10th March 2003

Well, its been a while. And suprisingly little has happened!! Series 6 final aired on BBC 2. No plans for Series 7 yet. The disk is pretty much done, just needs the teeth putting on. The bearing casings need to be cast in aluminium and then the disk can be mounted. That will be the main objective acheived. As long as it works... We have ordered some new aluminium wheels which will set us back £80!! Bit steep, but hopefully they'll be worth it. Those new wheels will have proper tread, so performance should be better. Time will tell... There is a long way to go yet, but we're up for it. We would get some more pics, but we don't have that much to show, so you'll have to wait a little bit. I'll keep you updated...

30th December 2002

Production has slowed a bit upto christmas due to extra school work ready for January exams. The disk is getting there and should be done soon. Gos has been tidying up the main frame with an angle grinder. He has taken 3kg out by cutting out metal that is no longer used and making welds neater. Quite impressive. Otherwise, it hasn't been bad. Lets hope the new year brings good ideas and luck!!

24th November 2002

Stripped Biothan down again. Had problems with the motors spewing grease and the magnets rotating around the motor, so we had a matinence session on them. made a nasty discovery in one of them. Part of the electromagnetic brake had cut through both the brake leads and had started on the negative lead to the motor. So, we just took the whole brake out leaving the end of the shaft of the motor. Should have some pics when i get round to taking some. We tightened up the gear boxes, and they are now sorted. tightened up some bolts inside the motors and they are good as new now. Nelsons been having a go at machineing the disk. Its a hard job, as the tool need sharpening so often. Shoudl be getting hold of some tungsten tools like the ones we used of the cast iron wheels. Looking good. School work has really picked up and I have very little time to do stuff i want to do. A bit of a shame. Launched the Another Dimension website. See what you think.

9th November 2002

Well, Series 6 has started on BBC 2 now, and looking good. Had Biothan running at the school open evening, so if you came down, chances are you will have seen it running. We had to build Biothan back into the empty frame and managed to do it 1hr 15mins, which we were quite impressed with. Good practice. Got some pics and more video of us playing football in our make shift arena. Good stuff. New site getting there. i think the reason it is taking so long, is that i had orginally planned just to use HTML, but now, JavaScript and ASP have been included, and it takes much longer to get them working properly. Still, it keeps getting better. Shoudl have theose new pics up soon once i have them and have edited them.

30th October 2002

Development of new site is coming along slowly. Got a few ASP components running well on it, so should be here soon. Had our webspace hacked yesterday. Had the index page tagged. This site was unaffected, which was pretty lucky. Fixed that now. Stripped Biothan down, so, we are left with an empty frame. Just need to tidy up the mess we made when getting the spike crankshaft out and then we are ready for the disk. Once that's in, we should be up and running again in no time. At least this time we have enough time to do stuff properly, like the aerial, and mounting weapons and the shell fitting perfectly. Craig has decided we need a new paintjob, so he can sort that out and do a smart job. Votes still coming in nicely. Thanks everyone. Might get some pics of where we are, I don't know yet. We'll see. Otherwise, we'll see how it goes. Got a forum running also. If you want to check it out, click here. Probably a bit unnecessary with the Robot Wars one, but there is other topics on there. See what you think.

8th October 2002

Getting a nice flow of votes now. Thanks everyone. Although I don't feel I am doing much work, I am finding I have very little free time, yet, I have 14hrs free at school each fortnight. I spose I am doing loads of extra things. Looks like I shall have to blame it on the release of Unreal Tournament 2K3.

Fixed the .com (at last), so that will now work. I shall probably leave another week (or 2) for voting and then work on the outcome in half term. I'll see what I can do. And, rather than con everyone by just copying the same content into a new template, I shall rewrite most stuff, so you will get a good deal.

After a lot of planning, we have decided to fit a disk to Biothan. Should be quite effective with the weight we will have once we get our new ally wheels. Also, we need to see our big Yuasa 12v 24AH batts. So, if you want some real big batteries, the lot can be yours for £240 o.n.o. That's for 6!! Should get your attention. Been playing about with the motors we are planning to use for the disk. Very nice Fracmos. We'll see what happens. Look out for a few changes around here.

