes. An accurate weakness, although the robot was invertible, was that Chip did not like to be flipped over.

Chip had a long stream of bad luck in Robot Wars. Although it only competed properly in Series 7, the team had attempted to qualify for every series since the Third Wars, failing each and every time. Team Xenomania failed to qualify for Series 3 and 4 with Xenomorph (not related to the Series 7 participant), the first version had a axe and the second version had a axe and lifter. Chip also failed to qualify for Series 5 and 6. Finally, after making a brief appearance in the New Blood competition of Extreme Series 2, Chip finally managed to enter the arena for the Seventh Wars. The glory of finally being able to compete was shattered quickly after Spawn Again threw it out of the arena in a matter of seconds, something which the team had expressed a fear of in the pits beforehand.

Chip also competed in Techno Games, in the sumo and tug of war competition (chip was renamed Bruiser in the 2003 Techno Games).

Extreme 2
After failing to qualify for 4 consecutive main competitions, Team Xenomania finally featured on the televised show as Chip was entered into the New Blood Championship of the second series of Extreme. In the first round of its heat, Chip was placed up against the Series 6 entrants Edge Hog and the 2mph walkerbot RT81. In the battle, Chip hit Edge Hog with its disc in the early stages of the fight, failing to make much of an impression, so Chip activated the pit release button. RT81 was pushed into the action by Mr. Psycho, where Chip and Edge Hog attacked it, causing the walkerbot to catch fire and break down to see Chip and Edge Hog through to the second round. Chip had technical problems with its disc, so it had to be removed for the second round and replaced with a static spike, making it look similar to the original Tornado. It would not emulate that machine's win over Thor, though. A single hammer blow from the future New Blood grand finalist stopped Chip dead, before it was fried on the flame pit and eliminated from the New Blood Championship. "The only thing that will be left of that are little wood chips, I would imagine"

- Jonathan Pearce

Series 7
After four series of failing to qualify for the main competition, Team Xenomania utterly wasted its only Robot Wars main competition opportunity. Chip participated in Heat N of the main competition, and was placed up against the number 6 seeds Spawn Again, NEATer Machine and Revenge of Trouble & Strife in the first round of the heat. In the battle, Chip spent its few seconds in the Seventh Wars retreating away from the Dutch entrant NEATer Machine, towards the arena side wall, failing to utilise its spinning disc in getting it up to speed. Unfortunately, as Chip moved into the arena centre, the seeded Spawn Again machine closed in and tossed it high into the air and straight out of the arena, eliminating it from the competition.

Results

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Wins/Losses

 * Wins: 1
 * Losses: 2

Series Record

 * Series 1-2: Did not enter
 * Series 3-4: Failed to qualify with Xenomorph (Not the Series 7 robot)
 * Series 5-6: Failed to qualify
 * Series 7: Heat, Round 1