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Thread: Ion (Beetle Weight Drum Spinner)

  1. #1
    Hey all, decided to make a build diary to log updates on my beetle, even though it’s been around for a while now. The robot body is CNC milled out of a billet of 6082 aluminium, with an aluminium drum using M12 high tensile cap head bolts as teeth.

    Been working on a few things, mainly making the transition to brushless drive to save weight and improving the weapon a bit. The brushless drive motors are just the generic SK3 ones, was looking at some other motors to try but they just seemed the best for the job out of the hobby king selection. I flashed some 12a blue series ESC’s to use with them and they seem to work alright (thanks R9000 for the great guide on flashing!), just need to fix the pinions onto the shafts and mount them to the 1000rpm gear motor gearboxes, I’m slightly afraid the pinions will keep coming loose and make the drive really unreliable but I’ll have to see if the Loctite I have is strong enough to keep them in place.

    As for the weapon, it worked fairly reliably at the beetle champs in November so changing it was probably a bad idea, but I’ve upped the voltage from 3S to 4S for more power and speed, as well as upping the motor pulley size. Also got bored and decided to make and fit my own 4mm silver steel shaft to the motor to add a bit of strength, and drilled a hole in the outside of the robot to have bearing support on both sides of the pulley.
    ion bearing support.jpg

    Bearing hole came out slightly bodged but just about fits, when I first span the weapon up the bearing flew out and there was some friction in the system somewhere so it needs sorting out a bit. Pressed the bearing further into the side bulkhead and added a circlip and some Loctite since the test, so the bearing should be more secure now.

    Changed a few other small things since the beetle champs, angling the HDPE outside armour to stop the robot getting stuck on its side, which it did a lot at the champs lol, also adding nuts to the bolt feet rather than nylon spacers, which shouldn’t shatter like one of the nylon ones did.

    That’s all for now! Cheers, Andy.

  2. #2
    With regards to keeping the pinions on, I used to use loctite and they were forever coming off. I switched to 2 part Araldite and haven't had a problem since... best to rough up the shaft a bit first; I used some wire cutters to basically knurl it.

    I found that the weight benefit of brushless only really works if the drive runs off the same battery as the weapon... otherwise fitting a second battery wastes most of the weight gain.

  3. #3
    It's all off one battery, ill just turn down the power going to the drive on my transmitter. Also thanks for the tip with the Aaraldite i'll give that a try

  4. #4
    If you do mixing on the TX, be aware that the channel are turned down before the mixing happens, so if both sticks are down at 50%, it can mix back up to 100% depending on where the sticks are. I've seen plenty of motors blown based on the assumption that 50% travel adjust limits to half the voltage. If you're using SimonK you can probably adjust the settings to limit it to what you need, that way regardless of what your mixing is doing you can't go over the max.

  5. #5
    Ive not done the maths, but won't the RPM of the brushless motors be considerably higher than the brushed, so you'll need a different GB (one with lower final rpm) to compensate?

  6. #6
    I use the SK3s on 2S with the standard gearboxes for drive in FL... it's a bit faster, but that's a good thing :P

  7. #7
    Yeah it'll definitely be on the fast side since the wheels are 60mm too, the speed should be helpful for bite since the drums geared fairly high now, if its too fast, I'll tweak the transmitter settings again

    Also tah for the heads up Rory, I'll keep that in mind.

  8. #8

  9. #9
    Hey David, I use Autodesk Inventor, you can get a three year trial if you say youre a student on the website so might be worth looking into that. I design it and get it made elsewhere yeah, I don't have the equipment or skills to do the machining myself haha

  10. #10

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