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I've got some help for it now in terms of the design and build (hopefully should have some help with acquiring materials too) so it won't be as difficult as if I was going it alone - still need to get the electronics bought, but that's a weight lifted I suppose!
Still going to have my wood bot to do myself, but I can deal with wood easily, just not Hardox or stainless steel and the like haha!
Hopefully going to get some use out of these dodgy speed controllers in that wood bot!
Went and carried on with the Beetle since I had some spare time and scrap parts - now got a fully functional machine made out of an old Playstation disc drive, so that's pretty cool. The best bit is yet to come though, and it's so utterly ridiculous that I'm not even sure it'll work. Definitely not a competition winner this though, I accidentally put a hole in the armour the other day with a stanley knife so it's definitely not going to stand up to those spinners. Still, not bad for a grand total cost of £0!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHL7co-0F-w
Could do with mentioning too, all the internals are the exact same as the very first version of HardWired and the other beetle that I posted a while back!
Thought I'd give HardWired Evolution a spin today, and the ebay speed controllers have for whatever reason both decided to short out (presumably due to the dreadful soldering on them, picture of that posted a short while back) and, well... Let's just say HardWired Evolution won't be seeing the light of day in that format again. The seller won't do refunds either, nor do they accept any fault with the product (blaming it on me) so that's a battery, two speed controllers and I'd assume two motors down. Still got my radio gear, thankfully, so the beetle's going to be my 'main' focus until I can afford to replace all the equipment in HardWired. Probably just as well, considering I was going to buy some BotBitz 85a's and a 6s lipo along with some 18v motors and brushless motor for the new disc weapon, but I'd rather have had the old equipment to play about with still.
Have got a quite ridiculous weapon almost built for the beetle, so that should be a laugh in the meantime.
Sorry to hear about the short out Matt, that really sucks...
Don't let it get you down though, you already knew the ones you had weren't upto much, and those sellers just sound useless and unhelpful :lol:
Onwards and Forth! :D
have you tested the motors since? what exactly happened when you said it shorted out? as all may not be lost?
It does, but hey - nice lightshow out of it ;)
It's probably just as well though, I kept wanting to completely rebuild HardWired and I think that's the push I needed! The gearboxes are fine there abouts, the contacts on the motors appear to have completely gone, and the fans inside are broken - it'd be easier to just buy some new drills entirely and keep those gearboxes as spares!
As for what happened, the contacts on the battery flashed and the speed controllers both went as well, then the plastic around the wires all melted together so I tried to disconnect everything as quickly as I could! Surprisingly the battery seems OK, no swelling or damage or anything but I've got it in quarantine still at the minute, just in case...
Definitely going to carry on with the featherweight side of things, though this has made me drastically rethink the design of it now that the chassis has gone all warped too so I won't be able to reuse it - not saying too much yet, but there might be another full body spinner at the next championships :p Got some help building it by way of people who actually know what they're doing regards building (something that, let's face it, isn't my strong point) so HardWired may be one to be wary of in the near future!
Toying with various different plans, wanting to try and build a FBS that has the capacity to right itself - I'm a huge fan of Typhoon, Little Spinner and MegaByte from the US but none of them can really self right (though I've seen Megabyte do it once through the centrifugal forces and all that) - whether my plan works or not remains to be seen but it's worth a shot - especially now it'll be built semi-professionally!
Finally come up with a proper design for HardWired Evolution mkII (cunningly named HardWired Revolution) - basically, think Tornado style 4WD box, but with a wedge on the front and a heavy vertical spinning blade in the middle of the wedge. The way I'm going to try and build it is so that it's a rambot with the power and speed of, say, Satanix or 540, but the heavy disc's for getting the launches that 720's pulled off in the last champs (that one against one of the Toon robots most notably!)
Maybe it won't fully work out as planned, but the idea is that I'd essentially have the best of both worlds of a drum spinner and a rambot.
This was the idea I had for my 'proper' beetleweight but it seems like it'd be a pretty solid featherweight in all honesty. Might make a beetle and upscale once I've refined it a tad and don't have the building abilites of a chimpanzee wearing thick woolen mittens.
Oh, and before I forget to mention, I did weapons testing with the beetle -
http://t.co/DM2iKSnbuA
http://t.co/wTHndQ71Cw
Quite dangerous if your robot happens to be made out of an old Blu-Ray drive.
Finally invested in some BotBitz 85A speed controllers (no idea how long they'll take to get here, but bought them nonetheless) so finally going to get a working machine cobbled together!
Just as a bit of a practise, I'm going to use the current design and chassis of HardWired Evolution with some new motors in to just get a machine built, then work's going to start on the new one!
Attachment 4101
Here's the plan I had for HardWired R-Evolution too, expertly Cad'ed in the finest CAD software, as I'm sure you could have expected from me by now. Still got the potential flaws to iron out, but I'd love to make this one my 2014 championship entry. HardWired II can wait till I figure out how to build a full-body properly!
