We're still looking for the easiest way to make our beetle walker respond to remote commands. To that end, we ordered a pair of wireless modules from Pololu which turned up today. We didn't have the Servotor32 board handy to work with, but we still wanted to see these doohickies in action. Hit Back after viewing an image.

We started out with both Wixels connected to different USB ports on a single computer, but couldn't get them to talk to each other. We downloaded and installed the Wixel utility from Pololu, which gave us drivers for the modules, and they then showed up as COM ports. Using the utility we installed a Wireless-to-Serial program, which should have had them streaming bits to each other on 2.4GHz wireless. With two PuTTY windows open (one on each COM port) what we typed into one should have shown up on the other, but to no avail. Then we decided to switch one of the Wixels to a different laptop.

And success!
After random typing and the required hello world we felt pretty confident that we're getting data back and forth. We took the second laptop a good thirty feet away, with the original Wixel sitting down inside a cubicle, and were still able to send messages back and forth, so that bodes well. If this works, we actually don't need the Arduino Uno: we can load Hexy's PoMoCo on a laptop fitted with a Wixel, and attach the other Wixel to the USB port of the Servotor32, and control Hexapedal Hitman 0.9 wirelessly from the laptop, using the full bank of built-in moves - less programming too! Hurray!

Finally! Two packages have been dropped off by USPS - both containing servos. One came from Hong Kong, and the other from Washington state. Let's check them out ... Hit Back after viewing an image.

The Hong Kong package contains 22 metal geared servos that we're going to put in our Hexy Kit tonight. Then we're going to load up the kit so it weighs a grand total of six pounds, and then we're going to see if it will walk. The idea here is that if it can move six pounds with these servos (rated for 2.2kg-cm of torque) then we can build the aluminium combat version of the kit with them, and keep the same leg design.

If it turns out that the replacement servos can't cut it, we'll need to trade up to heftier servos. For comparison the original metal gear servo is on the left. Next to it is a larger servo, also with metal gears, rated for 3.0kg-cm of torque - this would be our first choice replacement, as it's the smallest of the three options. Basically what we'll do is, knowing that the little blue servos have 2.2kg-cm of torque, we'll see at what weight they can move the kit, and then factor the needed torque for six pounds from there. For example, if they can move the kit at four pounds, we'll know that to move six pounds we'll need about 3kg-cm of torque, and so the next size up servo will work. If the little blue servos can only move three pounds, we'll need to step up again: the third servo is rated for over 6kg-cm of torque, and the fourth one is rated for 8kg-cm. If we do need to redesign, fingers crossed it's for the first alternative, because the other two are HUGE!

More tonight ...

There are a number of pieces we need to chuck up on a lathe in order to finish the remainder of the fleet, and we feel bad pestering Chris every time we need to make circular operations, so we checked out our lathe-buying options this week. Technically, Milly can lathe things for us, but to convert her from milling to lathing means a pretty big clean-up job, and we don't have the time for that. So we made a purchase ... Hit Back after viewing an image.

Given $100 off, plus a 20% off coupon, we knew what we were going to order, but we didn't know where we were going to put it, so purchase number one (with another 20% off coupon) was a work table. This photo doesn't show the 75 minutes we spent trying to assemble this darned thing, but once it was done, it was rock solid.

This was actually a decent deal price-wise: normally $599, on sale for $499, plus a coupon for 20% off, and the price before tax was $399. We bought the $80 2-year No- Questions-Asked Warranty, which gave us another $25 off, so for $375 we had a $600 mini lathe with some pretty decent reviews.

After taking the shipping bolts out the bottom of the package, we opened the top of the box, and found a few tools and parts. This seems to be a beefy package - 90lb - so hopefully this is a solid piece of kit.

After pulling out the top packaging we get to the meat of the sandwich: a 7" x 10" mini-lathe. There's still some heft to that box, so we're not risking our backs just yet - we want to make sure everything we payed the [discounted] price for is ready and available.

We've liberated handles, tools, outer chuck jaws, safety guards, rubber feet, and a spare fuse - sounds like we're about ready to roll. We did buy an MT2 drill chuck and a few pieces of miscellaneous tooling when we picked up the lathe, so maybe we can do something productive today.

We originally planned on mounting the lathe to the workbench, but didn't have long enough M6x1 bolts, so we decided to mount the rubber feet to the chip pan, and set that on the new work surface.

Turns out that works fine - the instruction manual suggested we break the lathe in - normally we're sceptical of such moves, but what the hey! We ran the lathe for 60 minutes at varying speeds in High, Low, Forward, Reverse, and every combination thereof. It worked well.

