Team Health & Safety - First Time Builder

[Zenith]

Hi everybody! Glad you joined us to celebrate in my radiant mediocrity! Yay!

Construction is slowly pacing along. First, I got the dimensions in for what is to become the primary line of defense: the 2mm grade 5 Titanium façades, here mocked up in cardboard.

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To me it seems a good idea to alternate wedges - this would be more of a design to face other lifters or rambots...

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...whereas this one has a more "WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST"-tone to it, inspired by Ziggy/Lucky. I'm aiming to have both setups available during the Euros, plus probably another 'ZOMG ZOMBIES'-wedge for a laugh.

Anyways, I seem to be fast approaching the point where I'm happy with the chassis, and the job is now to get the insides in proper shape. I mean, it's nice if I build a brick, but it'd be grand if it would move as well (and keep moving whilst we're at it).

This led to more soldering. The Euros require three main things when it comes to electronics - a power light (check!), a removable link (check!) and a fuse.

Now, I'll be squeezing in a 1300mAh 40C LiPo in there, so if my math is correct the fuse should be somewhere below 52A (f my math is not correct, feel free to comment, point, and laugh). I have two kinds at my disposal, but decided in the end to go with a 40A fuse.

Having a fuse is all fine and groovy, but it needs to get in there properly as well. I'm soldering novice at best, so cue my gallery of embarassment!

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Fuse marries wire. Such novice, much noob. Wow.

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After changing out the solder gun for a proper iron, I set out to work on those mythical XT60 plugs. I reckoned that if I were to learn soldering properly, wiring these up is going to improve my skills a lot better.

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But every learning curve starts at zero. You can almost hear a faint 'Killl..... mee" coming from this shambolic attempt at a removable link (I'll have you know though that the wires were in there solid as a rock, but as Quasimodo will tell you that doesn't matter if you look disfigured)

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The socket went a bit better. Redid the removable link, and there we are.

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Did a socket for the battery, and added a fuse. Just like in a motorbike (or car) the fuse should be the first halt after the battery I reckon.

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From right to left: power socket, fuse, removable link, and somewhere in the future I'll be adding an LED light to that.

If anything though I'm regarding this as a practice setup of sorts - apart from the fuse and the battery plug, everything is subject to change. Once I can finally mount a baseplate in the chassis I'll be mocking up the insides, and measuring up the wiring just so there won't be any waste of space. This is quite important as, even though the bot itself is quite wide, the inside is a tad cramped.

If anyone has a suggestion for placement of the removable link (as in, where to best put it on the bot) I'm all ears. I'm probably not going to use the XT60 as a link as the small BEC plugs are just more suitable to work with - the bulky XT60s just take up too much space.

If you've got anything else to share, suggest or ask I'm all ears too by the way, unless it's in defense of the Hunchback of the Notre Dame. Proper men watched The Lion King and Jungle Book as kids.

And Thunderbirds. Virgil was the man.