Most spontaneous competition ever. Originally I built Recoil to compete in Franklin but the amount of 3 lb robots in existence right now is absurd and registration filled up before I even realized it was open. I figured I would just fight it at Mass D about a month later and it just sat on my shelf ~90% done.

10pm - night before Franklin. Fred messaged me saying he's leaving in 3 hours and managed to snag a last minute registration opening for me. I got over to MITERS as fast possible to see how fast I could get Recoil up and running. 30 minutes of terrible titanium bending and Recoil was ready to go! Beauty shot, complete with brass flakes and heat patterns.

We hopped in the car and drove through the night to get to Philly by the morning. Recoil easily passed safety (weighed something like 2 lbs 13 oz) and was ready for it's first fight! It was against the many wheeled wedge know an Mr. Killjoy. Great Success!

As most builders would say "It did the thing". The main goal of all my vertical spinners has been to hit chunks of robot into the air, rather than simply machining them. Somehow, my last minute bent and ground wedge (THANKS ALEX AND FRED) managed to get under the other wedge and the blade, spinning at about 10000 rpm ripped off the front half of the robot and slam it into the ceiling. After that excitement, of course I was up against Fred next. Fred pretty much taught me everything I know about combat robots and so it was going to be a very interesting fight.

We exchanged 2 good hits before things really went wrong. Fred managed to hit the washer/bolt that retained my weapon shaft and it allowed the blade to deflect enough to hit my own weapon pulley, exploding it. The force of our blade on blade impacts also managed to knock Fred's belt right off. WEDGE TIME

Recoil somehow got flipped over and because of the nonexistant retaining bolt, the blade slide right out from my robot. We wedged around for a bit and in the end, the judges decided in Fred's favor. It worked out because I didn't have any spare pulleys.I toyed with the idea of being a wedge and taping my blade over my wheels to have more pushing power but opted against going to the dark wedge side.

Overall, Franklin was a ton of fun and for the first time my robot worked as spectacularly as I had imagined.I didn't take too many pictures (probably due to a lack of sleep) but I'll put some below.

Not Overhaul before matches

Classic Overhaul  with broken clamping motor

Megatron missing a "small" important bit in the front (his wedge got ripped off)Ceiling damage from the force of the wedge slamming into the ceiling