So - to productivity! Here we've just run a #11 drill bit through a pinion gear for the 30lb'er drive train. A #11 drill bit is nominally 0.1910", and our calipers tell us the inner diameter is now 0.1915" so that's some pretty tight performance! Unfortunately still not big enough to press fit on to the 5mm drive motor shafts, so we moved up to a #10 drill bit.

The #10 drill bit took us to 0.1940" inner diameter, and we needed closer to 0.1960" so we then moved up to a #9 drill bit, and that was just a hair too much - this gear could be pushed on to the pinion just by hand, so we're going to have to pick up some Loctite 609 retaining compound for this one, and decided to stick with boring the rest of the gears with the #10 bit, and see how they fair being pressed on to the shaft.

The operation went very well! Using a single washer on top of the gear gave us the right spacing when pressing the gear on to the shaft to align with the wheel gear, and we were extremely happy at this point. So happy, we decided to up the ante ...

... and worked on the wheel gears, enlarging the bore in 1/32" increments from 3/8" to 1/2".

The finaly pass with the 1/2" drill bit was tricky - it was riiiiight at the length we could push the tailstock back, but we persevered, and our patience was rewarded.

Here we have it: five wheel gears with 1/2" bored sitting nicely on the keyed shaft - the next step is to cut the keyed shaft to length, and then wait for the wheels to arrive from our friend at FingerTech Robotics. It's going to be a long wait, according to Canada Post tracking :-(

As you can see here, things line up very nicely. Despite the assault from the arbor press, the motor spins freely, and the teeth are well meshed between the gears. We can hardly wait to see these drive pods in operation! All in all, a good day's work :-)

Our day started with the usual round of obsessive checks on our packages in shipping. The FingerTech order seems to have stalled in Calgary, and the box of servos from Hong Kong has somehow ended up in Newburgh, New York! Unfortunately we're not going to be able to retro-fit our Hexy kit with metal gear servos this weekend - that will have to wait until next week. We are hoping to finish the Sportsman, Palindrome30, this weekend, and hopefully make some progress on the 30lb'er too. At least we have the Arduino kit to play with. Hit Back after viewing an image.

The Arduino starter kit didn't come with any documentation, but we did find the SparkFun Inventor's Kit Guide online, and so grabbed ourselves a copy of that, and set about going through the exercises in the manual. The first was to simply blink an LED, which was trivial, but teaches you how the basic program structure works. Next came varying the brightness of the LED with a potentiometer.

Also, we got to play with a tri-colour LED, cycling it through it's various colour combinations, which added a few more concepts into the mix. One thing we realized, though, in working with the Arduino board is that each time you start it up, you have to load a program to it. Hmm. This could be an issue in using it to run the walker, because it doesn't have enough EEPROM to store the code to run the Servotor32s ... each time we power it up we'd have to hook a PC to it, which is less than optimal.

After looking around, we found these: Wixel Shield for Arduino + Wixel Pair + USB cable, which would let us send the code to the Arduino over 2.4GHz wireless. If the NERC officers would let us use these instead of a transmitter and receiver we'd be able to run the walker directly from a PC, giving us a much wider range of pre-compiled moves the walker can perform. We can also run the servo for the hammer from the Servotor32 too. Guess it's worth an email to the NERC board to see if this is legal.

The first of our two Hobby King packages showed up today, featuring some electronics and motors - hurrah! The second package, with metal gear servos for the Hexy kit is looking like it might show up by Friday - fingers crossed! We also put in an order at Pololu for an Arduino Uno Starter Kit, as we will need something to take a PWM signal from the receiver on the walker and turn that into something the servo controller board can work with. We were also notified by our friend up in the frozen wastes of Canada that our custom wheels had shipped with speed controllers and power switches - Wheee! Hit Back after viewing an image.

First, half a dozen speed controllers. Five are destined for our featherweight Intrusive Interloper 3.0 to control the motors we mounted yesterday. The other is for the drumbot Nihilistic Naysayer 2.5, just in case we blew one up at Franklin trying to run a siezed wheel-motor. We still need to check whether it's operational or not.

The rest of the box contents are three replacement motors for the drumbot. We've cunningly decided that we're going to skip the urethane molding, as Kurtis over at FingerTech Robotics has done that for us, creating a 2.5" outer diameter 45A wheel, with an inner diameter of 1.25". Guess what the outer diameter of this motor is? Yup - a touch under 1.25", so we're going to mount this motor inside the wheel, and try running it directly, once we've programmed the speed controllers to run as hot as we can get them to.

