The one 'bot with the largest amount of construction to do is our thirty pounder Intrusive Interloper 3.0. It has a whole new chassis, and a bunch of discrete drive pods, although at the moment these are all sitting as a pile o' parts in a box, so we decide to get busy! Hit Back after viewing an image.

As there's not really anything to do on the top and bottom plates, we set them outside and hit them with a coat of primer, followed by Team Radicus purple, and finally a clear top coat in quick succession. Fortunately today has warmed up, unlike the last few days, so these parts dry fairly quickly.

The outer rails need a lip cut in them for the afore-mentioned top and bottom plates, so we set Milly in motion working on them. While she's doing her thing, we can turn our attention to ...

... The drive pods. There are five of them, including a spare, and plenty of drilling, tapping, and countersinking to do to get them assembled, so we decide to start with one, as a demo piece.

And it comes out very nicely! The keyed shaft slides right into place, and even turns freely in the bearings - bonus! Obviously this pod isn't finished: it still needs to be drilled and tapped for mounting to the top and bottom plates, and it needs a few things like, oh, a motor, and gears, and a wheel, and a speed controller, but it does look awfully like the CAD, so we're happy, and decide to move forward with the remaining four pods.

Meanwhile, Milly is going great guns cutting the plate lips. Despite drilling one hole off, and and breaking a tap in the other, we've decided we're going to use the two side rails anyhow, rather than remake them, because there are going to be so many bolts in this 'bot, one missing each from the front and rear aren't likely to be an issue.

Speaking of bolts, here are the five piles for just the drive pods. Twelve 1/4"-20 by 1" flatheads for assembly of the pods, and ten 1/4"-20 by 1/2" buttonheads. Each. Yup - each! 102 bolts for the drive pods, and a further forty for the chassis rails. Good thing we have a large stockpile ...

Excuse the mess, but we're busy here! End-drilling the polycarbonate for these pods is pretty simple at this point - we've been doing it ever since the Bad Grammar days. So these don't take too long to whip through.

We'll spare you the tapping photos, but there's a ton of it to do. Eventually we're at a point where we can install the very first chassis component onto the baseplate: the battery lid stand-off! Well, not very exciting, but hey - assembly has commenced!

Here's the access panel installed to ... well ... the stand-off. Milly is still working on the outer rails. But if all our drilled and tapped holes line up as well as the ones in this piece, this will be a breeze to put together!

Speaking of Milly, she doesn't quite have the capacity to put a slot in a 14" length of aluminium bar, so we flip it around, re-jig the program, and let her finish up the last couple of inches on each end. Speaking of finishing up, we've done a lot today, and it's getting pretty cold, so it's time for us to wrap up (no pun intended) and head indoors. Join us again tomorrow, where we could see some actual chassis construction - Same 'Bot Time, Same 'Bot Channel!

We had a few spare hours tonight, so we decided to hit the Build Space and do a little more on the antweight and featherweight rammers. There was some milling, drilling, and tapping to be done, but that sounded like a pretty good use of a Sunday. Hit Back after viewing an image.

First up we put the vise back on Milly and decided to edge the walls for Malicious Mule - they need to have a 1/16" lip, and it's pretty easy to get this aligned and cut for an eighth-inch top plate.

Meanwhile, we looked back at the CAD for Intrusive Interloper 3.0 and realized that we need to cut the outer rails shorter so they can be pocketed into the front and rear walls. Time to head back to the table saw.

Finaly we have some pieces for the antweight, including the front and rear rails plus the side rails, and a spare should tapping go astray ...

Having sorted out the length discrepancy with the table saw, it was time to get to pocketing, and so we added the 3/4" 6061 aluminium to the list of stuff Milly has to deal with.

After some judicious miling we had a decent boundary established for the front and end pieces, but there's work to be done on the side pieces.

Wow. That hasn't happened in some time - we've managed to break a 1/4-20" tap in some aluminium which hasn't happened in years. Time to buy a new tap, and get back to it, but in the meanwhile we have some stuff to do.

Finally we mock up the featherweight chassis to get an idea of a space it will need once completed. Everything will fit just fine, and we might be able to go to two packs in parallel.

We have a pretty busy build schedule between now and January, intending to upgrade most of the fleet in preparation for Motorama 2013. We do have some parts, but the bulk of the waterjetted parts are still in Wisconsin, so we're working with what we have on hand. Hit Back after viewing an image.

First up, a few pounds of aluminium from Speedy Metals, specifically the chassis for a redesigned Intrusive Interloper 3.0 - three-quarter inch front, rear, and side walls, and a pair of three-eighths thick angle for the front wedge. We've slimmed down the design so the body is only two inches high.

The aluminium from Speedy Metals was cut slightly oversized, so we ran it through the table saw to trim it to length. The front and rear walls, along with the angles, are 14" long, and the side walls are 12" long, but will be recessed a quarter-inch into the front and rear walls. As we were working with the table saw we decided to chop up some 5" lengths of quarter-inch thick 6061 bar to be the chassis for Lauren's antweight, also on it's third version.

Here's the basic layout of version three of Malicious Mule, with 1.5" Lite Flite wheels, receiver, batteries, and gyro. The bar, however, is 1.25" tall, and we needed one inch so ...

... It's over to Milly to trim the stock down. While the vise is in place we'll also work on slotting the front and rear walls for the thirty-pounder too.

Ouch! Well, we've bled on the featherwight, so the 'Bot Building Gods should be appeased - hopefully the sacrifice pleases them. That'll teach us to run a hand over the underside of a freshly drilled hole - stop and check for swarf first!

Here's where we're going to wrap up for the day - the front and rear walls for the featherweight have been drilled and countersunk for the chassis bolts - we'll still need to slot them, and drill holes for mounting the wedge too, but that's another build report.

Phew! We have three 'bots ready for NERC's Franklin Cup this coming Saturday, and one more missing a wheel but essentially done. Give that we have two and a half evenings plus one full day of build time left, we need to decide what we want to focus on. We can either work on the antweight, in a field of a dozen competitors, or we can put our time and effort into the hobbyweight, which is up against four other contenders in the weight class, including another of our own 'bots. Frankly, it's been so long since we earned a trophy that we're going to take the route with the numeric advantage, and work on the 12lb'er. Hit Back after viewing an image.

Here's the carcass 'bot we're rebuilding - Nihilistic Naysayer 2.0, which took a few hits at Motorama 2012, breaking the weapon shaft and crippling the drive train. Hopefully the improvements we're putting into the rebuild will beef it up some.

This what we have after taking the 'bot apart - a number of damaged frame pieces, a pretty solid drum, and lots of room for improvement! And so we move forward, keeping the drum, weapon motor and speed controller, and not much else.

