Team Nuts' Build Diary

[Rapidrory]

Ok, so this update isn't directly about robots, but it is related.

Recently I've been interested in using these 800W scooter motors for a Heavyweight. To test them out, I bought one to fit in a miniature railway locomotive that I've been restoring for a friend. After buying a few other bits and spending a few evenings bolting it all together, I ended up with the following setup:



It has a 10:1 gear ratio to the wheels which gives it a top speed of 6 mph and a load of low speed grunt. Alex and I spent all of yesterday throwing it round the track trying to stress test it, but even loading it with about 400kg and driving at full whack for a few minutes it barely even got warm. The first half of this video shows it running around the track quite nicely:



I know that running a train and a combat robot are hardly equivalent, but I'm none the less very impressed with it's performance and am confident that a pair of them will throw 100kgs around quite happily after perhaps a bit of battle hardening (although they don't come with a fan and the magnets appear to come glued in place so not sure what else would need doing..)

Another reason for doing this restoration was so I could trade it in return for their milling machine which they have never uses since they got it 20 years ago... Hoping to retro fit it with some CNC gear so I can do fancy spinning disks