NHRL’s first Pro Tour event requires a big upgrade!

Phenomenon V3

Background

Phenomenon V2(also known as Vorion) has been running since 2023. While recent events were hard on it, this version had earned its flowers. Under Phenomenon, this version fought 34 matches and under Vorion fought 23 matches giving it a combined fight history of 57 matches. During those matches it achieved the highest personal glory for the team with 2 Golden Dumpsters and the only Platinum Dumpster at NHRL All-Stars.

That being said, the its last event showed it had reached its design evolution peak as much larger and more controlling machines had arrived such as Gored, Overlord, and Deadrise. These machines were very much the “newer generation” of tower vertical spinners whose reach and power completely outclassed the compact Phenomenon. It was time to think bigger

Concept

The first big thing to address was the fork game. A world of longer and longer forks is not the way. In robot combat, the goal is always to hit the opponent with your weapon and forks are antithetical to that. Clearly they have merit as years of Phenomenon’s life were dedicated to honing fork game but with robots of growing reach simply keeping you away until they hit you it was not going to work. The other side of this is also true: making the weapon bigger increases the gyroscopic procession and ruins drive ability. MegatRon has used this to great affect against opponents numerous times. Phenomenon was designed with control at its core and the weapon as a second step to get knockouts. Both of these would have to be solved.

The first concepts of V3 began to appear near the beginning of the year. Though at this point forks were very much still on the menu, two more changes were added: more weapon power and 4WD. The control benefits of four wheels were evident after the February NHRL event where even in a small setup was a noticeable improvement.

The weapon power increase was a direct result of the new “Attack and Harm” conditions in NHRL’s 2026 rules. These changes really emphasized weapon ability is maintained in a fight and Phenomenon’s weapon was simply not reliable by the end of its last fights. This was going to be beefed up considerably to ensure that no matter what the weapon would still spin.

After about 2 months of design paralysis, the wide range of all new parts were ordered at the end of March with the target of assembly and test in time for NHRL’s May Pro Tour event. While the drive and lifter core electronics and gearmotors were kept, the entire mechanical system around them was changing dramatically so proper integration time was key.

All types of parts ranging from steel, aluminum, plastics, and carbon fiber began streaming in around mid-April. It was just like Christmas morning

One of the drawbacks of sending the parts out for manufacturing lead time is small design tweaks may be made after they were sent out. Little modifications had to be made after the components were ordered such as beveling the 6mm T700 Carbon Fiber baseplate to account for fillets in the center rails, thinning the center back rail to allow it to key into the back of the center rails, top mounting holes for drive motors attached through the carbon fiber top, threaded holes to attach a back support to the weapon motor, and drilling a second hole for the weapon motor wires to pass through to the weapon ESC on the other side. Using a bit of cleverness and 3D-printing, references were made to other features on the parts to locate and modify accordingly (except on the baseplate and backplate).

In no time the chassis went from a few pieces to almost a full pretendo-bot.

The big 5690 Hobbywing system that now powers Phenomenon was received from the teams first sponsor Hobby Works! We’ve personally gone to Hobby Works for years for r/c car and early robot needs so it was super exciting to have them on-board! With the system added to the central frame rails the first beefy sub-assembly of Phenomenon comes into view: the cradle. Here both the lifting (now featuring two arms) and spinning assemblies work together to handle all of those other mean bots. The 8mm carbon fiber lifting arms will be an experiment in seeing if the high stiffness of carbon will make it useful for lifting/resisting other machines (especially fiery ones) all while getting back some weight for the machine.

To get the robot prepared for a test session, the front horizontal wedge setup was bent to place. With the help of my old club the Leatherbacks the wedges were bent at the university machine shop. Unfortunately improper heating can really mess up the bends; 1 minute of heat with a butane torch allowed the 40 ton iron worker to bend the 3mm AR500 wedge without cracking while 30 seconds made it crack. Both wedges are usable though the cracked one has to be welded over to increase the connection.

After some battery box sculpting from 1/16 polycarbonate, the electronics assembly quickly came together. One benefit of the JCR Zomboxes (not sponsored but could be 😉) is the cage around the motors providing a guard from the wires. The 3D printed electronics guide certainly helps, but the secondary cage likely adds the last important layer under impacts.

After assembly it was time to go to testing at the Hive! The extremely wide width (shown next to fellow Marylanders Plusle and Deadrise) was excellent to resist the gyroscope procession of the weapon. Despite the different shape, the blade was the same diameter though slightly lower moment of inertia to ensure near instantaneous spinup. It’s also backwards compatible with V2’s disks so it could be upgraded with even more power punch in the future!

The biggest ground game change is the “piano keys” made famous on Hydra. These were direct answers to the reach concern from the background section. These are largely defensive; the goal is to win or tie every interaction so the bot never gets controlled.

The first attempt at springs were inspired by Maximizer which attempted a similar idea some time ago. Since TPU is similar to rubber, it has a natural flex to it that can be utilized. The green “sprouts” were designed to be bent and hook over the tabs on the wedgelets to push them down. Unfortunately, it does not take long for the material to develop “creep” and lose its springiness. The alternative design was to print a more solid block of TPU which goes over the full length of the front rail. This proved to be too strong as even over a full day of compressing the TPU was strong enough to lift up the front of the robot through the wedgelets. This was the winning plan going forward.

