[FW] Hydraulic Crusher Bot

[Giles]

Me and a work buddy, Dave, are working together on a featherweight for the champs in April. We're going to post our progress here, will probably just be working on spare weekends up until the event.

Here is a very rough idea of the kind of design we are aiming for. Nothing is set in stone yet, just trying to think of a shape that works, and this is our best effort so far:




We're going to be running two Satern-16's with 775's from Ranglebox with a belt driven 4WD setup. Powered these things on for the first time on Saturday and they are absolute beasts! Can't wait to get something driving around on them.

For the weapon, we're using a hydraulic pump from a convertible car roof. This pump is nice and compact, with the motor, pump and reservoir all combined into one block. Spent the weekend figuring out which valves and wires do what, it works in a strange fashion, with different flow directions controlling different outlets. It works a treat though, one ram had no trouble lifting a fully grown man off the ground, and we plan on using two of them

We used a pretty ghetto set up for testing... a computer power supply with all the wires soldered together and croc clipped onto the motors!



That is all for now... more soon!