Carbide

The horizontal bar spinner Carbide was the dominant weapon of the Robot Wars revival (Series 8 to 10, 2016 to 2017). Captain Dave Moulds drove it and Sam Smith co-built it. The electric robot is invertible, continuing to drive and fight after being flipped.

Verified sources give no weight or dimensions; the figures circulating in fan wikis (an 85 cm, 25 kg bar at 2,300 rpm, 20 hp) come from pages that could not be checked and are deliberately omitted. The revival’s weight class corresponds to 110 kg (FRA heavyweight), while the Wikipedia article on Robot Wars mentions only 100 kg.

Results: UK champion of Series 9 (2017), runner-up in Series 8 (2016, final lost to the flipper Apollo) and runner-up in Series 10 (December 2017, final lost to Eruption on a judges’ decision). Since the show ended in 2018 the robot has not competed; status retired.

The photograph from the 2017 filming is by LukeSurl under CC BY-SA 4.0. Carbide is widely seen as Britain’s answer to the American Tombstone.