An underrated yet crucial part of Phenomenon’s design is the rear horns. Earlier the green horns (prototyped in PLA+) were designed to match the previous version aesthetically but weren’t functional. These horns are designed to assist the robot in staying on its wheels as long as possible, namely when tilted up such as after going to weapon with another machine. After prototyping the horns again in another shape, the final versions were cut with other parts in 3/8″ UHMW. Another set of holes were added to allow a TPU chain guard to be bolted to them.

At this point it was time to prepare some anti-hammersaw/anti-big wheel armor as the Pro Tour events was only a week away.

And suddenly there were two of them! The second one flew together very quickly. Though not fully tested at the Hive like the original, preliminary bench tests were promising. From there the last beauty features were added like the name, sponsor plate, and painting the wedgelets (this also helps avoid corrosion). V3 is ready to go!

Event

After arriving at the event, Phenomenon flew through safety and did some media shots. Definitely a very smooth start to the day!

Gargantuan

The first fight against Gargatuan is the worst possible draw for Phenomenon especially V3. With the much larger size and weaker chassis with more fine components up top, it was not going to be a good time. Sadly this was exactly the case with the robot taking a hard beating everywhere. Miraculously, most of the features on the machine were still functional and the electronics had no issues (despite the danger they were allowed to be in). The weapon hub being strick by Garg did seize the bearings and lock it to the weapon shaft but even that didn’t stop it but more on that later. It was a valiant effort, but the anti-big wheel configuration will require more cooking. For now, it was important data so it will be helpful for the future. As Huge’s own Jonathan Schultz described about Huge fighting the robots that could counter it early “it makes a really resilient machine that has been mutated to handle its own counters and come out as nearly unstoppable against what it’s supposed to fight.” Let’s hope the same goes for V3!

MegatRon

MegatRon. V3 was heavily guided by decisions to counter MegatRon. The ground game was designed to tie its forks, the lifter designed to tilt the chassis up, and the drive made 4WD to maintain strong driving characteristics the whole match. Despite the same armor, this was a new 2nd chassis set aside explicitly to fight it. The hopes were high.

Yet once again, the fight was unsuccessful for Phenomenon. While the initial interaction was difficult, the robot was starting to get a rhythm of pops on it, the drive mysteriously cut out. It was impressive to see the robot be able to bend the 1/4″ 6061 lifter rails by speed alone and ultimately it wasn’t too much of detriment but the drive randomly cutting out was disappointing. Later evaluation of the ESCs show they were only getting to about half speed and warm so something far deeper in the system has broken and will need a heavier teardown to know for certain. It’s frustrating but hopefully it will come back stronger in later events! Also really glad the battery didn’t blow up! Seems the shot managed to severe electrical connections in the battery and not expose the lithium to air so it didn’t react. A very glad failure mode!

Afterwards Sam of Garg received the top plate now that it couldn’t be uses again. Congrats again to him!

Overlord

Overlord was Phenomenon’s last match and only “sane” match of the early group stage. Unlike the prior two, Overlord did not require special modifications or changes to the base configuration. This was to be the fight to finally show V3’s stuff.

And show its stuff it did! Overlord was already a bit handicapped by accumulated damage from MegatRon and Gargantuan (all robots are in a 4-man round robin) with a half-working weapon motor but it was still spinning and therefore still dangerous. Overlord posed an existential threat to V2 as its giant reach and deep body meant it would likely have hit the chassis on V2 before the weapon could do anything. For V3 and its deeper reach and long lifting forks it was the opposite with most interactions being a tie or a win for V3. This allowed Phenomenon to effectively bully Overlord and get a decisive victory. The wheel did come off as it was not well retained with the simple 1/2″ hex hub so future retention will be important in the future. Otherwise, the wear of the aluminum lifting mounts was evident as the steel hex began eating at the bore. This can be replaced with a simple steel substitute.

Sadly Phenomenon did not make it into the Primetime bracket. Due to only 3 groups of 4 there were two wildcard positions. Since Synthesis 30 achieved a win 13 seconds faster than Phenomenon it received the last wild card spot. Even so, V3 got some good learning and was more than ready for another run in June!

Post-Event Teardown

The most obvious damage is the accumulated damage from Gargatuan. The odd hitting angle of the high weapon did lots of damage but fortunately all of the built-in air gap allowed all essential components to keep working. The front plate is made from a billet of 6061 so it was chewed into very well. Even so, it remained largely functional and was even used in the fight against Overlord with no issues. It will be replaced but may also linger as a worst case scenario spare. The center rail was also struck but forces were largely contained to outside of the main pulley mount.

This was one of the most incredible subtle features of the bigger motor: torque to work through failure. Though Gargatuan effectively locked the weapon stack, the motor was so torquey it made the whole assembly spin in the frame rail! This was also what ran against Overlord so even there it was still plenty useful. It was only after testing after the event that the extent of the seizing was truly known. This would have been impossible for V2 to have worked through so it was clearly a change well worth it.

Despite the harsh record, V3 shows great potential. In the fight against Overlord it showed flashes of brilliance (such as freeing itself from the kickplate) and decisive control which can be fair to apply against most normal opponents. With that, its on to June NHRL!