HardWired II

[daveimi]

Something that's been interesting me of late is what's the maximum amount of grip possible by a thirteen kilo robot? I say this as my dad is a racing car builder. In a certain championship he's been building for, the car's are front wheel drive, and among the community for this class there is a general consensus that more than 220bhp or so just becomes wasted wheel spin. To this end they'll build the car, and then set the turbo boost on a rolling road so it JUST touches about 210 - 215bhp at the wheels.

This has made me think...I wonder if there's an amount of torque that past a point becomes wheel spin, and you can keep putting bigger n bigger motors in, but you're still sort of restricted by not being able to put the power down. I have been watching your build like every night after work lol to see what sort of results you got. I'm right right on the cusp of building a big power drive train for my robot. But when I've over-volted the drills and locked the clutches up, it will happily push a 10kg weight lifting plate up and down the driveway. If I double the weight the robot tries its best but just smokes it's tires (which feels way cool I may add!!).

Erm...so to sum up...I know building some sort of s900 torpedo 800 type drive train will definitely benefit my plywood La Machine clone given the type of robot that it is. However...if it will happily shove 10kg about, is it worth me spending what I predict will be about £150 sorting a big drive train out if the £30 drill setup is at the invisible border of grip anyway? Would it be best to move onto four wheel drive? Would it be best to get six wheel drive? These are all of my curios wonderings!!!

My working layman's hypothesis is: NO MATTER WHAT MOTORS AND WHEELS YOU HAVE, YOU STILL ONLY HAVE 13KG OF DOWNFORCE TO WORK WITH.