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The favoured day of the week (Sunday) for Robot building went reasonably well
-you never seem to get all you want to do done but progress was made never the less.
Adam and I were joined by Adams friend Niall and we seemed to work well together
with each having a knowledge in certain areas.
We mainly worked on the jaws system again, including the winch,chains,and sprocket
system.
First we removed the winch as the webbing was far too long for our purposes so we
cut it down to a reasonable length, secondly we cut out a hole in the robot frame to
insert an encapulated nut under where the winch sits and bolted it back in place.
After shortening the jaws pulling chains and linking them together
with a split link we turned our attention to the double sprocket that was held onto
the snakemaster stablising bar by mole grips.
Niall suggested that bolts were the prefered method for holding it it place so we
set about drilling holes in the snakemaster metal strip-this turned out to be
pretty tough going but after sharpening the drill bits between drilling the
breakthrough was made and the sprocket bracket is now bolted in place.
During the week I had fitted a sprocket to a matching drive motor we had
bought and fitted this motor and chain into position.
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Hi all, I just wanted to introduce myself as the newest member of the team. I'm mostly experienced in the electrical side of things so I'll be taking that on as a main responsibility.
We made good progress this week on getting the weapon functioning better. We cut the teeth for the jaws, and have been working on the spring return system for them. Our new springs are from a chest expander, Champion brand and everything!
Attachment 7257
Here's a close up of the teeth we cut from a template, they seem to be very sturdy and we are confident they'll take a good bit of abuse without breaking.
Attachment 7256
In other news, with last week's progress made to the chain drive for the weapon, the current weight is now at 82kg. Took a fair bit of effort to get it up on the scales!
Attachment 7258
And lastly, with a little help from one of our new springs, we got the weapon to close and return under it's own power! Still a few bits to smooth out to get reliable operation but it's great progress.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwHir4Sq1gI
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This is awesome. Like next level awesome.
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The sound of all the chains and motors going simultaneously will hopefully rival the famed death hum in the intimidating factor! Certainly makes a racket!
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Apologies for the late update!
Since last week, improvements have been made to the weapon chain system, each side's chain now has a guide to allow them to move much more freely and reduce stress on the chains and winch system.
Attachment 7288
Good progress was made on the drive this week, with both sides' axles being removed in order to have flats ground into them to prevent the wheels from slipping on their axles. This proved very effective, once tightened we couldn't get them to budge.
Attachment 7287
We also made adjustments to the general fit of the wheels, with some generous grinding and re-positioning in order to reduce any contact between the wheels and chassis. This still needs a little fine tuning, which will include photos in next week's update, but for now things were improved to the point where we were able to run both drive motors, currently on half voltage for demonstration purposes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hp5s7aDX0vw
Thanks for reading this update, and stay tuned for next week's post!
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Reaching The Finishing Line.
Having built Numerous Robots in the past you tend to know when your'e
reaching the finishing line of the build process.
Todays build was aimed mainly at the electronic aspects and Niall or Adam will
cover that topic, but there was some light fabricating work to be done first.
The speed controller needed a housing, so I cut a oblong slot out of the
top of the Robot just slightly larger than the controller and then searched
the workshop for a suitable metal housing.
Previously we had used metal from a Bath mate (lifting sling for the bath) and
it was to come in handy once again, containing a box shaped piece of metal
that was the perfect fit for the slot I had just cut to take the speed controller.
Other light fabrication included bolting on a steering box adjuster to cover
a hole in the bodywork and welding on a inner tail plate at the back of the Robot.
Image 1=Bath Mate and inner workings
Image 2=Steering box Adjuster
Image 3=inner tail plate
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Further to Colin's post, I have a few more photos to add from the new speed controller housing. first showing it's new home within the chassis, and second showing the hinge we installed for easy access to the ESC.
Attachment 7293
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And as for the electrical side, a lot of progress was made towards getting all the relevant connections in place. Our main connectors to and from the ESC are all being taken care of with the pictures EC5 connectors. These were installed by means of a windproof lighter repurposed as a mini torch.
Attachment 7295
It was then time to connect our batteries in parallel using a 5.5mm bullet to EC5 cable I had made during the week. The lead makes one positive and negative connection to the battery pack, providing a nominal 28 volts. Here's a photo of the arrangement for full voltage testing of the drive motors.
Attachment 7297
And here's a little video of the left wheel drive motor on around 29v from the two series batteries. Tons of power there!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eY-31CpAdaE
As always, thanks for reading this update and stay tuned for next time!
