How to take drill motors apart.

We may decided on using 4 £15 motors for the drive of our robot. My grandpa however, is worried about using this because he isnt sure how to take the drill apart and convert it into a drive system. I sent him the drill hacking guide, but we cant be certain that all the drills have the same components and set-up as the drills we want, especially as its an austrailian site. Does anyone have a step by step guide for idiots about how to convert these drills motors (we want to use the batteries as well) into a robot drive system. Please can I have all answers ASAP.

Yours in need of help,

Alex

This might help a little.
http://www.robowars.org/wikka/DrillHacking101http://www.robowars.org/wikka/DrillHacking101

99% of cordless drills are the same inside as that guide.

99% of the cheap 9,6V to 18 V drills have nearly the same inside. 1% of them have a (for us) better planetary gearbox with a 1:24 reduction instead of an 1:36 reduction. All of them use motors of the mabuchi 540/550 class i think, and these can be changed simply with other Motors. The next better class in drills i found use motors in the 750` mabuchi class (=21,4V) with better gearboxes, they use 4 little gears instead of 3 little gears per stage. The housing of the gears i throwed away and made some custom made housings with ball bearings. The next DRG-event will show if this would work or not. My full pressure Raptor-Class bot uses some mini drills since 2 years and works fine with them.
Greets from germany,
Dirk

Greetings from england. (Guten Tag?)

Um.........Well..... So if theyre all so similar should I just follow the guide? Or should I buy one of the better drills? Its a 14.4v, 700rpm drill, which we are going to overvolt by about 40%. We are to use four of them.

Auf Wiedersen?!

Alex R

all you need to do is take the battery off then undo ever screw you can see the motor and chuck and the small controller should come out easily cut the motor wires

then open the chuck fully look inside you will see a screw get the corect head screw driver put it in and try to do the screw up as its a reverse screw if you cant do it try putting it in a vive

to get the cells out of the battery again undo all the screws the top will come off and you will be left with the cells

cheers Alex. Ill get buying then.

Alex

its ok, are you going to the maidstone event at end of november?

or whats your first event going to be?

oooh. Probably a very long time off. Get it working properly first and as my grandfather lives in suffolk then well have to do a lot of posting stuff back and forwards.

Thanks,

Alex

Arghhh!
Last night I bought 4 cheap 9.6 volt drills to take apart.
I removed the reverse thread bolt from two without any problems. The other two just wont budge. I used all my strength and its just stuck. Im not exactly a small guy either! I have had to resort to a lovely angle grinder and tearing apart the bolt (i have spares).
Any hows rant over, is there anything that I should try? I had a go at reversing holding the chuck to make sure its all the way in to try and loosen the bolt.
Just dont understand why two were so dam tight and the other two were really easy.

Sometimes it just happens that way...unless two had some thread lock or other compounds on....Ive had a few with thread lock.
On really stubborn screws drill the head off if they wont come out.... Ive had to resort to that method only once in 15 or so dissassemblies.

If you have a suitable impact driver, which can be set to reverse so you are not just tightening the left hand thread machine screws, that should do it. Otherwise you can try drilling them out. Since your right hand drill is opposed to the left hand screw in the chuck this should get it out quickly.

Did try drilling. Just bored the end of the bolt off.
I just finished taking the chucks off all the drills and I had to use the angle grinder for both.
Managed to save one of the two stuck bolts with some skillfull grinding.

I would say thats the best method if you have to use force. Grind the top bit off the chuck. Cut off the plastic bits. Then gind down around the bolt and try to loosen it. Drilling could just damage the end of the bolt.

Did try drilling. Just bored the end of the bolt off.

Yup that was the general idea.

You then unscrew the chuck and purchase / find a new l.h. screw.

The plan in my head was to drill slowly and get some purches and unscrew the bolt out. But didnt work.
I just have to remember where I put all my L.H. screws. Havnt used them in a bot for around a year. I hope I have not given them away :S