[Eldarion]

Originally Posted by Katie Reynolds

That other robot was 857's (see sig). Here's what happened:

The battery was (stupidly) only secured inside the robot by three pieces of aluminum extrusion, leaving on side open. During our match, the battery fell out and instead of disconnecting, one of the wires from the battery pulled out of the connector and touched the metal frame. Sometime along the course of the build, a tiny piece of coating was stripped from the ground wire coming from the Fisher Price motor. That touched the frame as well. So now, all the current from the battery was going right to the frame, into the FP motor, completely skipping the whole breaker part (which is why the robot continued to smoke, and then catch fire long after the E-stop button was hit). The fuse in the speed controller blew, but that didn't matter because the battery kept pumping power to the FP motor. The speed controller eventually caught fire, giving off red smoke and prompting Copioli to shout something like, "Holy cow, that's the most magic smoke I've ever seen from a single robot!" ... It was a mess.

At the Wisconsin Regional, check out our super secure battery - now supported on all four side, sand velcroed two different ways, so it can never come off the robot again without some difficulty!

Wow! In addition to the most magic smoke, that's the most coincidental catastrophic failure I've ever heard of!