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Most of our work this week has been focused on getting the electrical side sorted out. First on the agenda was getting both drive motors fused, using 80A midi fuses, pictures still pending while we work on cable management. But the main thing was getting a fuse to protect the ESC and batteries. A little work with a bench vice was enough to crimp the huge terminals on this fuse holder. We have a choice of 200 and 250A fuses depending on our final load.
Attachment 7316
And once closed up, it becomes the biggest in-line fuse holder I've ever used! As you can see the fuse rating is still identifiable even with it closed.
Attachment 7317
Also on the electrical side, I started work on linking our receiver and ESC together. For our left and right drive motors, I have colour coded a 3-cable bundle for each channel, they aren't the prettiest as it is proving difficult to find the connectors I need, but I'm more than happy how well they came out!
Attachment 7318
Finally this week, following up to the mounting box made for our ESC in last week's post, a piece of thick lexan was made to protect the ESC box. This bolts in place using the pre-existing tapped holes in the metal used to make the box.
Attachment 7319
Stay tuned for next weeks post and thanks for reading!
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Mixed Fortunes this weekend on the Robot building front:roll::cry:
I had ordered some parts online to make the removable link and
typically ebay sellers with high feeback scores send poor quality
goods or in this case the wrong item so I ended up buying parts
locally to make some progress.
It can be a bit of a headache when it comes to where you
place the removable link, you need to make it easily accessable but
at the same time protected against axes and spikes and spinners.
So after a bit of head scratching I decided to place it in the wheel arch
and it worked well-protected and still easily removed even if blindfolded.
The previous week, Niall described the housing for the Speed controller
and I decided to place a secondary housing next to it to house the RC battery
pack and reciever, this has a piece of polycarbonate to protect it and a dome
metal cover (fire extinguiser bottom) covers both housings.
I confident this multi layered system will protect the delicate electronics from
the likes of Thors axe.
Adam was struck down with a bug at short notice and wasn't
able to come but Niall came through to help out on Sunday.
I have allways used my own basic relays in previous robots and
with a bit of luck we hope to use a speed controller in a team death
robot for the first time, i'm anxious to see this work even in static
mode with the wheels off the ground but I'm also aware that the ESC
is the most expensive bit of kit we have bought for the Robot and
great care is needed installing it.
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Picture 1 removable link housing in position
picture 2 tried and tested removable link type
picture 4 housing for reciever and ESC
Picture 5 cover made from fire extinguiser
Picture 3 top view of robot
For Some reason the pictures didn't appear last week so here
they are-more to report tomorrow:D
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Another Sunday passed!
For the first time in a while, I'll be delivering the blog update this time around! We were down a man again, as though I recovered from my illness, Niall was up in Scotland, but should be back for next week!
Today was another day of misses, with a recovery towards the end.
As soon as I met up with Colin, we took a trip to Maplin, and got some ceramic 1 ohm resistors of varying wattages. These were to be used to try nulling an issue with getting things up and running, when the battery was connected there was a huge spark. The plan is to have a resistor make the first connection, and ease the flow of energy in before the main connection is made, similar to how a British style plug works, the earth pin is slightly longer so it always makes contact first, where the longer pin would be the resistor pin here.
After getting back to the workshop, we had a go at getting this going, however instantly ran into issues. Unfortunately try as we might, our new Ragebridge ESC wasn't powering up, and after slowly removing stuff from the circuit trying to problem solve the faulty component, we came to the conclusion the actual ESC seems to be not enjoying the situation. We will hopefully have an update on this situation and a way to resolve it by next Sunday.
Unfortunately, all this took around 2 hours, but after realising we were not going to make progress there, we moved onto some more fabrication. First on this order was to make a set of battery holders on each side of the bot, they'll conveniently hold the batteries in place, but also add additional protection, as LiPos are not too fond of being pierced with hammers and axes, and competitors have lots of those! They've been put on hinges welded to the main body, so they can be quickly moved up and down in and out of place.
This didn't take too long, so we had time to do some work on the castors for extra handling, we cut a few pieces which will soon hold the castors in place. They'll be back with some springs, so they're always on the floor. Final order of the day was to drill a hole, for the castor to fit through. This last part will be repeated later on for other castors.
We currently think all major fabrication should be done within the next 2 or 3 weekends.
A few images for today;
The three ceramic resistors, all slightly different so we can play with what works better for what we need.
The rather large mess of electrics whilst we were trying to get the ESC to power up.
A close up of one of the battery holsters
Locked and loaded, batteries in place!
Some previous fabrication work done by Colin, and a little of what was done today, and will be continued on soon, for the castors.
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