Bristol Bot Builders – Big Bot Bash August 2025

16th August 2025

One year on from it’s debut Uplift returned to Bristol for another fantastic Bristol Bot Builders event, sporting some new 3D printed parts to hopefully fix some of the issues we’d encountered at North Down Havoc back in April.

Fight 1: Uplift vs Fubar vs Polaris

Our first fight was against two very well built and effective flippers. I had a feeling this one wasn’t going to go our way – Uplift is pretty easy to get under and flippers are always tricky opponents to deal with.

The fight started with some brief running away as I saw both of them turn towards me and unfortunately Uplift ended up right by the low pit button wall by the time they caught up with it. Polaris then slid its flipper straight underneath and threw us spectacularly high, clean over the wall and into the ball pit.

Our total fight time was around 4 seconds so definitely not the strongest start to the day – but at least it was an entertaining way to go out!

Uplift landed face first in the ball bit and the impact snapped the new 3D printed covers off the tips of both the forks. Not a big deal though – I’d anticipated breaking a few and had bought plenty of spares. Five minutes later we had a new set bolted on and were ready to go for fight two.

Fight 2: Uplift vs Mind The Gap

Next up was a new robot called Mind The Gap. It was actually similar in many ways to Uplift, despite having quite a different design. Both robots were four wheel drive with electric motor powered lifters and both were even using Ranglebox drive systems – although Mind The Gap’s was considerably more modern than ours (2016 brushed vs 2025 brushless!).

They warned me beforehand that their lifter was quite likely to break during the fight – it had so much power it was destroying the gearing that drives it. This gave me a bit of hope that if I could turn them over enough times eventually they might not be able to get back on their wheels again.

The fight started with them getting underneath our side and flipping us straight over – I was impressed at how fast their lifter was, it was really more of a flipper than a lifter.

Uplift self-righted successfully and I went back onto the attack, being more careful to keep the front of Uplift facing them so it would be more difficult to flip over. We seemed to have the ground game advantage and Uplift’s forks and lifter got underneath Mind The Gap more often than they were getting underneath us.

We had some good back and forth for a bit, with several attempts from both sides to lift the other one over. We managed to slam them quite hard into the wall a couple of times and eventually their lifter seemed to stop working.

I knew all I needed to do now was turn them over, but that was easier said than done. The shape of the top of their robot meant whenever I managed to partially lift them up against the walls they just rolled back down onto their wheels.

After one slam into the wall their lifting arm got stuck in the upright position and after a bit more back and forth I managed to get a good lift on them. They went right over although still managed a little spin as one side of their drive touched the floor, but eventually settled upside down and were counted out.

This was probably my favourite fight of the day as both robots were very evenly matched, it could have gone either way and we had to work hard for the win.

It was also nice to see that some of the improvements I’d made to the lifting arm end stop and forks after the issues at the previous event seemed to be making a difference. We did lose another of the 3D printed fork covers, but again five minutes later we had a spare fitted and were ready for the next round.

Fight 3: Uplift vs Backofforillsmackee

I was a bit concerned going into this one as we were busy repairing Uplift during Smackee’s first fight so I hadn’t seen how it had performed, but its overhead roller seemed heavy and looked like it had the potential to hit very hard!

Fortunately for us they’d been having issues with it all day and had actually replaced the roller with a much lighter piece of wood for this fight. They also seemed to have some traction problems. As we drove to our starting positions I could see their wheels struggling for grip, however I still wasn’t quite sure how to tackle such a large robot.

The fight started and Uplift headed straight for Smackee, they were stuck on the pit so I went to try and push or lift them off. After pushing them around and attempting to lift them a couple of times, we ended up in one of the far corners of the arena.

I managed to lift them onto their side and was going to try and push them around a bit more, but that corner of the arena must have been very dusty as Uplift was really struggling for traction over there. Smackee was also obscuring the view and I couldn’t really see what Uplift was doing, so in the end I decided to just back off and leave them to be counted out.

The Smackee team very kindly gave us the piece of wood that they’d substituted for the roller to keep as a battle trophy after the match.

Fight 4: Uplift & Petrichor vs Beep Beep Mareep & Easy Over

We teamed up with another great electric lifter named Petrichor for the 2 vs 2 fights. Our first opponents were Beep Beep Mareep and everybody’s favourite frying pan of death Easy Over.

Easy Over had taken out one of our drive motors last year so I was a bit wary of how hard it could hit. Fortunately for us it got into a fight with the arena wall fairly early on this time and the frying pan came off!

The first half was mostly Uplift and Petrichor teaming up against Mareep while Easy Over charged around the arena and smacked the floor. It then bounced off it’s own teammate and landed the ball pit, sending the plastic balls flying across the arena.

Easy Over did manage to get back out again but ended up in the pit quite soon after. The rest of the fight was therefore Uplift and Petrichor teaming up against the poor sheep again. At the end we still had two active robots versus their one, so we were given the win.

Fight 5: Uplift & Petrichor vs Acolyte 2 & Sandy Cheeks

Our final fight of the day was against the electric flipper Acolyte 2 and the spinning sanding drum of Sandy Cheeks. Acolyte had some drive issues before the fight and actually did a remarkable job of surviving the whole thing while causing quite a bit of trouble for us and Petrichor with only one side of it’s drive working.

At the start Petrichor headed for Sandy Cheeks so we went for Acolyte. They had a couple of attempts at flipping us before succeeding to turn us over. Sandy Cheeks came in and prevented us from self-righting for a moment or two but we were soon back on our wheels.

We had another go at turning Acolyte over without much success and then found ourselves going head to head with Sandy Cheeks, who were upside down at this point. We managed to hit them hard enough that they bounced on top of Uplift and we nearly got them down the pit before they escaped.

Sand Cheeks then charged at us from across the arena and bounced off the front of Uplift to land back up the right way. From then on it was mostly a pushing match between the two of us, while Petrichor and Acolyte fought their own battle.

Towards the end of the fight Acolyte did almost get Petrichor in the pit, so I drove across to try and help Petrichor out before going back to Sandy Cheeks.

All four robots were still running at the end of the very fun fight, so the audience got to decide the victors and gave us the win!

Summary

Overall I was very pleased with how Uplift performed and also that we managed to turn the day around after our quick exit in the first fight. BBB events aren’t about winning, but it was still nice to see the improvements I’d made to Uplift had made a positive difference.

The robot also managed to come home fully functional and in mostly one piece!

There some things I’d like to try and fix or improve for next time though, namely:

• we need more traction, Uplift is still sliding around and spinning it’s wheels a little too often and against opponents who also have powerful drives it’s definitely hurting its performance.
• the 3D printed covers I made at the last minute to try and protect the ends of the forks did work… when they didn’t break off, which wasn’t often. So the theory is good but the execution needs some refinement.
• opponents slide back down the lifting arm too easily. The front prongs on the lifter are at too steep of an angle – if I flatten the geometry there then other robots should stay on the lifter better, giving us more opportunities to lift and hopefully better lifts also.

The next event isn’t until April 2026, so stay tuned to the build diary to see how I get on before then!