Team Health & Safety - First Time Builder

[Zenith]

Deary me, it's been quite an adventurous week.

I went right ahead with trying to fit all the spaghetti within the bot and actually got everything to fit. Went for a testdrive, and all was well - I had even hooked up the lifter to see how that behaved, even though the lifter couldn't close fully yet (it's quite fiddly to make an accurate prong which both extends the lifter blade as far as possible, but also makes it close fully).

After about 5 minutes though, disaster struck. Smoke. More and more smoke started pouring out of it, so I carried it outside and prayed the lipo would be fine.

IMG_20171017_122944.jpg

And it was. The rest most decidedly wasn't though. Apparently the left drive ESC couldn't take it anymore and chose to go the way of self immolation, taking its two compadres with it. Oh yeah, that was why in Mk1 the two ESCs were not on top of one another.

IMG_20171017_133859.jpg

The bundle of ESC was now fused together, so I cut it out, and started to do a post mortem to see how bad things were.

Surprisingly enough, except for the stench and a scorch mark on the base plate, everything was rather fine. The light circuitry still functioned without problem, but still I ran though the motions of checking the leads.

IMG_20171018_100420.jpg

The power plug was mildly scorched and still fine, but I chose to do the sensible thing of changing it out entirely - if anything, I needed to make the power leads longer anyway.

Now, I have registered Mk2 to compete at the coming Bright Day event the weekend of the 18th of November, so I realized this left me with 4 weeks to rebuild the internals.

This was also when I realized that now, I could make the entire inside how I actually wanted it to be. With the first setup some wires were too long, others were too short and the placement of some stuff was also less than ideal (like the ESCs, AMIRITE?)

IMG_20171018_105756.jpg

I also noticed the blessing of the design of Mk2 - the removable lifter module made the repairs a whole lot easier than they otherwise would've been. Now, I just had to disconnect it and take it out and voila, tons of room to work in.

An added bonus is that part of the lifter module also gives the lipo its own separated compartment. Simply put, had this not been the case, the ESCs would've also taken the lipo with it and the entire thing would've been a puddle of molten plastic. All clouds have a silver lining I guess.

Speaking of the lipo, I think it's prudent if I maintain 3S for Mk2. I don't feel comfortable using the Botbitz beyond its rating (even though people do use it with 4S) and since I need the weight, I'll be switching back. I'm also going to downgrade the battery's amperage to save weight - I reckon 1300mAh for a lifter is more than overkill.

Anyways, with the insides cleaned up and ready for new ESCs, I set my sights to the outside. I wasn't happy yet with how it looked - the titanium wedgelets from Mk1 left quite a gap to the side because the wedges have been moved forward slightly. In a spinner-laden environment as the beetleworld I thought it to be necessary to address this.

IMG_20171019_134515.jpg

So I chose to play around with some HDPE. I gawked at how good it actually looked from the side. I assure you though, this is an accident. It won't happen again, honestly.

IMG_20171019_134401.jpg

Now, I know that 3mm HDPE is not going to be enough to upend all those balls-to-the-wall RPM guzzlers that roam these lands, but there's a catch. Together, these two HDPE wedgelets weigh in at 44g, which is considerably less than the 107g from the two titanium ones fitted before.

This leaves me some weight to put wedgelets on my wedgelets - I aim to carve up some of the 1mm Titanium I used in Mk1 and use it to provide the bottom half with some proper shielding. 3mm HDPE + 1mm Titanium ought to do the trick, I reckon (FAMOUS LAST WORDS).

To be continued when I lay my hands on new ESCs, which is the coming week.

IMG_20171019_134535.jpg

Until then, here's a bonus pic showing the front angles of Mk2 as they currently are. I was rather pleased how well it all seemed to fit together... hopefully it stays that way.