1st October 2002

That's the new Pics up. I thought you would like big ones, so I have put 800 x 600 ones up (shrunk from 1600 x 1200) and compressed them loads. See what you think. Nice to see people voting. Keep up the good work. The video shall be up as soon as I have compressed it. Should be tomorrow hopefully. We'll see. Should also be able to get the newspaper articles scanned in and uploaded. We'll see

28th September 2002

Just got back from Southfields. Great event. We shall be going next year. Got video of Biothan in the Assault Course and Tug of War. We were first up for assault course, and were in such a rush that we forgot to put duck tape on the battery contacts. We were flipped up by Roobarb and the cables came off. We scored 20. Well, did a fair job of defending. We have Video of both parts. We then were up against Can Opener for the Tug of War. We had no chance. The rubber on the wheels is very poor and although the wheels turned at full speed, the tyres just skidded. Made a nice mess of the floor and got some good pics. All will be uploaded as soon as I get them back from Craig. Overall, a good day.

27th September 2002

So, not many people have voted. Either you are lazy, or you don't care. Well, the only votes are from me testing it and seeing if I could vote more than once, so otherwise, we have had no feedback. Ill give it a week as we should get a load of hits from people at Southfields so, if after that, there is no votes, I'll choose and all of you will have to live with it.

So, Southfields tomorrow. Should be good. See you all there.

24th September 2002

Added the vote for the future of the site. Hopefully should get enough feedback to do something (Hint Hint). Fixed a dodgy link on the video. Realixed there are no audition pics up. On my hard disk there is it all set up ready to upload, so I'm sorry to everyone who wanted to see them. They are (or will be) up now. Sorry. Nothing major planned for the site. Vote for what you want and we'l see what happens. We'll get more pics/video at Southfields. That'll be up ASAP. Until then, see you.

21st September 2002

All ready for Southfields next weekend. Should be a good day and we shall get some new pictures and video (this is where the new webspace comes into play). I have realised I forgot to change the navigation bar so it kept going back to the freeserve webspace with the message "Check team-doorstop.co.uk for latest news" and you couldn't, so I'm sorry about that and I have now fixed it. School work has kept us busy hence lack of update. Rather than me doing all the thinking and getting it wrong, I'll ask you:

What do you want on this site?

Do you want the new site, an updated version of this site or leave it as it is?

Is there something you don't like on this site?

So, if you email the answers to the questions, I'll do what you want me to do, as long as it isn't stupid or a waste of my (incredibly) precious time. If you prefer not to email, or would like to chat to me about it, I'm on MSN (musicboffin@yahoo.co.uk) quite a bit, so you could then. This will help me keep you all happy and improve the site. Thanks,

10th September 2002

Well, the domain has been redirected to the new space (or will do when I upload this!!). I have added links to the new video files as we have more space to host them. I have found a new video that is only in WMV format (both 56k and 128k+). The Real Media will be coming very soon!! Got to prepare for Southfields event soon. Little to be done, but there is a few things. We should get some good video and pictures from Southfields for all you who can't make it, to lazy to go or can't go because you live nowhere near us!!

Production on the new site has not been getting very far lately due to us working on other projects. To see what we have been up to, have a look at Another Dimension and Site Selector. They main pages are not up yet, but we are very close to going live soon. Once they are up, Its all time spent on this site. YEAH!!!

7th September 2002

We have had a big buying session of web domains and some webspace. We shall be moving the site. We shall leave a copy of the site of freeserve but not update it. The .co.uk will now lead to the new web space. I am planning to run 2 copies of the videos now we have more space. I shall put very small videos suitable for streaming over 56k (if you can call it streaming!!) and a set for you lucky people with 512kbs or higher. These shall be WMV format, so as long as you have media player you will be able to view them.

We shall be attending the Southfield School event on 28th September. For more info, click here. If you want to come down and see us, you can tell us what you think about our robots, our performance and ask any questions. There is a small fee ot get in, but this is for charity. We look forwrad to seeing you!!

2nd September 2002

Back to school tomorrow. Apart from having loads of work to do, we shall be able to start work on Biothan again. We shall probably be looking at ways of improving the weapon, or designing a new weapon. I have had an idea to do a "How Biothan works" section on the new site, which would be pretty original. It means, loads of new pictures and an explanation of what does what. Only problem is, that it all depends on hiow much spare time i have. We shall see. Not long now until the Southfields event which should be very interesting. More info nearer the time.