We've also been thinking about the walker. The basic plan is going to be to install the metal gear servos into the plastic kit as soon as they show up - multiple people on the Arcbotics Hexy Forum have stated these are drop-in replacements. Then we're going to weigh down the kit with enough stuff to make it weigh six pounds, and then we're going to see if it can move. Truthfully, it may not, because these servos have the same torque as the plastic-geared ones, and we guestimated we would need twice as much, but we're going to try anyway. The reason is that if these servos can move the 'bot, we don't have to redesign any of the parts - we can simply have the existing design cut out of aluminium. If the servos can't handle it, we'll have to scramble and get the original servos we were planning on switching to, and redesign around them.

As far as controlling the walker goes, we've decided against trying proportional speed when making the 'bot move - it's going to be an all-or-nothing approach: depending on where the transmitter stick is located, the 'bot will perform one action continuously until the Arduino board receives PWM pulses indicating the transmitter stick is in a different location. For example:

The right stick will tell the 'bot either: move forward; move backward; turn to the left; or turn to the right - but only one operation at a time. The left stick controls the hammer using the rudder channel (left/right) swinging it either in front of the 'bot or behind the 'bot. The top of the throttle channel (up/down) is a special move, in that if the Arduino detects full throttle, it will ignore the right stick, and put the 'bot into "Defensive Mode" where the two front legs come together, to allow an impact, for example, to be received by the titanium plates on the front.

For kicks we might add the "Dance" move to one transmitter toggle switch, and the "Wave" move to the other toggle switch :-)

After researching on the Interwebz, there are basically two ways the Arduino board can read what a receiver is putting out: by using the PulseIn() method, or by using interrupts. The PulseIn() method is simpler to implement, but apparently wastes a lot of the compute time on the board. The interrupts are more complicated, but allow you to change the commands faster. Now, given that Hexy will only be doing one thing at a time (move forward, turn left, defend, etc.) we're thinking that PulseIn() ought to be fine. The basic command program will be something like:

Initialize the servo controllers
Initialize the servos (stand up)
Begin main routine
Loop {
   Check to see if Throttle channel pulse is > 2000µs {
      Position the servos for defensive posture
      Restart Loop
   }
   Check to see if Elevator channel is > 2000µs {
      Move the servos to move the 'bot forward a step
      Restart Loop
   }
   Check to see if Elevator channel is < 1000µs {
      Move the servos to move the 'bot backward a step
      Restart Loop
   }
   Check to see if Aileron channel is > 2000µs {
      Move the servos to turn the 'bot right a step
      Restart Loop
   }
   Check to see if Aileron channel is < 1000µs {
      Move the servos to turn the 'bot left a step
      Restart Loop
   }
}


Anyhow, that's enough rambling for now - not sure if we're building tonight, but stay tuned for more in the run-up to Motorama 2013!

Well, it's December, and we're about two-and-a-half weeks away from the Christmas Break at work, and that means eleven straight days of build time available, so we're definitely getting ready for some serious progress before Motorama 2013. Recently we picked up some hacked 85A ESCs and DeWalt motors for the 30lb Sportsman, and we have polycarbonate and titanium en route to Team Whyachi for some waterjetting. Today we received a couple of small packages containing small parts for small 'bots. Hit Back after viewing an image.

Firstly, some 260mAh lithium polymer batteries for Lauren's antweight Malicious Mule, and a very small gyro to go in it. The 'bot will run on two of those packs in series, which will mean it tops 11mph, so the gyro ought to come in handy.

We also received some 180mAh 3S LiPo packs for our tiniest 'bot, Transcendental Terror 2.0 which has been redesigned to hopefully correct the lack of invertibility. There are a couple of weapon motor ESCs freshly arrived from Hobby King too.

Back to antweight parts, and here are a couple of 370mAh 3S LiPo packs for the tweaked redesign of Poor Punctuation 2.5, in case the current 470mAh packs are too heavy, and a few ESCs for the weapon motor for that 'bot too.

Finally a package from our friends at FingerTech Robotics up there in the Great White North, with a pair of TinyESCs - now able to handle more current than earlier versions - and four Lite Hubs for Lauren's antweight's upgraded drive train. At this point we almost have everything we need to put that 'bot together: the only missing pieces are the top and bottom panels which are part of the waterjet order, so with any luck this will be a straight-forward build once that order shows up next week ...

