Team Expat - Beetleweight Adventures

[Andy]

looks really cool, going to be deady, goodluck!

[GlenR]

That setup is pretty similar to killers, you'll love it!



Those little NTM motors are torquey and efficient. Even a dodgy 10c 500mah lipo at 3s seemed overkill :P Not sure what you plan to use for weapon supports but 1.2mm sawblades chopped up work great. The steel is really tough and light at those thicknesses

[harry hills]

Sawblade armour. That's so hardcore.

[Niels - Team K.a.L.M.]

I tried that on an earlier version of chop suey. My metal skills are extremely undeveloped so it ended up completely askew but the metal itself is great, both bouncy and tough to get through.

[PJ-27]

Awesome, moar Beetles!! Didn't realise they were going to be at Stevenage, that's near my Stomping ground so I'll make sure I'm there.

[Ellis]

I may or may not have found out how much the 9" sawblades from a local store are...

The design I have had a load of weight left, so I think I can get 2.5mm steel supports in weight although they're pretty cut about to be light enough. I'd use 2-3mm ti in a flash, I just don't have any. Need to do a complete CAD and weigh in before starting.

--

I've fully converted Gonzales to threaded inserts and barrelnuts. No more m4 tapped HDPE, yay. I did this for ease of maintenance more than strength; m4 straight into HDPE is probably stronger with a long enough bolt. I had to make 18 inserts and 8 barrelnuts and work around my own build tolerances from 11 months ago. Slow process!

Pic spam (although when bolted up the only visible difference is the change of bolts...)

Most of the inserts are m8 external and m4 internal:



I experimented with m6 external for the top and bottom panels to try and save a few grams. These aren't very strong but they shouldn't need to be (typical 9t drill pinion for scale):

The chassis as of this evening:




What's in those pics weighs 403g. I don't know what it weighed before, probably 20-30g less. I'm hoping with the other changes I still have enough left to stiffen the wedge.

[Mega Masher]

Looking great. Will need to get a move on with my beetle too
What's the baseplate btw? Looks like ali

[Ellis]

Baseplate is just 2mm hdpe. Pretty bendy but does the job. Cheers.

[Ellis]

Spent the day in CADland instead of the workshop today.





It weighs 1320g as pictured, so lacking ESCs, rx and general wiring.

edit: no it doesn't! I'm new to Solidworks and I wrongly assumed it'd assign a realistic material density to bolts taken from its own library. After correcting I have roughly 90g left for ESCs and wiring. Should still be quite doable, but tighter than anticipated.

[daveimi]

This is a bit scary looking