30th August 2002

Very little has been done on the new site unfortunately. Hopefully, we shall be able to get it up soon as i am fed up of this site not working on high resolutions. By the looks of it, Compila are having trouble, which means our domain is constantly working and then packing up. Their site is also down, which is not hopeful at all. If they do call it a day, we shall have to buy anotehr domain. Nevermind. Time to start planning how to modify Biothan...

17th August 2002

The new site is looking good. Now Craig is back from Brazil, we shall be able to get the new site up pretty soon. I bought www.team-doorstop.co.uk so you can now use that to access the site and for email. There won't be any updates on the building of Biothan until September as we are taking a break from building. Still, keep coming back as we may surprise you. Who knows? In the mean time, check out Series 5 on BBC 2 at the usual time. We should have some news on the filming taking place in October as soon as I find out.

31st July 2002

Last update I think before I go on holiday. The new site is coming along nicely. I have the first page built (4th attempt), but I shall not continue until Craig is back and has done the graphics. Until then, I shall work on another project.

24th July 2002

Well, I have my PC up and running again after a virus. We considered bringing Biothan home to work on over summer, but decided we have spent so much time and money over the past couple of months, that we deserve a break. We have had holidays for about the past 6 wks now and I'm getting fed up now. Just another 5 to go then!! I am thinking about re-designing this site as it does not represent the best of our capabilities. If anyone has cheap, sensible ideas for a new weapon, we would love to hear from you.

10th July 2002

Added more making pictures. Added the video so that it works (sort of). See what you think. Launched the new LTeb site.

8th July 2002

Added new pictures from audition and video from audition. Very good. Still thinking about what to do to Biothan. If Extreme is going to be in October, we may consider entering. We havn't decided yet.

6th July 2002

Still feeling chuffed about how we performed. The only damage we sustained was scratches, as few half axe holes and bent spike shafts. Check out the Series 6 Audition Report for the full info. We are planning where to go from now on. We shall almost definately dump the spikes, as although they were pretty much unique, they didn't do the job. We shall start work fixing the damage we recieved on monday and cut out the crankshaft that the spikes run off. We shall try and replace as much steel/iron with aluminium in order to bring the weight down a bit (we weighed in at 100.1 kg after we worked it out at 95kgs!!). The pics will be up once they have been edited as they are 730kb each at the minute and they are 1600 x 1200 pixels!!

5th July 2002

Been, battled and survived!!!! Very good. No pics or video yet (yes, VIDEO!!). Craig hasn't emailed them to me yet. We filmed our audition battle (whether we should have is another matter!!) and had one of testing at 4:00 the previous afternoon. I shall upload tham as soon as they have been edited and converted to mpeg (each one is a 9mb avi and they are each 1min long!!). We now own team-doorstop.com but we can't set it up, so it won't work yet.

4th July 2002

The night before the audition. All done. Had it almost finished on sunday, but then Nelson bust the pins while testing it. We then had to go on 6th form induction from monday to wednesday which left us with today. We got all the small jobs done and put in the new pins. Took it down school (we were down Nelson's workshop) to test. We bust the pins again, so we just stuck some bolts in. Sorted. We took her for a spin and it goes off to the left , but it won't be perfect. We couldn't test it for long, as it was marking the floor quite a bit. Im feeling confident that we can put up a good fight. Well, let tomorrow roll on!!!

22nd June 2002

"Load up on pics, bring your friends" Sorry, opening lyrics from a well known song. Yep, that's right, we have more pics, and lots of 'em. We took 100 and I have put up 56 of them. Took a while to sort out the HTML document and then to upload on my 56K modem!! Well, we are getting there. Should be done by the end of next week. We have spent quite a bit of stuff this week. £30 on paint, £15 on crystals and £13 on welding wire. If we get through, we'll get it all back. We dumped the idea of vertical roll bars. We did a test where we all jump on each horizontal roll bar and see what happened... ..not much. They didn't even move, so we are leaving it how it is. The weapon should have its motor and belt set up on Monday so we can see how it goes. It is grinding a bit inside the crankshaft so we make have to fill it with oil and bodge (sorry, attach) a cork or something in the hole to stop it leaking everywhere. It is still working out pretty stressful and I'm the type of person who can do all my GCSE exams without caring, yet when it comes to something like this, it seems to bother me. We'll see what happens. After all, the youngest team to enter RW (everyone in the team is 16 years old) we can't expect to win it. But we can hope. Stick with us for the latest news later in the week.