Here's a quick test-layout of the new chassis and components. The 4S LiPo battery is being replaced with 5S of LiFePO4 cells; the drive motors are going brushless and will be essentially the hubs of the wheels, and the frame should be somewhat sturdier.

Here we've milled slots in the 1/2" 6061 outer walls. The front and middle walls don't look quite right here as they need to be slotted too.

And indeed, here's Milly working on the polycarbonate middle wall. We like working with polycarbonate and UHMW because things go so much faster than when working with aluminium.

With the middle wall slotted, we realize we've made a mistake. Note that the weapon motor shaft is off-center? We cut the slot 1/4" deep, rather than 1/8" - oops! Luckily this ought to be an easy fix.

This is a quick test fit of the drive walls which have been drilled and tapped. The drive motors should end up bolted directly to them, and also need a slot for them in the center wall.

Originally we were planning on casting 40A durometer urethane onto the drive motors, but we don't have time for the Franklin Cup to figure all that out, so here's our 'brilliant plan' instead: we applied five layers of double-sided sticky foam tape to the motor, and then on top of that we added a round of traction tape. In theory the foam tape ought to have some give, like a tire, and the traction tape should - well - give us traction! The traction tape pretty thin, but we have 60 feet of it, so we can afford to replace it between matches.

And this is right about where we see the fatal flaw in the plan. Somehow we messed up the design, because the motors are half an inch longer in real life than we designed for. Argh! If we move the drive walls a half an inch each, we won't have space for our battery packs. Argh! We really want this to work, so we pause to consider our options ...

We decide to press on. We're going to move the drive walls, and order two 2S A123 packs that will fit in the remaining space and run in series. We're dropping 20% of the voltage, but on the other hand, it'll work! So we painted and counter-sank the top and bottom panels. The rear panels will need to be trimmed once the drive walls are moved.

We're about out of time for tonight, so we decided to throw the parts on the scale and see how things look. 11lb 5.6oz with all the existing parts bar a few screws. Even switching the batteries for heavier A123 cells we can still make this work - it's just going to be a matter of time.

There's a saying that goes "Work expands to fill the time available". We don't believe work can possibly contract to fill the time available so looking at our To Do list, we'd better hope we can make good use of our two evenings and one day of build time remaining!

This time in two weeks we'll be competing in the Franklin Cup in Philadelphia, and at the moment the main thing standing between us and victory is ... well ... not having finished 'bots! Hit Back after viewing an image.

As you can tell from our To Do lists for each 'bot, there's plenty yet to do! We're hoping to have quite a few items checked off by the end of the weekend. There's a simple pleasure in scratching out things on a To Do list.

And here are the materials we'll be working with this weekend - five boxes full of parts, waiting to be milled, drilled, and assembled into mighty warriors. Or at least worthy competitors!

For whatever reason the new paint for Malicious Mule and Steel Stiletto never fully dried. While milling these parts for the antweight the paint bonded, so these pieces need touching up, but at least they're done with tapping.

We're trying to get all the milling done that needs the vise, before we take it off for all the flat milling. Here are the side rails for the hobbyweight Nihilistic Naysayer 2.0 getting niches milled for the top and bottom plates.

Hmm. With Milly's head lowered as far as it will go, the end mill still doesn't reach down to the part. Time to break out some risers so we can slot some parts.

With two chunks of 3/4" UHMW under the wall, we can begin to slot them. This is the front wall for Steel Stiletto being slotted for the inner rails.

While Milly is doing her thing, we put some connectors on the 2S 2Ah lithium iron phosphate batteries that will be linked in series for Steel Stiletto. We ended up buying three two-cell packs simply because Hobby King was out of three-cell packs, but the smaller size gives us a little more flexibility in where they live in the 'bot.

Here's the inner chassis for Steel Stiletto - everything lines up nicely - ignore the fact that the left rail seems bowed - once assembled everything actually sat in place nicely.

Yet more slotting - Milly's having a busy day today! Here we're slotting the side rail for Nihilistic Naysayer 2.0 for the front and center walls ...

... Which came out quite well, except we forgot to do a final pass on the middle wall, so it's only 1/8" deep instead of 1/4", so we'll have to fix that tomorrow!

All in all a very productive day again, so let's hope we keep that momentum going through tomorrow, and maybe we'll be able to finish up a 'bot tomorrow! Stay tuned ...

We're another weekend closer to NERC's Franklin Cup competition! We have flights, hotel, and car, but at the moment we don't have any 'bots ... so we'd better keep working! Today more to do on our featherweight Intrusive Interloper 2.0, including figuring out how to get Milly to produce a circular circle. Hit Back after viewing an image.

The first task today is to extract the bearing that wouldn't spin after being pressed into Milly's last attempt at pocketing a circular hole. The bearing definitely put up a fight, as we tried screwdrivers, hammers, and pliers to extract the darn thing.

Finally it came out - pretty mangled - and this is what we were left with. We decided to give Milly another shot at the pocket, and also to take a few thousandths of an inch off the surface to try and neaten it up so the bearing flange would be able to lay flat.

Ouch!! Turns out when Intrusive Interloper 2.0 is standing on end with end walls removed, the inner rails are at exactly the right height to hit you bang in the center of the kneecap! There was much swearing and cursing before things calmed down enough to go find some wound cleanser and the camera.

After a lot of trial and error, we finally came up with a way to get Milly to make a circular pocket we could use, and ta-daa! One side of the outer wall is done. Two more bearing holes to go, and we can think about maybe a lick of paint and getting on with some assembly.

After finishing the outer walls, we needed to enlarge the axle hole in the inner walls, and as we don't have a 5/8" drill bit, we handed this task over to Milly too. We didn't care so much whether this hole was perfectly round or not, as long as there was sufficient clearance for the axle shaft.

While Milly was working on one inner rail, we took the other and drilled and tapped mounting holes for the Whyachi power switch. By the time we were done tapping, Milly was done with the first rail, so we fed her this one.

At this point, we were almost done with fabrication! So to celebrate we broke out the primer, and coated the 6061 rails, in anticipation of putting on top coats later in the afternoon.

While the paint was drying, we began the final assembly. The DeWalts have power leads that are basically the two ends of 6' lengths of silicone-coated flexible wire. We're taking this approach as we don't want to waste wire, but we don't know how much we need, so as we begin wiring we can cut the leads to the appropriate length.

We also tried out all the axles, to ensure there was sufficient clearance, and there is. We do still need to cut the axles to length and pin the wheels to the axles, but we don't have enough Dremel-ish discs for cutting steel, so that will have to wait for the next build session.

Meanwhile, the front and rear rails have dried, so with the help of a rubber mallet we get those reassembled.

