Team Kaizen - Kaizen

[Ocracoke]

Well, 22 days to go until Chatham and a lot has changed since. The electronics have been screwed down, the new 2x 4S1P batteries arrived and I am awaiting a few connectors to get them wired in series to 8S1P. The axe weapon has also been made and it actually works!

The axe, as I noted before, is powered by a CIM motor, overvolted to 19.8v (6S LiFe). I had intended to have it driven by a single channel FeatherTwo that drove the axe from The Honey Badger 2.2 but the horrors of Extreme Robots Manchester came back to haunt me. The PCB had split, taking out a chip in the process. So now it is being powered by a TZ85A until I find another controller to drive the axe. The axe is going through a 3:1 custom gearbox on a dead shaft. Drilling the reduction gear was a bit of a faff but worth the effort.

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I've still got a fair way to go with this one, such as fixing the electronics, fitting a safety pin to the axe and so on. The big issue is weight, or rather the lack of it. It weighs 20.5kg at the moment and the minimum for a Middleweight is 30kg. I've got a substantial amount of 25mm HDPE around to add more armour on with and if all else fails, I'll add a solid brick to the thing. :P I have a worklist of things to do to this one but I've signed up for EXR Chatham, Maidstone and Gloucester in anticipation for this one making it.

Here is a video of the axe firing. The axe arm definitely needs reinforcing before combat but it works for all intents and purposes. The issue here is the grub screw undoing itself through shock (you can hear the motor spinning after the axe arm retracts). I suspect some threadlock might be enough here but I am open to drilling the shaft to allow for a pin of some description.



Next video will be of it moving about under its own steam on the 8S batteries and hopefully "done" before Chatham.