So are you going to concentrate on your original robot? How far along is it? :)
HardWired Evolution (the flatter version of the original) is getting some new motors in it and whatever speed controllers I can cobble together, but nothing substantial for now! May upgrade the armour and enter it in some Robots Live/ Robot Wars events but I can't see it being amazingly competitive or interesting in main competitions :p
Wheels are here! Got 4 80mm castor wheels and 2 100mm blue rubber wheels for when I inevitably make the wood bot, finally have almost everything I need for HardWired Evolution to be complete, just need an LED (have an LED and a spare servo to reciever plug that I cut off a broken servo, if there's a way to light up the LED with those then please let me know!) and better radio gear as well as a proper removable link (made one out of chocolate block connectors) so things are looking good! Unsure as to whether HardWired REvolution will be ready for this year's championships, but I may have a robot to enter now so things are looking good.
Update to HardWired's next version - I'm currently looking into that brushless drive again, seen a pair of motors which would have 8000 RPM and put out about 2400W of power (about 3 horsepower?) at 8s so I'm going to have a look for an ESC that'll go in reverse at that voltage - I know that's the difficult bit, but it's worth a try. Might as well do something interesting where I can!
I have seen the Trackstar 150A one from Turnigy that reverses and manages up to 6s so maybe I'll just have to leave it down at a lower voltage until an alternative comes up.
The power in brushless motors seems quite large proportionately so if I can turn that into a successful drive system then I can sense it being moderately successful. May take a while to get it perfected, but I'd like to have it done for the next main championships!
Ok... forget everything that was here.
I don't see much difference in behaviour compared to a brushed robot. It's just a case of using the right parts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwu8y8ScA5w
I don't think there's a ton of difference, but it'd be nice to change things up a tad! I'm hoping to find a reversible ESC that handles 8s and up so I can get the full 2400W out of these motors (or so Hobbyking says). May need to do a bit more research into more powerful motors, but I can see it being a viable substitute to some of the high-end brushed motors if I can get it working reliably...
Of course, getting it to work reliably is 90% of the problem. Likely going to make Mk1 out of spare bits of wood if that'll work so I can iron out any of the creases, then make the final thing out of either clear polycarb or HDPE, would need about 20-25mm if what I've heard is correct, so naturally it looks like it'll be HDPE but I still like the idea of a fully transparent bot. Unless of course those hydraulic crushers that I've been hearing about come to the next championships, in which case it definitely won't be that transparent!
Also, it's funny you should post that video, that's the very one that inspired me to start work on this particular project! I think it's a machine from the Australian combat robotics forum, seems to work pretty solidly!
Yeah it is an Oz robot.
I won't bother saying too much about brushless drive as I have no experience with it myself. A bit of advice I would give is that it is probably a good idea to have a brushed setup ready to go so you could just sub that in if the brushless has problems or fails during a comp.
Also think about how exactly you mean to put down the power from the motors... Its not really any good having uberpower if you can't use it. Its all very nice to play with big numbers but they tend to get a lot smaller when reality happens.
I wish you luck with the build though :) Might want to rethink the frame though, some tougher plastic or maybe steel or aluminium. Of course, I'm in no way experienced enough to really advise or anything, I just thought I'd add something I felt relevant.
Thanks! I will remember that! Chances are I'll just make sure I can sub it with a set of drills or similar, I bet there'll be plenty of teething problems with it! Think I might have a look at some hefty magnets so I've got torque and 'weight' behind it, definitely need to re-visit that! I think the motors come out at about 2.5/3 horsepower each without a reduction assuming my calculations haven't gone horribly wrong (I wouldn't put money on that) so it'll be pretty beefy if it works alright. Quite liked the idea of omniwheels too so it can simply carry on driving sidewards, but one step at a time!
Thanks too! May end up going the plastic route for now, easier for me to work with! Would like to move to clear polycarb in the future because I've always liked it! May be an update for HardWired though when I get round to it! Speaking of Hardwired, I'm working on the power LEDs for it, got a standard LED on the top, but then on the back I'm cutting out the name 'HardWired Evolution' and putting a load of LEDs behind it to make the name glow, a bit like New Ripper actually... Thought it'd be a nice effect! As always, pictures up when it (eventually) gets done!
Update on the plans, my intention is still to use brushless drive, but I'm trying to find the highest torque and lowest RPM ones possible, and loading my machine up with magnets. The disc will remain, but naturally it'll not be quite as heavy as I first wanted. Maybe about 2.5/3 kg at a higher RPM, but I'm hopefully going to put plenty of magnets in the bottom of the machine, dependant on how heavy they are. The idea is that I'll make an entirely flip-proof machine, whether it works in the end is something else entirely, but hopefully it'll work!
Worth a shot in any case, would like to work on something a little different!
Remember I said a long time ago that I made a wooden prototype of HardWired? Well, since I've been waiting for the equipment to put the hex nuts into the wheels I've bought, I decided to spend a bit of time fixing that up. Hopefully getting the motors put up to it soon (they used to be direct drive drill motors but they were not very reliable, as you can imagine) but other than that, no changes at all to it. I have the wheels right at the back and it pulled some awesome wheelies on the first tests, so I'm hoping I can replicate that!
Obviously not a serious machine, but it was fun to drive that one time before the battery shorted out.