Here's where we're at, as the evening dwindles away - we can begin installing some of the internals!

First up, we put the power switch in, then started deciding where to mount the speed controllers. We're initially going to mount them with double-sided foam tape, and once we know how much weight we have left over once the 'bot is totally assembled, we can make some retainers to bolt in.

With the ESCs stuck down we can now begin hooking up the ring terminals on the outputs to the drive motors. We're keeping the leads as short as possible, not just to save weight, but to keep the layout very simple too.

With the motors done, we make a start on putting in the wiring harness for the batteries. They, too, will need some kind of retainer fabricated once we know how much weight there is to play with. It's getting late, though, and it's a school night, so we're going to wrap it up for now and see if we can't get this 'bot driving around by next weekend!

We went on a little bit of a spending spree at the end of last week, thanks to a bit of a bonus at work, and ordered a whole slew of parts for various 'bots we're taking to NERC's Franklin Cup in a month. While we wait for those parts to be delivered, we spent some time this weekend reorganizing the Build Space, and also got some more work done on the featherweight Intrusive Interloper 2.0. Hit Back after viewing an image.

First up, having already received a USB AVR programming controller from Pololu - speedy shipping! - we decided to take another stab at flashing our TZ85A brushless controllers, turning them into brushed controllers. Here's where we left them last time, and one of the leads needs to be resoldered before we can get going.

After inspecting the Pololu board, we found one mistake right off the bat - we had mixed up the MISO and MOSI leads, so we decided to cut off the 10-pin cable, and attach the ends from the 6-pin cable that came with the Pololu programmer. Our poor soldering skills notwithstanding, it didn't take too long to get everything hooked up.

Figuring out the Atmel Studio was relatively simple. Once the drivers for the Pololu programmer were installed, plugging in the device caused to virtual COM ports to be created. In this version of the Atmel Studio, you add them from the tools menu, then open the Device Programming option. It was exciting to see the software actually detect the board, and from there flashing the unit was fast and straight-forward. We tested the ESC with a battery, receiver (it retained its Battery Eliminator Circuit, which is cool) and a spare motor - SUCCESS!

Emboldened by our initial success we decided to try again with the second TX85A. This time we left the heatsink attached, cut off Output C, and also removed the on/off switch leads.

You know, we might be getting the hang of this soldering thing after all - it only took ten minutes to connect the 6-pin cable to the board this time! In a matter of moments the ESC had been flashed - successfully, according to the software, but again we decided to hook it up and try it with a motor.

Hooray - it works! HUGE thanks go to Steve Martin, an Australian robot builder, who figured out how to reverse engineer the ESC and created the hex code. He was also good enough to put up instructions on how to do this. Thanks Steve!

Happy with the speed controllers, we switch the connectors on them from powerpoles to ring terminals, and decided to see where we stood on weight. The only things missing from the photo are some wires, ring terminals, and tie-downs, so as we're currently at 29lb 3.4oz we don't have any worries about this 'bot coming in under weight. You can also see in the photo four wheels we picked up from McMaster. Unlike typical Colson wheels which have a hardness of 65A, these wheels are 40A - the same as we were going to cast for ourselves, but we don't have time to figure that out before Franklin, so we'll play with casting urethane for Motorama instead.

Feeling pretty pleased, we decided to fire Milly up and pocket some holes for the axle bearings. We used Rhino3D and CamBam to produce the G-code, then set her off to work.

While Milly was working, we enlarged the bore on the wheels from 5/16" to half an inch on the drill press, and pushed in the axles. We do still need to pin them, and also the axles need trimming down slightly, but things are coming together.

"Shaka - When the wall fell." Hmm ... Milly didn't do a particularly good job of creating a circle ... we've had this issue before, and fellow builders have suggested checking on the amount of backlash on the X and Y axes. We had it set to 0.002" in the Mach3 CNC software, but checking online shows that other people with units like Milly are more typically in the 0.020" range, so we edited the settings, and re-ran the G-code, and saw that the pocket was becoming more circular. We reset it again to 0.030" and once again the pocket looked better after re-running the code. At this point we could fit a bearing in there, so we turned the wall around and set Milly off on the other side.

Argh! There was a loud crunch as the program got underway - the cutter had impacted the vise, as I had left the part at 0,0 but the G-code goes to a start depth of 0.5" above the surface of the piece, so that was not good. After resetting and letting the code run again, the pocket was pretty ragged - we're guessing that the endmill had become blunt after being rammed into the steel vise at high speed. We tried fitting a bearing, but it wouldn't seat properly, and we also couldn't get it out again! Rats.

We decided it was time to call it a day, and go see a movie. We'll tackle the stuck bearing tomorrow, and replace the blunt endmill, then try the other wall. We're getting pretty close to having this 'bot finished - we're hoping to have it done by the time all the rest of the parts show up, so we can concentrate on the other 'bots we're taking to Franklin.

We have a little work to do today, but it shouldn't take long, so we sneaked in a couple more build hours for the featherweight to see what more we could get done on the chassis, seeing as though our ESC hacking didn't go so well yesterday. If we can get the chassis finished up we can temporarily wire up the frame with Victor 883s and see how it runs. Hit Back after viewing an image.

First up is drilling some 13/64" wholes in the front wedge so we can tap them for 1/4"-20 bolts, which semed to go well enough, although the clearance for the countersink bit was a bit tight.

After the drilling, countersinking, and tapping, thing look pretty good, so it's time to let Milly lose on the front wall to slot it for the bolts to hold the front wedge on.

We'll skip ahead a bit, because we left Milly working while we took care of some work items, and came back to a finished front wall, which we then installed, and fitted the front wedge too - the black marks you see are from the rubber mallet we used to "encourage" the wedge to fit. All told, it's a pretty beefy frame!

Time to wrap up for the day, and so we throw everything in the scale. Chassis, batteries, and some of the electronics come out to 27lb 2.2oz. Missing from this photo are speed controllers, wheels, axles, bearings, and we have a bit of work left to do on the wedge to put an edge on it, so all in all, we're going to get quite close to the 30lb limit, but really shouldn't go over it. Hurrah!

Having mowed the yard this morning, we have the rest of the afternoon free, so it's time for a bit more work on the chassis for our featherweight. After finishing the drillig and tapping yesterday, today we're moving on to milling slots in the chassis and hopefuly having another big chunk of fabrication finished, leaving the wedge, drive train, and wiring to worry about. Hit Back after viewing an image.

It's been a while since we fired Milly up, and it took a little bit before we remembered all the right speeds and feeds to run her at, which is why this first cut is somewhat ragged, but eventually it came back to us, and we set Milly off autonomously.

