RogueTwo Robots

[psycho_fling]

looks good jamie cant work out how the weapon motor connects to the drum with hit other parts though?????

maybe call the grabber robot golden bear ????

good job

[RogueTwoRobots]

The belt connecting the motor to the drum will run round the cordless drill gearboxes and will have tensioners in place so that the belt clears them. I haven't finalised a tensioner design yet, which is why it doesn't show in the pictures. Plus I don't know how to CAD timing belts
I've done a really crude drawing in Paint though, to show the basic idea:



It may add to the complexity of the system but its a method that allows me to have my drive wheels as close to the drum and inline with the weapon axle as possible, thus minimising a percentage of the gyroscopic effects.

The grabbing robot was called Incisor as it was all I could come up with name-wise that didn't already rip off the names of other crushing robots. I had tried to look for crab species to use as a name since I feel it has a bit of a crab look to it but all the species names weren't really suited to robots.
However I spent the other night trawling the net and found a page of the original Latin/Greek names for crab species and as such it shall now be called Carcinus
(carcinus maenas is Greek for shore crab - but maenas detracts from it as a bot name, so I shortened it )

[RogueTwoRobots]

Update

Well progress has been a lot slower than anticipated over the past couple of weeks. I went through a lack-of-motivaton phase last week after falling out with the polypropylene. Cutting the 12mm stuff for the Drumroll chassis, it would melt really easily even with the slowest speed setting on the jigsaw, and then the blade would start to seize up. I was disappointed with it as I had never suffered problems like this to the same degree cutting 20mm Nylon and 12mm HDPE. But it turns out all it needed was some loving and copious amounts of WD-40 sprayed in the cutting zone every few seconds. I've gotten away with not using cutting lubricant before on plastics but this type was having none of it!

So cutting done, all the holes for bolting the chassis together have been drilled and tapped and the main parts have gone together:



Its a solid and rugged little construction; I'm happy with it so far. Compared with the CAD drawing however, you may notice the angled rear sides have been ditched in favour of a boring box. Basically the internal space gained by the angled sides was not needed and just added to the general bulk of the robot, plus cutting and bolting a box together is much easier
I don't like the overall boxy look though, so I'll still be adding some cosmetic fins etc as per the CAD image in my previous update.

There was a slight design flaw too (more like me hoping I could get away with it based on CAD drawings). The diameter of the drum is larger than the total length of the front skids, so the teeth hit the ground on a revolution. Easily solved with the addition of some extra skid pads as shown (not made out of duct tape and cardboard on the finished product) to raise the height of the front of the robot slightly and allow the drum to spin freely:



Low-lying wedges beware though; drum tooth ground clearance is minimal so don't expect to get away with not sustaining damage :twisted:



Next steps, scheduled for tomorrow, are to get the drill motors fitted in place, throw in the speedos and batteries and hopefully get a quick runabout to see how the new setup (faster, wider wheelbase, different CoG) handles.

Need to get my finger out and make a start on Carcinus too

[psycho_fling]

Looks good Jamie

post some more pictures of todays work

also how tall is the new drumroll????

[calumco]

looking very nice and neat so far

the same thing was happening to me on wednesday, i had to cut out 2 ali lids for pinsor and i was clogging up jig saw blades like nothing else, 10 clogged blades in, i had to go to screw fix and get some blades made for ali and when they started clogging up aswell i was beginning to think it wasn't worth the waste of petrol but then froggy told about the wonders or WD40

[RogueTwoRobots]

Thanks guys

Alex - the boxy part of the chassis is 75mm high (and I'm planning on tapering the back now the same was Kaizer was, if I can get away with even less internal space - its gonna be tight!) and the height at the front skids will be about 130mm when I get the additional skid pads fitted in place.

Calum - I'd never really considered WD-40 to be the best lubricant for cutting stuff, I always thought a more liquid-like fluid was needed, and I also didn't know if the WD-40 would have any weakening or corroding effects on plastic but it seem fine, and I'll need to stock up on a couple more cans soon. Hoping to get the videos uploaded for you today as well for the old weapons setup; yesterday's time managed to disappear a lot faster than I anticipated :|

[calumco]

ok thanks that would be great

[typhoon_driver]

Guys don't bother with the WD40 as its quite pricey and a waste of good lubricant!

Instead just buy a litre of coolant here http://www.chronos.ltd.uk/acatalog/Chro ... c_124.html

The 1 Litre Multicut Soluble Oil is brilliant for all cutting operations. Just take a sports cap lucazade bottle, pour a shot of the oil in and then fill up with water. I use this with my lathes and have no problem and that litre will last you a LONG time if you dilute it correctly, believe me!

You do have to spend a min of 10 quid with chronos but I'm pretty sure you could find some other random tool that you never even considered using before for a couple quid.

[typhoon_driver]

O and the new chassis looks good Jamie

[RogueTwoRobots]

Update

Well I didn't get it driving today; it was one of those days where you think everything will be nice and simple, screw a few screws in, bolt/tape some things down, wire up some connections and it'll all be good but instead it turns into one of those days where little niggling things slow you down, get in the way and generally just annoy the crap out of you.

The rear of the robot got cut to a taper because otherwise the wheels would not touch the ground, and tapering it shortened the length of the base and solved that problem. But its very tight for space inside now (tighter even than my dad when it comes to paying for shopping/restaurant bills etc )
I always prefer to build my robots to contain as much power as possible in as small a space as possible, but I'm pushing it a bit this time:



May not look too squished but by the time I add a second battery pack (to go in the void on the right-hand side) motor mount, Victor speedo mount, wires, radio gear, removeable link, LED, aerial etc it'll be difficult to work with. So I'm going to really have to keep wires trimmed and everything neat and tidy if I don't want to drive myself nuts at events trying to effect repairs. It'll be a bit better when the brushless is fitted, but since the bigger motor/speedo combo of the Speed 900 is my back-up and space is limited, I figured it'd be better to mount that in place first to make sure it fits and then swap in the smaller brushless setup. Should be plenty of room inside once I've indulged in some A123s, Scorpion or Sabretooth controller etc

Gonna take a building break for a few days after today frustrated me quite a bit (part of me wants to chuck the current chassis, remake it from Nylon and stick to the original CAD layout) and such a break coincides nicely with going back up to Glasgow for the weekend to work