Heatwave v4- Team Shock

It's been a while since I've had a build diary on here so I thought I'd go through the build of the latest version of my featherweight- Heatwave.

Heatwave has existing in some form since 2008 starting with the original HDPE version, the round gas pipe model was used for the 2013 UK Champs before reverting back to the v1 chassis. At the start of 2016 I set about rebuilding from scratch which led to v3 which has been running for the last 18 months.

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V3 has recieved a few changes during that time including a Raex flipper arm to replace the mild steel one, REC drives to replace the drills and a steel base to replace the 8mm HDPE. Over time, the mild steel chassis has started to bend and crack so it was clearly time for a new one!

The first major change was to upgrade to a Hardox chassis which should solve the bending isses. The design was also made a fraction larger to incorporate a larger ram for the flipper (60mm bore instead of 45mm). The back end of the chassis was modified to prevent it from getting stuck on its back (another issue with v3).

The chassis itself was designed to be fully welded with 5 access panels cut for maintenance. With all of this in mind I came up with this in Solidworks.

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Once the design had been worked out, I laser cut a test chassis from 3mm MDF to check the sizes and make sure that all of the parts fitted as expected. Alongside Heatwave v3 you can see the slight size increase and other design changes.

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Luckily everything fitted first time so I got in touch with our sponsors Emsea Ltd to arrange the Hardox cutting. They offered to not only cut the Hardox for the chassis but adjust the design so that it could be folded and increase the overall strength. This led to these changes (the colours represent chassis sections made from single folded pieces)

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A couple of weeks later, the finished chassis arrived and it was perfect!

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The work done by Emsea was amazing, you can barely tell the where the folds and welds are! From there, the rest of the build was very straightforward. I welded the mounts for the bungees onto the flipper arm, assembled the pneumatics and stripped down the gearboxes to clean and regrease them. All that was left was to paint and reassemble.

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Unfortunately I haven't had chance to make the new buffer/ manifold yet so it's back to the old pneumatic setup but with the larger ram fitted. That will be one of the first things to get upgraded.

Once the pneumatics were fitted the drive was installed and the wiring carried over from the previous machine. The drive was tested and seemed as good as ever- the increased ground clearance helps a lot. The pneumatics were leak tested and then everything was fixed firmly in place.

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And this is how it currently looks. Just needs the battery charging and the bottle filling and it is good to go. It will be going to Colchester next weekend so hopefully Heatwave will have some good fights!

Neat looking machine Will, I'm impressed!
A sponsor makes your life much easier it seems :p. I had to sponsor myself and buy a lathe and a mill to hopefully build something...next year maybe...
I do wonder how you manage to fit everything inside with a hardox shell and still be within the weight limits! Does not look too small, how does it measure up?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by teamshock

REC drives

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Do you have the bolt hole spacing for the front and top/bottem as i do have a set but i can't for the life of me get it right.
Tt is really annoying

Thanks guys.

It took a long time to get the weight down to a decent level in CAD before I got anything cut- theres some large cutouts in the base to help bring the weight down. The overall size is 45x45x16cm so it's not massive- just slightly larger than the previous version.

The hole spacings I used were 20x29.5mm I used 6.5mm holes to allow for some tolerance. Worked perfectly for Heatwave.