For those who are interested I thought Id post an update on the work weve been doing on Storm II over the past 9 months - some of you may have noticed that Storm II hasnt been out recently, even at our local events like the Robot Rumble.
Following Storm II crashing out of the 2005 Winter Tour we decided that we needed to take some time to look at the machine and understand why it had developed a tendency to break down. In the fights where Storm II hadnt broken down it was all but unbeaten - ie we were our own worst enemy !
Work carried out :[*]RC Control system totally overhauled and serviced. Re-assembled and soak tested for 24 hours by manufacturer. Battery packs stripped down, all loose cells re-glued and re-soldered. Foam padding inserted (previously Storms packs never had any padding) and re-heatshrunk. Main drive spur gears re-machined from EN36 Case hardened material. Previous gears had worn over the last 3 years and were on the edge of losing their mesh. Arm mechanism strengthened, extra bracing has been put in place Output gear of arm mechanism and driving pinion replaced. Many of our failures had been due to problems with the arm on Storm II. The output gear was a 25mm thick En36 Case Hardened MOD2 quadrant gear. The pinion driving this kept on breaking teeth. In order to deal with this problem both the pinion and final output gear have been re-machined as MOD3 gears again in case hardened En36. This has also had the side effect of speeding up the arm as the gear ratio has been reduced slightly but strength is up around 200%. Arm motor upgraded from an S28-150 to an S28-400. Originally an S28-150 Magmotor was used on the arm to keep weight to a minimum however Storm II has always been around 5Kg underweight. Because the modification to the gears above had resulted in a slightly high gear ratio the upgraded Magmotors increased power will partially make up for the ratio, but will also provide more torque to the arm and lifting power is therefore up 50%. Although the S28-400 spins slightly slower than the S28-150 the increased gear ration means that the speed is around the same. Result of all of this is a mechanism thats 200% stronger and can lift 50% more ! Protection put in place around a few exposed fragile parts of the machine All cells tested individually, those with problems replaced and all battery packs re-balanced[/list]There are one or two other tweaks that have been made to the machine as well. Overall its been a lot of work to get everything done, but were hoping that Storm II should now return back to the reliability that saw it go through New Blood, Series 7 and the World Championships without any reliability issues on the scale we had to deal with last year !
Ed
http://www.teamstorm.comhttp://www.teamstorm.com
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