Small Update

Not really got anything exciting to post with regards to Carcinus progress or beetleweight development but I wasn't keen on a lack of updates so Drumroll it is!

After the UK champs, the chassis was in a bad state. Threads had stripped, nuts had pulled through their mounting holes and it was generally a mess. If I want to see an improvement in performance I might as well start strengthening and improving from the ground up, so a new chassis has been made out of 15mm Nylon 6 (or 16.5mm to be precise, more precise than Direct Plastics anyway). Opted for the blue stuff this time for a couple of reasons; it looked good on Boner, it saves me having to use a lot of spray cans painting my chassis blue, and it was actually the cheaper option. Also decided that I'm never making a chassis out of any other plastic besides Nylon in the future; nothing else in the 'bot' range (HDPE, RG1000, Polypro, UHMWPE) can compete with it. I've used the other ones in the past due to them costing less and me having little money but when that's less of an issue, it's clear Nylon is much more suited to the job:



It has mostly the same dimensions as the previous chassis but with slightly larger heads at the drum end of the machine and an altered curvy bit. Chassis height has increased a little as well, just to free up a little more space.



In comparison with the old chassis. Very similar but it looks so much more sturdy (which it is!) than the RG1000. It weighs a bit more too but I think the robot had 2kg spare at the champs so I'm currently not worried about weight.



Transferring all the component across. I've changed to Banebots wheels as the set I had on the robot at the champs were not particularly grippy and one of them got properly stuck on the drill shaft, so I had to butcher it to get it off. Although the green ones are more susceptible to wear and tear, they were the only ones in stock on Technobots at the time of ordering, but I plan on getting a set of orange and blue ones too so I can interchange depending on how good I feel the grip is. They're pretty low-cost and I've got the nut-insert melting method sussed so should be able to churn them out fairly easily.



Everything back in and wired up, which meant all was good for a quick test drive tonight where it seemed to perform well. Battleswitch for the weapon is goosed though (got a green LED on, but no clicking noise being made so it's not activating the SSR) so I'll need to get a new one of them before I can check the spin-up but barring a few cosmetic issues, the machine is back up to running spec. Hopefully nowhere near as many things will break, but RL Edinburgh will be a good opportunity to thrash it about and see.

Now with that out the way I can turn my attention to Carcinus. It's got all its parts in it, but needs the claw mechanism all sussed and fitted, then wiring, then testing etc. At least I know what I'll be doing this weekend...