One of the best things about a CNC-equipped mill is that you can load the G-code and go off and do other things, and just check in from time to time to blow away chips or apply lubricant.

While Milly was doing her thing, we spent some time trying to digest the instructions for hacking the TX85A brushless speed controllers to make them run brushed motors. There's a great page on the Australian RoboWars forum with steps, but we had a devil of a time trying to follow them. As a result, we registered an account, and will ask a couple of questions to try and get going with this.

As we puzzled out the Atmel Studio and USB dongle for attaching to the speed controller, Milly was getting close to finishing the rear wall, so we put down the speed controller and turned our attention back to the frame.

Et voila! The rear wall is finished, and we gently hammered it into place. Everything lined up nicely, so in the next installment we'll spend some time on the front of the 'bot, and finish the front wall and wedge.

This time in two weeks it'll all be over at Motorama 2012 and the arena is likely almost disassembled and stowed in the Benson Trailer, but for now we still have work to do in preparation for the event. Specifically we have an antweight and featherweight to finish, and possibly a Sportsman to wrap up. We've definitely decided to drop Versatile Villain 0.9 in favour of Unlettered Understrapper 2.5, so that one can go back on the bench. Hit Back after viewing an image.

Yesterday we had a space issue with the wheel walls, so to get around that, this morning we decided to take 1/16" off the wheel walls, so we set Milly's atomic batteries to power and turbines to speed, and took care of that.

That's much better - we can now install the outer wall without any interference from the wheel wall, so we just need to do the same thing with the other two wheel walls ...

Et voila! With these walls installed we can now get to sizing up the longer UHMW walls and drilling and slotting them to complete the frame work.

Meanwhile, Lauren's here working on her antweight, and the 'bot is being disassembled for installation of the drive axles.
SGGS: Today I found a new talent in addition to tapping ... the arbor press. With the fuel of a double-shot of espresso and the background of MASH Season 1 I got Malicious Mule disassembled.

Some drilling and pinning later, and all four motor/axle/wheel combos are reinstalled back in the 'bot.

The rest of the chassis is reassembled ready for wiring.

It's a nice, simple design - easy for a new builder to get to grips with. At this point it's time to fire up the soldering iron.
SGGS: Almost done - that same feeling as on Christmas Eve.

The electronics are pretty easy in this 'bot - two ESCs and four motors to be soldered together, and the ESC power source to be soldered to the battery connector.

The battery and receiver are simply mounted to the baseplate with 3M double-sided foam tape, and there we are: done!
SGGS: Time to celebrate and plan out a graffiti-fabulous paint scheme before sparring trials this upcoming weekend.

The reason this isn't a "Presenting ..." post is because the 'bot is a quarter of an ounce overweight, so we're going to slap the 1/4" 6061 aluminium front and rear plates on the mill and pocket out some weight.

At this point in time (three weeks til Motorama) we have a finished antweight, a finished beetleweight, and two finished hobyweights. Still in progress are a fairyweight, an antweight, two beetleweights, a featherweight, and a sportsman. We changed our mind on the fairyweight design a couple of weeks ago, and we're not feeling entirely confident that the featherweight will survive it's first hit, but nonetheless we're pressing on! Hit Back after viewing an image.

First order of business is breaking out the table saw and cutting chassis parts for the fairyweight and sportsman. We've cut some UHMW frame rails, and polycarb rails and plates - made quite a mess but they're done.

We also have some UHMW blocks for the two halves of the fairyweight chassis, which we'll set Milly on in just a little bit.

We've slotted the chassis parts for the sportsman, and are testing the fit - looks fine so far. We will need to do a fair bit of drilling though ...

... But not so much tapping - Pete Smith gifted us some Nutstrip at the last Motorama, so we've cut some lengths with a jigsaw, and we're planning on using it to assemble the outer chassis of the sportsman, as UHMW doesn't hold a thread well.

Ta-daa! Kudos to Pete for a handy product - assembling this chassis took about an hour, including the cutting and drilling. Much better than having to tap 36 holes!

Meanwhile Milly is off and running on the fairyweight chassis blocks, using the G-code we got from CamBam+ a while back. Should be interesting to see how it comes out ...

... Quite nicely actually! We need to clean up a little bit with a craft knife, but it's pretty much just as we imagined.

Unlike these frame rails for the sportsman! Geez ... out of six holes, one is in the right spot - the rest ended up all over the place! Not good ... for some reason we had problems seeing the punch marks on the drill press. We're going to have to try that again.

On the other hand, Milly is doing fine cutting the fairyweight chassis down to size. A quick clean-up, flip, and she can do the other side too.

To give us this! They currently weigh 70 grams, but are still half an inch too long, and have another bit of pocketing to go, but they do look how we envisioned the chassis to come together.

Lauren's getting in on the action too, working on her antweight Malicious Mule. She's working on the drive train at the moment, and Toni's letting her do 95% of the work, to get the full building experience :-)

The 'bot is coming together quite nicely, although perhaps not as quickly as Lauren would like, but it'll be up and running, and sparring with Poor Punctuation 2.0 by next weekend.

The final shot of the evening is a close-up of the fairyweight internals - there's an awful lot of wire that's going to need to be trimmed down, but otherwise things are looking good. Next step with this 'bot will be mounting the drive motors and wheels, and drilling holes to bolt the chassis halves together. But for now it's time to go grill some steaks!

Okay - this is way too cool! Jerome Miles suggested we take a look at CamBam, which is a tool that takes a CAD drawing and allows you to specify what you want to do to the part with the mill, then it automatically generates the G-Code for you! How neat is that??

We created a DXF of the chassis base for the new fairyweight, imported it into CamBam+, told it we wanted three pockets 3/8" deep, and it spat this out:

And it gave us a text file with the G-Code for it!