Having received and worked on chassis parts for a number of 'bots, we've been keeping a close eye on tracking numbers for other parts orders, and two of them have come in! We were getting frustrated with both shipments, but learned to read the shipping options at Hobby King carefully - there was an option that said "EMS - NO LIPO" which we took to mean we couldn't send LiPo batteries via EMS, and so selected Parcel Post, but hidden in the options was a plain ol' EMS option, which Customer Service later confirmed could be used to ship LiPo batteries - we could have had these parts two weeks ago! Hit Back after viewing an image.

First delivery comes [incomplete] from the Robot Marketplace - a spare Team Delta shaft (their last one), Colson wheels for Steel Stiletto, wheels for Belligerent Battler 0.9, and 75% of the wheels for Malicious Mule.

More parts for Malicious Mule, including battery, top and bottom plates, gyro, receiver for the pistol-type radio, and V-tail mixer, because of the gyro.

A stash of parts for Persistent Pugilist 0.9, including 2204-14T motors for the drum, and 10A reversible ESCs for them, a receiver, spare 1" foam wheels, and a couple of 1Ah 25C batteries.

Also, some parts for Belligerent Battler 0.9, including 18A reversible ESCs, brushless motors to power the beater, top and bottom plates, 3S battery pack, and a spare receiver.

There wasn't a whole lot of stuff needed for the rebuild of Nihilistic Naysayer 2.0 as we're essentually reusing the weapon setup, and we'd already ordered the drive train components a while ago. All we have here are two sets of 5S-worth of Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries, and a spare receiver.

Finally, the remaining electronics for the rebuild of Steel Stiletto - we already have the replacement drive ESCs, so here are 6S-worth of LiFePO4 batteries, a V-tail mixer, receiver for the pistol radio, and gyro. Let the building commence! continue!

How about that for timing? Really happy these showed up today, so we can get as much done this weekend as possible! Hit Back after viewing an image.

Some cute little parts for Malicious Mule - 6061 aluminium front, back, and sides, and polycarbonate inner rails, all quarter-inch thick.

Some parts for our 'last minute' replacements for Poor Punctuation 2.0 and Lincoln Limboer 0.9. UHMW walls for both Persistent Pugilist 0.9 and Belligerent Battler 0.9, plus a beautifully machined beater for the beetleweight.

Stepping up to hobbyweights, and here's the new chassis for Steel Stilleto, with quarter-inch titanium sides, 3/8"-thick front and rear 6061 aluminium walls, and quarter-inch polycarbonate inner walls.

Finally a bunch of frame parts for the redesigned Nihilistic Naysayer 2.0 which will need plenty of slotting, drilling, and tapping!

Wow - that was pretty zippy! We received a shipment of parts from HobbyKing this morning - not bad considering they only shipped - from Hong Kong - on Friday! The EMS shipping is definitely worth the extra few bucks, versus standard airmail! Hit Back after viewing an image.

First out of the shipping box we have a pair of Turnigy G60 brushless motors and two 70A ESCs. These motors are the little brother of the G110 we had in the first version of our 30lb'er Formidable Fustigator 1.0, but in the second version we're going to be running two motors to the weapon blade, so in theory, an upgrade as 2 x 60 > 110 :-)

Better safe than sorry, right? We're going to be teaching Lauren about care and feeding of her 'bots for Motorama 2012, so we ought to start off right, and swiped a couple of jumbo LiPo charge sacks, as they were actually in stock when we ordered.

Here are some battery packs to go in the charge sacks - a pair of 3S 370mAH packs for Lauren's antweight, and a pair of 3S 470mAH packs for Poor Punctuation 2.0.

The Battery Eliminator in the twelve-pounder seemed to have blown up last time we were playing, so we swapped in the one from the carcass of the thirty-pounder. We decided we should probably pick up some spares ...

We also took the opportunity to grab some spare receivers, too. There are three 3-channel HobbyKing receivers for Lauren's 'bots, and a couple of AR6110e-equivalents to replace the ones that died at Motorama 2011.

Tucked in the bottom of the box was the programming card for the ESCs for the featherweight weapon motors, along with a chrome-like Turnigy logo ... no idea what to do with that, but hey: freebie!

These were our weight-fillers for the package, some wire, bullet connectors, and heat shrink tubing. The tubing is for the 1000rpm motors in the beetleweight, to try and provide some stability between motor and gearbox.

Last, but not least, a collection of LEDs, pre-made to plug in to a receiver, and hey presto: instant power light. Much easier than fiddling around trying to make them, so a dollar or so well spent!

