Team Death - New Heavyweight

[team death]

The favoured day of the week (Sunday) for Robot building went reasonably well
-you never seem to get all you want to do done but progress was made never the less.
Adam and I were joined by Adams friend Niall and we seemed to work well together
with each having a knowledge in certain areas.

We mainly worked on the jaws system again, including the winch,chains,and sprocket
system.
First we removed the winch as the webbing was far too long for our purposes so we
cut it down to a reasonable length, secondly we cut out a hole in the robot frame to
insert an encapulated nut under where the winch sits and bolted it back in place.
After shortening the jaws pulling chains and linking them together
with a split link we turned our attention to the double sprocket that was held onto
the snakemaster stablising bar by mole grips.
Niall suggested that bolts were the prefered method for holding it it place so we
set about drilling holes in the snakemaster metal strip-this turned out to be
pretty tough going but after sharpening the drill bits between drilling the
breakthrough was made and the sprocket bracket is now bolted in place.

During the week I had fitted a sprocket to a matching drive motor we had
bought and fitted this motor and chain into position.


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[Captain Foxbunny]

Hi all, I just wanted to introduce myself as the newest member of the team. I'm mostly experienced in the electrical side of things so I'll be taking that on as a main responsibility.
We made good progress this week on getting the weapon functioning better. We cut the teeth for the jaws, and have been working on the spring return system for them. Our new springs are from a chest expander, Champion brand and everything!

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Here's a close up of the teeth we cut from a template, they seem to be very sturdy and we are confident they'll take a good bit of abuse without breaking.

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In other news, with last week's progress made to the chain drive for the weapon, the current weight is now at 82kg. Took a fair bit of effort to get it up on the scales!

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And lastly, with a little help from one of our new springs, we got the weapon to close and return under it's own power! Still a few bits to smooth out to get reliable operation but it's great progress.

[daveimi]

This is awesome. Like next level awesome.

[Captain Foxbunny]

Apologies for the late update!
Since last week, improvements have been made to the weapon chain system, each side's chain now has a guide to allow them to move much more freely and reduce stress on the chains and winch system.

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Good progress was made on the drive this week, with both sides' axles being removed in order to have flats ground into them to prevent the wheels from slipping on their axles. This proved very effective, once tightened we couldn't get them to budge.

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We also made adjustments to the general fit of the wheels, with some generous grinding and re-positioning in order to reduce any contact between the wheels and chassis. This still needs a little fine tuning, which will include photos in next week's update, but for now things were improved to the point where we were able to run both drive motors, currently on half voltage for demonstration purposes.



Thanks for reading this update, and stay tuned for next week's post!

[team death]

Reaching The Finishing Line.
Having built Numerous Robots in the past you tend to know when your'e
reaching the finishing line of the build process.
Todays build was aimed mainly at the electronic aspects and Niall or Adam will
cover that topic, but there was some light fabricating work to be done first.
The speed controller needed a housing, so I cut a oblong slot out of the
top of the Robot just slightly larger than the controller and then searched
the workshop for a suitable metal housing.
Previously we had used metal from a Bath mate (lifting sling for the bath) and
it was to come in handy once again, containing a box shaped piece of metal
that was the perfect fit for the slot I had just cut to take the speed controller.

Other light fabrication included bolting on a steering box adjuster to cover
a hole in the bodywork and welding on a inner tail plate at the back of the Robot.
Image 1=Bath Mate and inner workings
Image 2=Steering box Adjuster
Image 3=inner tail plate
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[Captain Foxbunny]

Further to Colin's post, I have a few more photos to add from the new speed controller housing. first showing it's new home within the chassis, and second showing the hinge we installed for easy access to the ESC.

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And as for the electrical side, a lot of progress was made towards getting all the relevant connections in place. Our main connectors to and from the ESC are all being taken care of with the pictures EC5 connectors. These were installed by means of a windproof lighter repurposed as a mini torch.

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It was then time to connect our batteries in parallel using a 5.5mm bullet to EC5 cable I had made during the week. The lead makes one positive and negative connection to the battery pack, providing a nominal 28 volts. Here's a photo of the arrangement for full voltage testing of the drive motors.

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And here's a little video of the left wheel drive motor on around 29v from the two series batteries. Tons of power there!



As always, thanks for reading this update and stay tuned for next time!

[Captain Foxbunny]

Most of our work this week has been focused on getting the electrical side sorted out. First on the agenda was getting both drive motors fused, using 80A midi fuses, pictures still pending while we work on cable management. But the main thing was getting a fuse to protect the ESC and batteries. A little work with a bench vice was enough to crimp the huge terminals on this fuse holder. We have a choice of 200 and 250A fuses depending on our final load.

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And once closed up, it becomes the biggest in-line fuse holder I've ever used! As you can see the fuse rating is still identifiable even with it closed.

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Also on the electrical side, I started work on linking our receiver and ESC together. For our left and right drive motors, I have colour coded a 3-cable bundle for each channel, they aren't the prettiest as it is proving difficult to find the connectors I need, but I'm more than happy how well they came out!

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Finally this week, following up to the mounting box made for our ESC in last week's post, a piece of thick lexan was made to protect the ESC box. This bolts in place using the pre-existing tapped holes in the metal used to make the box.

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Stay tuned for next weeks post and thanks for reading!

[team death]

Mixed Fortunes this weekend on the Robot building front
I had ordered some parts online to make the removable link and
typically ebay sellers with high feeback scores send poor quality
goods or in this case the wrong item so I ended up buying parts
locally to make some progress.
It can be a bit of a headache when it comes to where you
place the removable link, you need to make it easily accessable but
at the same time protected against axes and spikes and spinners.
So after a bit of head scratching I decided to place it in the wheel arch
and it worked well-protected and still easily removed even if blindfolded.
The previous week, Niall described the housing for the Speed controller
and I decided to place a secondary housing next to it to house the RC battery
pack and reciever, this has a piece of polycarbonate to protect it and a dome
metal cover (fire extinguiser bottom) covers both housings.
I confident this multi layered system will protect the delicate electronics from
the likes of Thors axe.
Adam was struck down with a bug at short notice and wasn't
able to come but Niall came through to help out on Sunday.
I have allways used my own basic relays in previous robots and
with a bit of luck we hope to use a speed controller in a team death
robot for the first time, i'm anxious to see this work even in static
mode with the wheels off the ground but I'm also aware that the ESC
is the most expensive bit of kit we have bought for the Robot and
great care is needed installing it.
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Picture 1 removable link housing in position
picture 2 tried and tested removable link type
picture 4 housing for reciever and ESC
Picture 5 cover made from fire extinguiser
Picture 3 top view of robot
For Some reason the pictures didn't appear last week so here
they are-more to report tomorrow