( Made using CamBam - http://www.cambam.co.uk )
( FW2 Bottom.dxf 1/19/2012 10:30:14 PM )
( T0 : 0.1875 )
G20 G90 G64 G40
G0 Z0.1
( T0 : 0.1875 )
T0 M6
( Pocket1 )
G17
M3 S0
G0 X1.7563 Y1.6313
G1 F6.0 Z-0.1875
G1 Y0.8688
G1 X1.7438
G1 Y1.6313
G1 X1.7563
G1 Y1.7063
G1 X1.8313
G1 Y0.7938
G1 X1.6688
G1 Y1.7063
G1 X1.7563
G1 Y1.7813
G1 X1.9063
G1 Y0.7188
G1 X1.5938
G1 Y1.7813
G1 X1.7563
G1 Y1.8563
G1 X1.9813
G1 Y0.6438
G1 X1.5188
G1 Y1.8563
G1 X1.7563
G1 Y1.9313
G1 X2.0563
G1 Y0.5688
G1 X1.4438
G1 Y1.9313
G1 X1.7563
G1 Y2.0063
G1 X2.1313
G1 Y0.4938
G1 X1.3688
G1 Y2.0063
G1 X1.7563
G1 Y2.0813
G1 X2.2063
G1 Y0.4188
G1 X1.2938
G1 Y2.0813
G1 X1.7563
G1 Y2.1563
G1 X2.2813
G1 Y0.3438
G1 X1.2188
G1 Y2.1563
G1 X1.7563
G0 Z0.1
G0 X0.6368 Y1.4074
G1 Z-0.1875
G1 Y1.0926
G1 X0.625
G3 X0.5188 Y1.078 I0.0 J-0.3938
G1 Y1.422
G3 X0.625 Y1.4074 I0.1063 J0.3791
G1 X0.6368
G1 Y1.4824
G1 X0.7118
G1 Y1.0176
G1 X0.625
G3 X0.4438 Y0.961 I0.0 J-0.3188
G1 Y1.539
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M5
M30

How cool is that?! Can't wait to try this out!!

With the drill press still out of commission, we're falling a little behind in our build schedule, but we found a few other things to be getting on with today, including a non-'bot-related job for a friend at work. Hit Back after viewing an image.

A friend at work caught wind of the fact we have a CNC-equipped mill, and asked whether we could help him with a part he needed fabricating. As we can't get on with a whole lot at the moment, we said sure, and invited him round to the Build Space. The part is a mount for a telescope, and he needed some holes milled for alignment.

It took about an hour to learn about the G2 and G3 codes, and eventually had a G-code script written to mill the three holes. There were a number of firsts - for us - in this simple project, including actually milling all the way through a 3/4" piece of aluminium!

Et voila! In fact, David even paid us for it :-) Good thing too, because we were about to take a hit to the wallet ...

We'd received a call from a machine shop in South Austin that we'd contracted to fix up a few parts for us we couldn't manage by ourselves. Here's the weapon for Didactic Duelist 1.5 all MIG-welded up.

And a couple of parts for the hobbyweight Nihilistic Naysayer 2.0, namely the drum on the left, which had been bored to 1/2" to fit the endcaps, and the rear walls on the right, cut from 4" pipe. Unfortunately the bill for these parts wound up being double the original telephone estimate, so we weren't real thrilled about that, but the work was good.

Here's one of the endcaps in place, although we can't drill and tap it at the moment - hmph!

Same deal with the rear wall ... we sure hope one of the 2L V-belts we ordered from McMaster will fit the drill press when they arrive on Tuesday!

With the exception of a few bolts, we're at 11lb 2.4oz out of the 12lb limit, so we have plenty of weight free on the 'bot we can invest in securing the teeth to the drum.

Turning our attention elsewhere, and we're following some advice from the NERC Forum to switch the output on the weapon motors to decrease the leverage on them and their mounts. Here's one of the weapon motors disassembled.

And we used the arbor press to push the shaft through to the other end of the motor can. This took more force than we would have thought - the shaft is a pretty tight fit in the can, but that's a good thing!

We added a couple of new flats to the shaft for the setscrew and collar. We can reuse the flat already on there from the shaft collar for attaching our pinion gear later.

And we're halfway done. The motor on the left is the adjusted one. We just need to follow the same procedure for the one on the right. Those magnets are really very strong! To reassemble the motor we just put the can in the vicinity of the windings, and everything jumped into place!

And finally two adjusted motors with their mounts attached. We need to add spacers for the pinion gears, and re-attach them to the walls, but that's a task for another day.

Last photo of the day, and it's a Pile-o-Parts we just happen to have sitting around the Build Space ... we wonder if we could make anything with these ...

Despite trying a number of V-belts from Grainger, we still hadn't found a decent replacement for the drill press, so we had to find other things to work on this weekend. We do have a lot of drilling and countersinking to do, and we're waiting for more parts to show up, so we decided to tackle the things we could actually finish without the drill press. Hit Back after viewing an image.

We started out with some 3/4" UHMW blocks loaded into Milly's vise and a quick G-code script to cut out the wheel holes. We did three blocks, just to be on the safe side.

Another G-code script later, and we had cut the lip in the other side of the block for the top plates. Unfortunately we were down to two blocks at this point, because of a mistake mixing X for Y, and ruining a piece.

Here we've been scribbling to determine the paths for the half-inch end mill for the next two G-code scripts to cut out the insides of the chassis.

The outsides were easy. We had issues a while back trying to cut the whole block because the UHMW flexes in the vise, so we used aluminium spacers to prevent that from happening this time.

And success! Two fairyweight chassis blocks ready for the internals to be added, and no errant cuts. We still need to cut slots for the arm, so that's out next task.

Et voila! We've cut the slots for the arms, and the waterjetted top plates fit great! We finally have a fairyweight chassis to work with ... just as soon as the drill press is back in business.

We spent an hour trying to get the weapon motors mounted in the antweight, but the #2-56 nuts were too big to fit against the weapon motor can, so we decided to sand them down a bit and try again.

Yay! After fiddling around for quite a while longer we finally had the weapon motors installed, and they look good! We Dremelled the titanium gears out to fit the motors and Super-Glued them to the motors earlier this morning.

Here we've tested the fit with the weapon ring, and life is good, although this isn't quite as good as we had in our mind's eye, because there's the potential for the ring to move out of alignment if the two weapon motors aren't perfectly in sync, so we may have to add the idlers back in to this design.

Here we've milled down the lower UHMW ring by 1/32" and the titanium ring moves pretty smoothly, so hopefully we won't need to add bearings to the UHMW.

We've had a pretty productive week so far! We're making good progress on two of the beetles, have one 'bot done, and are really waiting for parts to show up to get cracking on the others we're planning on taking to Motorama 2012. While we wait for those parts we have some pieces we can make ourselves, and we still have the wiring to do on Unlettered Understrapper 2.5. Hit Back after viewing an image.

We set Milly off and running on the remaining aluminium parts for the featherweight. While that was going on we decided to finish the lifter for the beetle. We've drilled and tapped one hole for the crank, to fit a #6-32 1" screw which will be Loctite'd in after assembly.

Looks like Milly has finished - we have the three aluminium wall pieces and a spare for each. Still some drilling and tapping to do, once the top and base plates show up.

With the aluminium done, we set Milly off on the UHMW wall pieces, and went to go find something else to do.

Here we've bolted in the crank for the beetle lifter. We still need to round off the ends on the sander, but it's looking okay so far.

A bit more drilling and tapping and the rocker arm has gone in place. Again we need the edges rounding down, but it's coming together nicely.