There hasn't been much in the way of updates lately because there's been a whole lot of fun stuff going on at work, and by the time the weekends roll around it's time to catch up on useful things like sleep! But with the Christmas Holiday coming up, we've been laying the groundwork for parts and pieces to keep us occupied during the break we have from December 23rd through January 1st. This time in two months we'll be packing the car ready for the road trip to Motorama 2012! Which means we'd better get busy: we've registered our bots:

• Macchiavelian Malcontent 0.9
• Poor Punctuation 2.0
• Malicious Mule*
• Didactic Duelist 1.5
• Versatile Villain 0.9
• Nihilistic Naysayer 2.0
• Steel Stilleto*
• Formidable Fustigator 2.0

The asterisks are the two 'bots Lauren is building, driving, and maintaining at the event.

We've drawn up a calendar, to identify when we have built time available, and feel quite secure that all the 'bots will be done before it's time to pack the car. We've already ordered parts from HobbyKing, and sent materials to the Whyachi folks for waterjetting, so expect a tremendous amount of work to be done between Christmas and New Year - stay tuned!

16 New Hyundai 18V drills, snagged from eBay for $126 inluding shipping.

12 are earmarked for CyberScorpion 0.9, and three may go in Formidable Fustigator 2.0, so yes - we can definitely put these to good use!

Direct from the frozen tundra of Dorchester, Wisconsin, comes a box full of win: Whyachi-Waterjetted Parts! There are a few parts yet to come, because - get this - they're being heat treated! Oh yes! But as you can see below we have plenty to be getting on with ... Click Back after viewing an image.

These diminutive pieces are top plates for our 150 gram fairyweight. We could have done them ourselves, but with the small size of the parts and relatively large thickness of our fingers, it was just easier to add them to the batch.

Next we have the chassis and drive walls for one of our three pound beetleweights. The black block is UHMW, with some 6061 top plates, and polycabonate motor and wheel mounts.

Here are the frame parts for our other beetleweight - rear wall (with spare), outer walls (with spares), inner wall, drive and weapon motor mounts, and wheel mounts, along with top and bottom plates.

Stepping up a weight class to the twelve pound hobbyweights, and here's the chassis for the second version of our drumbot. 3/8" 6061 outer walls, and 1/2" polycarbonate internals. We're looking forward to putting this one together, because it should be fairly quick - after all, we're really just putting a new frame around the old internals.

Finally a few parts for our thirty pound featherweight. Above are the two weapon braces from 6061 aluminium, and below are some nylon bearings for the weapon blade. Unforutnately the weapon blade hasn't made it here yet, because it's being heat treated, but should show up next week, along with the top and base plates.

Thanks to Jake at Team Whyachi for the immaculate cutting job!

No building this evening, just some organization and troubleshooting using some tips from our friends on the Forums, but we did receive a couple of deliveries! Click Back after viewing an image.

Our bearings order from VXB came in, bringing some 1/4", 5/16", 3/8" and 1/2" bearings, plus a bonus digital caliper, which will be handy, so we can keep one on the build table and one by Milly.

These were the contents of the first of three packages from Speedy Metals, who have some pretty good pricing on aluminium. The plate in front is 3" x 1/8" x 12" 6061, and will be used to make the weapon motor mount for Formidable Fustigator 0.9. The two rods are 1/2" 6061, and 1" steel tube (1/2" inner diameter) which will be the weapon shaft and retainer for the featherweight. The 6061 tube at the back will be cut to form the rounded rear wall of Nihilistic Naysayer 2.0.

The contents of the second package include a number of short pieces of 6061 tube, to be used for wheel covers and weapon caps for the featherweight. The two bars on the right are the teeth for the drum on the hobbyweight.

The third and final package contained a number of lengths of 6061 - some flatbar to make arm components for both the fairyweight and beetle, plus plow material for the beetle, and the round is for axles for the beetles too. Not a bad haul, and it certainly came well packaged!

While we were waiting for the rest of our parts to trickle in, we decided to spend some time on our antweight this evening. We'd received a new timing belt and pulleys for the weapon transmission, and so we wanted to look into how to get the weapon hooked up for our antweight Poor Punctuation 0.9. Click Back after viewing an image.

First up, some stuff! A couple of batteries for the beetle Didactic Duelist 0.9 - we were planning on 1000mAh LiPo batteries, but they were out of stock, and so went with 850mAh, figuring it should be close enough. There's also a 60A reversible brushless ESC, to see if we can fit it in the 12lb drum, some cheap blue threadlocker, and a couple of Spektrum-compatible receivers, as spares.

