Team Health & Safety - First Time Builder

[Zenith]

I finally got round to fiddling around with the lifter system.

You see, there was a bit of an issue. As is the case with every roboteer stalking the badlands these days I like my insides to be thoroughly protected. You know, just in case there's some evil robot pulling a rabbit out of a hat and you're left with a smoldering heap of what once was delicate, costly electronic circuitry.

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First, there was the matter of harnessing the power of the servo. I fabricated a bracket out of HDPE, and moved right along.

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I chose the first emulate the two-bar system that the Viper lifter uses, and this is how far I got. Now, the big piece at the top is merely taking the role of surrogate here as opposed to being an actual representative model (as it is, it has no lip to get underneath other bots - the actual lifter would have a bend at the end), and there were a number of issues.

To start off: fully extended it didn't really seem to have much reach. I mean, it had enough for my control-type of lifting, but for something like selfrighting this certainly left to be desired.


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It certainly looked cool though, especially when folded down.

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However, the biggest issue was with the lifter mechanism itself. When all is said and done I like my stuff beefy and simple and whereas the lifter itself was quite chunky...

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...it's only as strong as its weakest link. I mean, if your lifter is held on with the tiniest screw imaginable then you shouldn't expect favorable results in the jungle that is robotic combat.

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I therefore reckoned it best to flip the servo, put on a bigger arm and operate the lifter by letting the servo push the arm upwards with rubber bands pulling the lifter down, instead of connecting the arm directly to the servo. This is simpler approach, which not only makes the servo less prone to feel the hits, but also enables me to make the 'lifter slot' in the top armor less than half the size, meaning more protection for the juicy innards!

As far as the juicy innards are concerned, you can probably tell it's going to be a bit of a squeeze, but I reckon I can get everything to fit just fine.

The coming week will see titanium enter the construction phase, and hopefully I'll be able to do some first driving soon as well.

Plenty of fun to come then!