Wintery weather Today but the build must go on- unfortunatley due
to the bad weather Adam was unavailable this week.
I had planned to use most of today on the electrical side of things
but due to me working on my own I thought I would do outstanding
fabrication first.
Early last week I ordered a couple of things of e bay and they arrived
in time for this weekends build.
I bought 2 cheap speed controllers at £8 each -they are rated at 7-16 volts
and 300 amps and I bought 2 weightlifting bars to complete the fabrication
of the jaws.
Fitting of the weights bar to the front of the jaws was quite straight
forward, it just needed slight shaping and welding in place.
I then needed to cut a false tooth out of a car disc brake which I had used
on previous occassions for various things and I welded that to the bar.
Now I turned my attention to the never ending saga of the electrics
and namely the speed controller-I could be green with envy at other roboteers
who say " controller arrived and five minutes later it was running around "-
this hasn't been my experience-the Ragebridge blew with a massive spark
as soon as it was plugged in, so before we commit to another I'm doing some
experiments.
So my thoughts were-how would a £8 speed controller designed for small RC
cope with driving a heavyweight ?.
Bearing in mind my motors are 24 volt and the max current of the speed controller
is 16 volt I wasn't expecting great performance.
I tried running it at 12 volts on a gell battery to begin with and it worked well
(wheels off ground ) and then I tried our 14.5 volt lipo battery and it was slightly
better going forward and backwards no problem.
Whether or not the ESC will blow when the Robot is on the ground remains
to be seen-I have heard that the ampage rating is not the true rating ?-
What I do know is that I can wire them up and why the Ragebridge blew
is still a mystery (possible overvolts) but Adam thinks not.
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