And some random electronic components, including 7805s for a cheap battery eliminator for the fairyweight, and some bright blue LEDs as power indicators. Unfortunately this means at some point we'll be soldering, but that's why there's plenty of everything! :-)

To start with we went back to figuring out where all the electronics were supposed to go, how they're supposed to be mounted, and where the wires route around the chassis. The drive ESCs will mount to the walls near the battery ...

... And on the back side, the weapon ESC and receiver. We were planning on using one of the new ultra-light OrangeRx receivers we recently received, but it proved to be a hair too long to sit on the wall with the PWM cables plugged in.

A test-fit of the shell, with all the rollers installed, and the frame bolted tight. There's a little friction in there, but with some very light sanding that should be eliminated, and we should be good to go.

Now that we have all our parts, it's time to see how much weight is left for teeth. At the moment we're at 14.2 ounces, but that actually doesn't include the main weapon shaft, so still not much left over to give the shell some bite.

To start assembling the weapon transmission we pressed a spacer onto the motor shaft. It has a 1/4" outer diameter, and so we drilled out the bore on the pulley to 1/4" and it seems to fit okay, we just need to shorted everything.

Before the operation. We're going to cut the spacer/shaft down to about an eighth of an inch using the Dremel. We've covered much of the 'bot off with paper to stop shavings getting into motors, etc.

After fitting the pulley on the shortened shaft, we needed to secure it, and this is where a 1/16" roll pin comes in handy. After hammering it in, we trimmed it flush to the pulley. In hindsight we probably should have ordered pulleys for 3mm belts, not 6mm, as we're having an issue now working around how tall the pulley is.

To work around the problems, we're going to need a new bearing for the main weapon shaft, to both stabilize the shell and to give us a place to mount the weapon shaft and it's pulley. Here's what we came up with, a horseshoe-shaped mount with bearings above and below. We'll cut it out tomorrow and see how it works. Our bearings should be here too!

With only four weekends left before Motorama 2011 it's time to step up the action on the building front. Although we're still waiting for the lion's share of parts to come in, we were determined to get as much grunt work done as possible this weekend. To that end we made a couple of lists of things to do, and stepped out to the build space! Click Back after viewing an image.

Our order from SDP/SI has arrived - here are the weapon transmissions for Formidable Fustigator 0.9 (two XL pulleys and an XL timing belt), Didactic Duelist 0.9 (two GT2 pulleys and timing belts), and Poor Punctuation 0.9 (also GT2). With any luck we might even get to install our antweight's weapon transmission this weekend.

We've also received an order from Hobby King. We thought we'd hit pay-dirt with these speed controllers - 30A, 1 ounce, and cheap! But after opening one and reading the manual (RTFM!) we were disappointed to realize that there are single-direction ESCs. Not useful. We'll have to order different speed controllers for the beetleweight Versatile Villain 0.9. Poop.

The rest of the order looked good though. Some handy little 1S 100mAh LiPo batteries, some Spektrum-compatible, 3-gram receivers, and a programming cable for the secondary radio we ordered a while back.

And parts for the featherweight - a BEC on the left, and 70A 8S-capable speed controller on the right. At least these looked right, and we hadn't messed them up!

Plus the weapon motor for Formidable Fustigator 0.9, which looked pretty beefy, so fingers crossed it'll pull it's weight in the 'bot spinning the 24" blade. So with parts organized, it's time to head out to the build space.

First order of business is chopping up a bunch of stuff on the tablesaw. We didn't realize before our last McMaster order that you could order polycarbonate in strips, not just sheets - duh! By ordering 2" x 0.5" strips of polycarbonate it was much easier to work with in cutting pieces for the walls for the featherweight - only one cut per piece to get right, instead of two or three. Nifty!

We also chopped up a top and bottom plate for the hobbyweight Nihilistic Naysayer 2.0. After that we switched out the blade and cut some 2" x 0.5" lengths of 6061 too, but we were too busy being careful to take photos!

The plates for the drmbot need to be notched, so we switch to the jigsaw, and roughly cut them.

And finished them up on the belt-sander, including rounding off the corners to where they'll mate with the grooves we're planning on cutting into the top and bottom of the frame pieces for the hobbyweight.

Trying to be organized and efficient, we decided that while we had the sander out we'd quickly make up a couple of weapon shafts - a 3/8" one for the drumbot, and 1/4" one for the beetle Didactic Duelist 0.9. Didn't take too long at all.

Time for the astonishingly exciting drilling-and-tapping portion of today's programme! Here are the inner walls for the 30-lb'er. We've marked and punched the bolt holes, and it's time to get to drilling.