For fun, we decided to put the arm into place in the 'bot, using hex keys, and the holes all line up, so yay! :-)

Here's where the arm extends to, give or take, and it ought to be enough to be able to fall to one side and roll on to the wheels again. The only issue is that cranking the arm takes a bit of force, and we're not entirely sure whether the HD servo we have is up to the task. We'll have to see when the 'bot is a bit more assembled. We can always switch to a gearmotor, and figure out limit switches using a Team Delta relay.

Yay! The UPS guy just dropped off a fairly large box - let's see what's inside!
:-)

Parts for Formidable Fustigator 2.0: base plate; top plate; and boom strengtheners.

Parts for Poor Punctuation 2.0: top and bottom plates for a one-weapon-motor configuration; top and bottom plates for a two-weapon-motor configuration; a pair of UHMW rings; and titanium weapon ring and gears.

Parts for Malicious Mule: top and bottom plates; inner walls; spare outer walls; front and back plates; and aluminium outer walls.

Parts for Didactic Duelist 1.5: base plate; top plate; side walls; wheels walls; engine mounts; rear walls; and side walls.

We couldn't resist: we had to do a little on the antweight parts! Here we've drilled the UHMW rings slightly to accomodate #4-40 locknuts.

And with minimal effort the locknuts have been pressed into place. We had originally envisioned regular hex nuts, but inexplicably we don't have any, hence the locknuts.

Here's how the antweight parts stack together - polycarb, UHMW ring, titanium weapon ring, UHMW, and then polycarb. There will be a bunch of spacers holding everything together.

Meanwhile, Milly is still turning away on the UHMW parts. Because even half-inch thick UHMW is a bit bendy, we're only doing four inches at a time - the width in the vise, to ensure that at least that much doesn't flex while we're cutting.

Here's the front wall for the 30lb'er, and it's 26.5" long, so we're having to work around the lathe chuck to be able to get the middle of the part, but we finagled it successfully.

Here's a test-fit of the 30lb'er walls on the baseplate. If you look at the back wall, it's not sitting on the baseplate, so obviously we messed something up. On closer inspection we mis-measured the length of the side aluminium walls - they should be a quarter-inch shorter! Thankfully that'll be pretty easy to take care of tomorrow, so we've put it on the list of things Milly has to do tomorrow.

A quick trip to the mailbox yielded junkmail and a package from Hong Kong - more spiral bevel gears! We were planning on using these on the 30lb Sportsman Walker Cyber Scorpion 0.9, but we've scrapped that idea - just too complex with not enough time for Motorama 2012, but on the plus side it'll be a project that will keep us engaged in 'bot-building through the year, rather than just the few months leading up to Motorama 2013 ...

Here we've already counter-sunk all the holes for the top and bottom plates for the antweight's two-motor configuration, so we're about to throw some team colour on them, while we fiddle with some other parts ...

... Namely the antweight weapon motors. They came with set screws in place for prop-savers, but by golly they were in there tight! We ended up Dremelling them off.

Right - we've taken the can off one of the motors intending to press the titanium ring onto the can!

Er - yeah ... not so much. We've mangled the can pressing the gear on, so something's obviously not right here. We broke out the calipers, and groaned. For a press fit you typically aim for three or four thousandths difference in size. What we have here is four hundredths difference. Grr. Our bad on the DXFs we sent to the Whyachis, so what can we do about it?

We set the Dremel-a-like onto it and see if we can neatly take the inner diameter of the gear to somewhere close to the motor outer diameter. Unfortunately we got far too carried away - not realizing the Dremel-a-like worked so quickly on Grade 5 Titanium, and now the ring just slips down the motor. Drat!

At this point we have one good motor, one bad gear, and two fresh gears. Obviously we're going to have to order some more motors, but we started wondering whether we could reclaim the bad gear some way, so we built a jig ...

... And applied some Loctite to the motor/ring combo. Ordinarily we'd have used duct tape, but felt this operation needed a little more finesse. The jig has the ring 0.25" from the bottom of the motor, so if this works we have one working weapon motor. We'll find out in the morning whether we were able to save the titanium gear.

But the first thing we have to do tomorrow is clean, tidy, and organize the garage Build Space, because we wasted a whole heap of time today simply trying to find things! This place is a bomb site hit by a tornado! So that's the plan for first thing tomorrow. For now, we're going to have a gin and tonic, and order some motors ...

This is turning into quite a productive week! Having made a solid start on Versatile Villain 0.9 we decided to gather up all the milling we need to do and take care of as much of it as possible. And we heard from the Whyachis that our parts will actually be here Thursday rather than Friday, so that should make Friday a busy day too! Hit Back after viewing an image.

The first order of business is the table saw, though. We need to cut some walls and chassis blocks from our recent McMaster order. We have some 0.75" UHMW chassis blocks for Macchiavelian Malcontent 0.9 and some pieces for its 4-bar lifter. We also cut the UHMW and 6061 walls for the next version of our featherweight.

Speaking of the featherweight, here are the two weapon motors - we need to make mounts for them, and so cut out a couple of pieces of 1/2" polycarbonate. Here you can see we're missing a pinion gear, but it's on order from China.

The next job for the table saw is bevelling the walls for Formidable Fustigator 2.0 which didn't take too long, but it was quite daunting pushing a three-inch piece of aluminium across the blade and pressing it into the guide to try and keep it level (our table saw has a dip next to the blade) - definitely had to rest the fingers after that job, but they're all intact!

Here's a completed motor mount - fairly quick and easy to whip up, and we were actually quite accurate in our drilling, which made a pleasant change ...

And here's the second. We haven't figured out eactly how far the mounting distances are for these spiral bevel gears, but we'll sort that out once we have the pinions on the motors and a shaft for the main gear.

Well now ... what have we here? These are the two DeWalt motors that survived from the first version of the featherweight, and they don't look like the spare we have. We Googled for information about high and low speed, and found Team DaVinci's handy page which informed us that these DeWalts were in low gear - doh! We set about disassembling them and removing the locking ring to get them into high gear. It took a while, because those planetary gearboxes are fiddly, but eventually we got the hang of putting them back together layer by layer.

Speaking of things surviving from the first version - here are some pieces that didn't! We decided to spend a little bit of time going through the parts to see if we could use anything as spares.

One of the motors was good, and we were able to scavenge sufficient gears to build a gearbox for it, so these are all the DeWalt spares we have now - three motor/gearbox/mount combos. [Actually, we have two more, but Scott's going to buy those for his featherweight - Ed]

While we were scavenging we fired up Milly, with a program to cut down the lifter arm for the beetle. We've figured out by trial and error that if we run the spindle at 1500rpm, set a feed rate of 6 inches/minute, and take 1/16"-deep passes we get good results. Sure, it takes a while, but when we can give it to the CNC PC to take care of, the speed doesn't matter too much.