Craig's Arm: Craig has broken his wrist while playing football at the Sainsburys tournament (He works for Sainsburys, by the way). He spent all day on Thursday last week building Biothan and then went to Casualty that night and Friday morning. It Hasn't stopped him working and it will be off next week.

16th June 2002

Spend all day Thursday and Friday hard at work. Managed to get all of the horizontal roll bars on and tested. They work very well. They are also very strong considering they are welded at 90° from the main frame and I could jump up and down on them. Got motor plates fitted to the motors. We weighed what we have so far. The frame is 17kgs and the aluminum in 20kg, which leaves us with 63kg to play with. Looks like we shall be underweight for the auditions. Better than overweight. We have been looking at the Team Delta interfaces to run out weapon motor off. The relays are rated at 24amps, so we shall have to risk it considering we only have 3 weeks left. Well, less than that now. 4th July is the target to be ready for the 5th. We have the last of our exams until Thurdays and Craig is hopeing to get the paintjob done on the wednesday. He's the best guy to do it. That reminds me, I'd better get the domain name sorted so that the address is correct on the shell. Lets hope all goes well now!! New pics comming very, very soon !!

13th June 2002

We receive a letter saying we have been selected for Series 6 auditions this morning. Very comforting, seeing as we had prepared ourselves for rejection. Spent all day working on the robot. Managed to pick a load of sheets of 3mm Aluminium checkerplate. Brand new and very very nice. Also some 5mm steel for motor plates. All cut to size. Top notch. Also, we cut all the bars out for the roll cage and started to mill out the honeycomb. Hopefully tomorrow we can get some more pics and get very near to finishing. We are a lot more organized than last year. That was hell... Still we ave learnt so much more. Lets hope it all works out. 4 way battle, eh? Its gonna be tough...

27th May 2002

Now that we are on exam leave I have a bit more time to work on this site and we have more time to work on the robot. Should have it done for the end of June no problem, unless a problem occurs. Still don't know how we are going to get to wherever we need to (if we get in). In case you already know, Series 5 started last Friday and I think Shredder (Our opponent in the auditions) are in heat 3. Check out here for more info. We have put our name down for the southfied event in September as long as we are still in working order. Well, got an English Lit exam this afternoon. Better get working.

22nd May 2002

Where does time go? Been too busy working on our new web design site which has gone wrong, so I'm back here. Added some old pics I found to the making section on the Doorstop site. Added a price list so people can see how much everything cost. Decided to try and work as hard as possible to get it running for the 31st June. A bit of Déja Vu I think. Oh well, hopefully, we shall have moved to some decent webspace and have a proper domain. We'll let you know.

27th April 2002

Wow, been a long time since the last update. Been too busy revising for GCSEs to update. The new rules for series 6 are now up, but I cant find all the broken links, so if anyone could report any they find it would help me very much. Someone has sticky fingers and some of our gear has gone missing. This is a shame which means I have to take all non essential parts home. We got the old wheelchair out and managed to get the motor going. We shall machine down the gears so we can use them as pullies for the crankshaft. Runs very well.

19th March 2002

I have added the new pages and modified the the pics page as for some people it did not look quite right. Check out the webdesign page.

16th March 2002

After all the time we spend making the styrofome wheels and casting them (and machined them!!) we are going to buy some. Well, we got some spares now! I went down to Kettering Library to see Mike Franklin. Shame the event was not advertised well!!! Seing as the BBC have cocked showing Series 5, Technogames is being shown!!! Check out Scuttle and Anarchy (Mike Franklins Robots). Its gonna be big this year!!!! Oh yeah, also check out the new game!!!

5th March 2002

Well, we have made our aluminium wheels which we are quite pleased about. You can see the pictures here. Production is going reasonably well. We still have no supplier of some aluminum sheet for a shell, so if anyone can help us in anyway with that could they please contact us (c'mon... we're very nice!!). Please give us some feedback on the new site(s).