After a while we're done with both walls, and the spare. As you can see we made a bit of a mess - it might be time to invest in a new, sharp, 13/64" drill bit!

Fast-forward a while, and here are three walls, all drilled and tapped, and ready to roll. We'd forgotten how long it can take to tap things, but now we remember! Ugh ... still, these parts are done at least.

Seeing as though we're in a tapping mode, and already have the 1/4"-20 tap handy, we decided to tap the weapon shaft for the hobbyweight. Piece of cake, once we realized that holding the tube with the channel-locks made the operation go faster, because the part couldn't rotate so much in the vise!

As we get close to wrapping up for the evening, we decided to take some of the parts we'd received/made today and do a rough layout on the featherweight. The wheel and motor mounts in this photo are too wide, which is why it doesn't line up properly at the back, and the edges of the inner walls aren't bevelled yet, so they don't quite line up yet either, but otherwise it's beginning to be recognizable.

A final look at our checklist for this weekend - still a lot to do tomorrow, but we've made pretty good progress for an afternoon. The weapon motor mount and drum are outlined because we're not going to be able to make those this weekend - we have no 1/8" 6061 aluminium, and the piece of UHMW pipe we ordered last week was the wrong size - doh! But tomorrow should be a fun day of drilling, tapping, lathing, and milling, and stand us in good stead for the flood of parts that will be arriving next week!

Now that Milly is a fixture in the Build Space, it was time for phase two of the setup - adding the CNC capabilities in! We'd rustled up an old PC (do you know how difficult it is to get a computer with a parallel port new?!) and did a quick refresh of the operating system, and decided to go plug it in. Click Back after viewing an image.

Of course it might have been handy to have installed the cabling before putting Milly in place, but no big deal - it didn't take long to attach the serial cables to the motors, and run a parallel cable under the bench.

Here's the old clunker we dug out and [almost] dusted off. An old Lenovo something-or-other, with a gig of RAM and a 2.4GHz dual core CPU. We went more for robustness than aesthetics this time. It took all night last night to reinstall the O/S and then clear all the pre-installed junk off it, but now it's ready to rock.

Not a great photo, but at this point we're ready to fire up the CAD software for the first time. The software is called Mach3, and came with the mill, apparently with configuration files already set up, so this should be pretty easy!

For the first time, we turn the mystical bottom switches - controller power on the left, and stepper motor engage on the right. It was an exciting moment, as we went over to the PC and entered our first command: G0 X-2 ... and nothing happened. Zip. So then came a half an hour of checking connections, checking the setup instructions, and finally we checked the motor setup in the configuration file, to find everything was disabled - huh?! It took another five minutes to realize that the pre-configured 'profile' file had a space between the filename and extension, so when we were starting the CAD software it was generating a new, blank, profile file. Geez computers can be picky! After a quick bit of renaming we finally were ready to reissue the command:

And there was much rejoicing! For a while we investigated the various menus, and experimented with G codes to see what they would do. We even started getting fancy:

Having gotten the basics sorted out, we wrapped up the configuration by plugging in our backlash values (0.005" and 0.006") and wrapped up for the evening, plotting and scheming as to what crazy things we'd be able to do now ...

One of the great things about the holidays is that there's a whole lot of really fun things to do. The downside - as with any holiday - is there's more to do than time to do it! We had a really great Christmas, and hope you and your's did too, and a Happy New Year to you :-)

With Milly the new Mill firmly ensconced in the garage Build Space we had to spend some time rearranging and organizing the Build Space, and so that was a task duly accomplished today. With a little bit of time left over, we decided to give Milly a test run. It took a while to figure out the whole drawbar/collet thing, but then again this whole Mill-thing is a learning process for us. We eventually mounted up a collet with a half-inch end mill, and selected a sacrificial target - an off-cut of UHMW we've had sitting around for years, and bolted it down. Click back after viewing an image.

After a couple of minutes of cranking handles - we haven't set up the CNC PC yet, we have our first ever self-milled part produced in our own Build Space! Not a great photo, so let's go to Macro Mode.

Ta-daa! True, it's pretty rough, but none-the-less we did that with our own hands, on our own mill. Milly rocks :-) [Not literally though - that would be unsafe - Ed]

As you can see, we've gotten somewhat organized, with our meagre selection of tooling up on the pegboard ... as time goes by that board is probably going to become filled with handy implements, but hey: you've got to start somewhere!

We've been pretty quiet lately. There are a number of reasons: work, visitors from overseas, work, designing new 'bots, and work. Oh - did we mention work? But we've got a week off coming, and we have big plans!