After a while, this is what we ended up with for phase one. Looks pretty good!

Next we set up a program for the holes for the arms. Truthfully, we do have smaller endmills, but it's a hassle to switch them, so we're quite content to keep trucking with the half-inch one.

Et voila! Phase two is complete - just ignore that errant cut on the right - operator error :-O We moved the part along in the vise and moved on to phase three, and pretty soon had a finished part, which we put aside and moved on to the mating part ...

... The Plow. Truthfully we should have trimmed this on the table saw earlier, but we forgot. It took a while to cut the 2" angle leg down to 1.375", but hey: CNC PC!

While Milly was doing her thing we checked out the lifter arm - just like the CAD! :-) We only need to drill a couple of holes in it and it's a finished part.

Meanwhile, upping the weight class to 1000% we decided to do a test layout of the featherweight. The only parts we're missing for the body are the batteries, motor shaft and pulley - oh: and the top and bottom plates, but it's already starting to come together.

After Milly was done creating aluminium sprinkles we checked out her work - the plow has a small pocket to mate with the arm. There was probably a better way of creating it, but for the life of us, we couldn't figure out how to make a rectangular pocket with round endmills. Maybe we should read a couple more books ...

The next (repetative) task on Milly's plate is to cut lips in all the aluminium walls for the 30lb'er. Again, taking 1/16" passes it takes a while but the results are fine, and we went back to the beetle.

A little bit of drilling-and-tapping later and the plow is mounted on the lifter arm. We're still debating whether to countersink those holes for flat-head bolts, but for now we'll stick with buttonheads.

The last shot of the night, with the aluminium wall parts all cut for the top and bottom plates. Tomorrow: cutting lips into the UHMW walls - hopefully just in time for the plates to arrive!

We received an email today from the Whyachi folks: our parts should be here Friday! In the meanwhile, we have a few 'bots to work on, including our newest beetle, Versatile Villain 0.9, which we made a start on yesterday. Let's see how far we can get today! Hit Back after viewing an image.

Here's our starting point for today: the bottom of the chassis for the beetle. Yesterday we noted that the original chunk of UHMW was a quarter-inch too thick, and we'd have to trim it down, so here we go ...

We're almost getting the hang of clamping parts and not using the vise. It means stopping now and them to adjust the clamps, but that's much better than milling through the bottom of the 'bot!

Et voila! Actually, not quite. Things didn't look quite right, and so we took some measurements. Somehow we'd only shaved off 0.15", not 0.25" - doh! So we were going to have to run the G-code scripts again.

The inner portion is done, and Milly managed to shave a three-foot long streamer during the process - nifty! Now to adjust the clamps for the outer portions.

And we're done! For sure, this time :-) This picture was taken after using a box-knife blade (carefully) to strip off all the hairy bits. Came out nice, we think.

There is still the issue of the lip being too shallow in the corners, so back on the mill for a bit more to cut the lip a bit deeper.

And there it is: the top plates fit, and the chassis block is done - yay! Not bad for two day's work ... we were actually doing other things while Milly was running, but just organizational stuff. Honest.

Here we've drilled the pin-holes for the rocker and the crank arms for the 4-bar lifting mechanism. Thankfully we had spares, as we'd managed to snap a 1/16" drill bit in one of them, but no worries.

Just a quick test layout with pin-holes drilled in the internal polycarbonate walls. Looks about right to us.

On the other hand, this doesn't look right: the PWM cable for one of the inputs on the RobotLogic Mecanum Mixer seems to be reversed. Rather than send it back, or fiddle with the soldering iron, we're just going to make a note to plug that connector into the receiver backwards.

After a bit of drilling and tapping we have the inner walls installed, and things still seem to fit okay, except we've just realized that we're probably not going to be able to actuate the crank in the position it's currently in.

Here are some of the internals of the 'bot, including the omniwheels and mounts, mixer and receiver, servo for the arm, and battery and power switch. Still needing to be ordered are the four FingerTech TinyESCs and four Pololu 50:1 HP motors.

We haven't done any milling on the arm pieces yet, but decided to do a test-fit anyhow, and things look about right so far. Weight-wise we're also doing good - a little over two pounds without the motors or speed controllers.

Last shot of the day as we wrap up - the top plates are installed and the 'bot looks pretty neat :-) Still plenty of milling, drilling, tapping, and assembly to go, but for now - as the temperature dips below 40°F it's time for dinner!

Okay - after a fun Christmas Day (love my Kindle!) it was time to get serious about Motorama 2012. We have the week off this week, so looking forward to a getting a whole bunch of building done. As we're waiting for parts for the new 'bots, and didn't much fancy tackling the wiring on Unlettered Understrapper 2.5, we decided instead to spend some time working on the chassis for our other new beetleweight Versatile Villain 0.9. Hit Back after viewing an image.

Our mill vise can't handle the 8.75" chassis block, and given our problems working on the fairyweight chassis with it in the vise, we decided instead to try bolting it down to the cross-slide.

We elected to tackle the milling in three segments - middle, front, and back - with the front being to the right in the picture. There were a couple of spots where we weren't entirely sure about clearances of the bolts for the clamps, but we figured we'd give it a shot anyhow!

A quick shot of the CNC control system - Mach3 - running our G-code. There are a number of functions we still haven't figured out yet, but we appreciate the opportunity to practice. It was actually a bit daunting going straight for a one-off block we don't have spares for should something go wrong, but there's no time like the present!

Oops! We hadn't entirely positioned the block properly, because we hit the extend of the Y-axis. So we stopped the G-code program and repositioned the block. We were aligning the block with the edge of the cross-slide, which allowed us to keep 0 on the x-axis in the same place, and just had to recalibrate the Y-axis.

And we're off and running! We're going in three passes - 0.375", 0.75", and 1.125" deep. It's only UHMW and we could probably do more at a time, but we wanted to be a little careful.

Having completed the first pass in the middle section, we took a quick photo and reset for the next round.

Cool! The middle section is done, so it's time to adjust the clamps, and load up the G-code for the front third.

We've reset the clamps, and we're about to get the next section underway. We did take a sanity check to ensure that the spindle will keep clear of the clamps, and it does, barely - but "barely" is enough :-)

After some more 220V consumption we have two-thirds of the milling done. Time to readjust the clamps again for the final third.

Here's a gratuitous shot of the last section underway. You don't have to click on this one ;-)

And hey presto! We're done! Actually, we're not done because the original material was actually 1.5" thick and the 'bot is only 1.25" tall, so we'll need to load back up tomorrow and take the base down a bit. You'll also notice that the top plates don't quite actually fit, as we were a little off in calculating the curves, so we'll have to touch them up a bit too.