♪♫ We wish us a Merry Christmas
We wish us a Merry Christmas
We wish us a Merry Christmas
And a Happy Birthday! ♪♫

Back in October we ordered ourselves a ShopMaster Patriot Lathe/Mill combo machine. On December 9th it finally showed up, and we've spent a couple of weeks trying to get it ready to run. The 900-pound machine was quite difficult to handle, and we spend time ready other people's reports of getting their Patriot machines set up to try and prepare ourselves. Click Back after viewing an image.

After waiting all afternoon for delivery some time between noon and 5pm the truck finally showed up at 6:40pm! The delivery driver had some issues unloading, and there was a fleeting moment when I thought the whole crate was going to slide off the lift gate, but we wrangled the crate into the garage without too much effort.

A cursory check of the crate showed that one of the steel runners under the crate had gotten mangled, but otherwise the rest of the package looked pretty good.

We took the ends off the crate and then was able to unbolt the front and back panels, which were bolted to the legs of the stand.

We pulled the wrapping off, and Ta-Daa! A CNC mill/lathe to call our very own. Actually, I think we'll call it "Milly" :-) The legs of the stand were bolted to the table, and were cheap, metric crappy bolts, so we put them off to one side after removing them, planning to replace them with decent 3/8" SAE bolts.

These are the extras that came the order. Live centers, collets, a clamp kit, end mills, and miscellaneous stuff. There were a couple of pieces on back-order, such as the 4-jaw chuck and coolant system, but that's okay. For now we need to work out how to get it on the stand, and how to make it go!

Having ordered a heavy-duty mobile shop base, as recommended by another user, we realized when the Patriot arrived that the newer model is larger than the one the other user had, so the base was too small. We decided to make our own. We took six pieces of 1/2" plywood and started to drill them out.

Sad outlet is sad
Sorry - couldn't resist the LOLCat reference. Bill Tillotson came by and installed a spiffy new 220V circuit for us, as what we had previously thought was a 220V outlet was just a funky-looking 110V outlet. Installing the outlet was a very quick job, no doubt made look easy by many years of practice - Thanks Bill!

Almost done assembling the new base - those are 200lb-rated casters, lockable of course. There's an additional benefit to installing these casters (besides mobility) which will become apparent later ...

And the base is readfy to roll - literally. The upper plywood piece is bolted to the end of the leg where the leveller used to be, and then the casters are bolted through using 1/4-20 bolts and locknuts. Hopefully it will be plenty sturdy!

Time to start the scary part - hoisting the 800lb mill/lathe onto the stand. You can see the swanky CNC connectors on the right there. We picked up a 2-Ton engine hoist from Craig's List, and here we're trying to figure out the best location to put the straps.

The first challenge is that the legs of the hoist don't fit under the steel tray. Even if the one bracket hadn't been mangled, it still wouldn't have fit, so we need to figure out how to raise Milly enough for the hoist to slide under.

Solution: 2x4s. We lifted one side and put a few sections of 2x4 under the bracket, and after clearing some working room on the other side did the same there. It was a little nerve-wracking, putting your arm under an 800lb steel tray, with one of the runners looking as warped as it did, but there were no incidents.

Success! Well ... the second time anyway - the first attempt to lift the unit didn't go well, with it leaning badly to one side - definitely brown-trousers-time. After stopping for a think, we were able to adjust the straps and leveller and get a clean lift on the unit.

From there it was pretty easy to slide the stand in under Milly, but that's thanks to the casters - without them the cross-braces on the legs would have meant that the legs of the hoist wouldn't have fitted under the bench. All we had left to do is bolt together the unit and the stand and put it in place.

Ta-Daa! Here we have Milly in place, and we're pretty damn happy about it! No injuries or damage done, and we're set to have a ton of fun during the Christmas break making chips!

We're not usually ones for mixing business with pleasure, but we had to do a quick bit of "building" here at the office, as a small box of waterjetted parts just showed up from Team Whyachi. Click Back after viewing an image.

Here's a new top plate and bottom plate for Hyperbolic Hoops 0.9. We figured we'd have material left over from the other parts in this batch, and so we had Team Whyachi go ahead and cut us a more precise set.

Here are the frame parts for Poor Punctuation 0.9. There's a number of each type, as we wanted a few spares. At first we weren't sure why they looked so ragged, but eventually realized that the clingfilm that was coating the polycabonate was ragged - the bare parts look perfect!

Here's a fake 'build session': slotting four of the frame pieces together - they look exactly as we envisioned them from the CAD. This will be a fun, jigsaw-esque build.