We also milled slots for the weapon arm in the front and back walls. We'll need to run a razor blade over the base to clean up the 'hairy UHMW' from cutting in the 'wrong' direction. CNC'd material always end up looking nifty.

The realization dawned this morning that we weren't going to be able to complete our drumbot Nihilistic Naysayer 2.0. We just didn't have the tooling to work on the drum, and without it the 'bot is pretty useless, so we looked around the Build Space to see what was available to us. We stumbled upon a box of old parts, and decided to investigate further. Click Back after viewing an image.

We've unearthed the parts for a rammer hobbyweight that we never took to competition from six years ago. These are 6061 aluminium frame parts, mini-EV motors with custom gearboxes (called Mini-Walts), and 3.5" Colson wheels. Those parts, plus some #25 chain come to 9.4 pounds in weight, so the other question is can we add the rest of the essentials and stay within twleve pounds ...

We added a 4S LiPo pack, receiver, BEC, power switch, a couple of Victor speed controllers, and couple of spikes. At this point we were up to 11.2 pounds, so it looks like with the lithium-polymer technology we're going to be able to bring this 'bot to life for Motorama!

We remember that when we tried to assemble this 'bot years ago the drive train was horribly bound up, so we ran a couple of drill bits and the Dremel-ish in the bronze bushings, and set about assembling the drive train.

To try and ensure we don't hit up on the binding issues again we use Milly to open the frame slots by a few thousandths both front and back. This helps a lot in putting the frame together, as it no longer feels so tight.

Now the slots are open we go ahead and assemble the chassis, and feel good with how well the wheels spin by hand. We had to switch one of the chain so the master link plates were on the outside, but now we've done that things are looking good.

Good enough to steal some electronics from the carcas of our old middleweight and begin the wiring process. Victor 883s do take up space, but they also make wiring a 'bot very easy.

The grey bundles on the ends are a pair of 3S LiPo packs running in series to give the Mini-Walts 22.2V of juice, which will make the 'bot hugely fast and pushy, but also means we need to dig out the transmitter manual and read up on dual rates!

The last connections go in and there's life! We tweaked the connections to get the motors running the right way, but there's no binding in the drivetrain, and everything looks solid, so we took it out to the driveway for a test run. There's no video of it - sorry - but trust us - it actually drove quite well!

As a final step we're installing the spikes to the front, and we don't have any 3/8"-24 flathead bolts, so we've put some grade 5 hex bolts in there, and we're sanding the heads down to give is clearance for the wheels.

Here we are all wrapped up! 11.8 pounds, working, driving, living, brought back from the Box o' Death - note that sometimes being a hoarder pays off :-)

Due to some work requirements, we weren't able to get any building in last night, plus UPS were still keeping our missing parts from Whyachi hostage, so we were a bit miffed. Today was quite different, though, because not only did UPS finally drop off our parts, we had the whole evening to work on the 'bots. Granted it was below freezing in the Build Space, but we were determined to keep moving and cross some items off our To Do Lists. Click Back after viewing an image.

Here's one of the more exciting parts that showed up via UPS from Team Whyachi: the hardened steel blade for our 30-pounder Formidable Fustigator 0.9. That's a 24" quarter-inch thick piece of chromoly.

More Whyachi parts - the top and bottom plates for the 30lb'er, cut from 3/16" polycarbonate. We've been really looking forward to receiving these, so we could get on with assembling the 'bot.

Some more parts, although on a different scale. 0.07" titanium front panels for the beetleweight Didactic Duelist 0.9, and three chromoly blades for the 'bot too, also heat treated.

Despite below-freezing temperatures in the Build Space we decided to try and put a coat of paint on some of the featheweight and beetleweight parts. Due to the low light in the Build Space it wasn't until we took this photo that we saw the first coat barely coloured the parts, much less covered them. Guess it's time to give a second coat.

There were a few holes to drill in the top plate of the 30lb'er, to mount the drive motors and wheel walls. We didn't have them waterjetted because we didn't know where they needed to be at the time. It was pretty easy to mark up and drill the top plate, though.

As you can see, this 'bot is bigger than our drill press, so working on the base plate proved to be a logistical challenge, trying to work around the limitations of the drill press to get to the holes we needed.

We chucked up the countersink and went to town on the top and bottom plates. We find countersinking to be a very relaxing operation ... wonder if you can be a professional countersinkerer ...

Now that the top plate has been drilled out, we're ready to give it a coat of paint. The blotches on the camera are condensation on the lens, although we did end up applying a second coat to the top plate. We decided not to paint the baseplate, as it wasn't necessary, and we wanted a way to be able to see into the 'bot after a match.

While the 30lb'er parts dried, we decided to look at the hobbyweight, and work on the gearboxes we're building. Here we've pressed a second ring gear into some delrin tube, and we're collecting up gears to install.

After working on this for a little while we realized we'd made a slight error - the gearbox plates that the motor mounted to should have been a quarter of an inch thick, instead of an eighth of an inch. We'll recut those at a more socially acceptable time to be using the tablesaw.

While we continued to wait for the painted parts to dry, we decided to install some components to the baseplate. Here we've installed the weapon shaft bearing and the strengthener for the bottom plate, along with the lower blade sheath. It all went together easily - bonus marks for waterjetting!

Here's the flip side of the part. The half-inch bolts are just the right size, and the bearing fits very nicely into the base of the aluminium parts.

We couldn't resist test-fitting the blade. We bolted in the weapon retainer, and pressed the shaft into the blade. With the aliminium brace installed the parts seemed reasonably solid, so that's good. Maybe it'll make it past one hit ;-)

We changed tack as the painted parts were still tacky, and decided to sweat some small stuff. We've never done this before, but we installed zipties to the FETs on the Victor 883s for the 30lb'er to try and protect against the two bridges shorting on an impact. It was easy enough, and passed the time while parts were drying.

Here we failed miserably to install a 45A Anderson Powerpole connector to a battery pack. We used to have no problems doing this, but we must have lost the knack. We scoured YouTube for a while, and dinked with a spare connector or two, and finally managed to get them installed.

Our parts are dry to the touch, so we decided to soldier ahead with the assembly. Here we've loosely installed the weapon motor mount and the rear curve wall. We decide to install the rear drive motor next, but a mistake in our design meant the wall and the mount overlapped, and we'd need to clear that up.

Ordinarily we'd have sanded down the wheel mount using the sander, but we realized we had Milly sitting in the corner, so we decided to cut out slots for the motor mount to fit in. At this point we realized it was gone 11pm, and down to the teens temperature-wise, so we called it a night, and headed into the warmth.