This is it: our last day before we have to pack up the Botmobile and hit the road to Motorama. We have two unfinished 'bots: the featherweight Formidable Fustigator 2.0 and the sportsman Palindrome30. The featherweight is closest to being completed, so that's where we'll concentrate today. To Hit Back after viewing an image.

We need to drill weapon transmission holes in the top and bottom panels, so we printed a 1:1 template from Rhino3D to help mark the holes, and punched them into place.

Meanwhile, Milly was off making bearing blocks for the Sportsman, in the slim chance we'll have some time to work on it too, today.

Here are the bearing blocks - they need to be cut up, but otherwise ought to be okay.

Going back over to Milly, we used the 1/8"-inch end mill to position the top panel and then used a Mach3 wizard to cut a circular hole for the bronze bushing for the transmission shaft.

And hurray - top and bottom are done. Of course this photo doesn't show the time that ticked away disassembling and then reassembling the 'bot ...

The top panel has had a coat of paint, and we've also pressed the bushing in here too. Now we just have to finish the wiring!

As we have plenty of weight to spare, we decided to cut and install a battery wall, using some 2" polycarbonate strips. Fortunately it didn't take too long to cut, drill, and tap them, and we moved on.

Now that we can actually put the 'bot together, we found ourselves with a very tight fit in the transmission bushings for the shaft, so we put the shaft in the drill press, and used a file to trim down the diameter of the ends of the shaft until it spun more freely.

Et voila. We need to trim the bronze bushings down - we only had half-inch long ones on hand, and only really needed quarter-inch, but that's a trivial task.

Here we're in the midst of aligning the gears for the weapon transmission - through the forceful application of the arbor press we were able to bring the bevel gear in alignment with the pinion, and things seemed to fit together fairly well.

We've just realized something: we thought we were being clever angling the weapon motors away from the blade path and drive motors, but in fact we've shot ourselves in the foot - now we don't have room behind the rear drive motor for the wiring to pass from one side of the 'bot to the other. Grr. We're going to have to run it over the rear DeWalt, and squish it down with the top panel.

It's gone from being late to being early again! But we press on with the assembly and wiring, doggedly determined to wrap up this build for Motorama. The weapon transmission is done, and we move on to the remaining wiring.

The battery wall has been installed, so now we can run wiring from the batteries to the power switch and common ground.

It looks a bit of a mess, but except for the weapon motor speed controllers, the wiring is all in place! We decided to use ring terminals to connect the speed controllers to the weapon motors, so they don't take very long to install in the end.

Smoke! We fired the 'bot up to test the drive wiring, and one of the Victor 883s let out the magic smoke from one half of the FETs - the motor connected to it would go forward fine, but there would be smoke, flame, and no movement in the other direction. Yet more precious time was consumed swapping out both the speed controller and the motor.

Due to our weapon motor placement gaffe, we're having to route a pair of wires across the front of the 'bot and under the path of the blade. We use wire anchors and zip ties to keep the wires taut across there.

The wiring is finally done! The mess of PWM cables has been zip-tied up, and everything checks out okay! Time to bolt the 'bot up.

Last thing to do is check weight, and we're way under - 27 out of 30 pounds allowed, so no problems there. We'd better get the Botmobile loaded - it's 4am, and we leave for Motorama in four hours!

Two build days and two unfinished 'bots. Not much introduction to this one, just get out there and get some construction accomplished. We did start by revising our To Do lists for Formidable Fustigator 2.0 and Palindrome30; unfortunately there seems like about three days of work to do - missing Tuesday and Wednesday evenings has hurt the schedule, but we'll see what we can do. Hit Back after viewing an image.

First up today is another trip to Chris Allison's place for some sawing and lathing. Lots of small, but vital parts.

The bandsaw makes short work of our list of things to cut - some weapon motor spacers, weapon shafts, blade hubs, and transmission shafts.

And over to the lathe for some boring and turning, not just of the pieces we cut, but a pulley and some bushings too.

Here are some blade hubs - these will be drilled and screwed to the blades, and the hubs will be pinned to the weapon shaft.

Not a bad couple of hours of work. We'd like to say Thanks again to Chris for his hospitality and his very cool workshop - incidentally, Chris runs a pretty neat web site with all sorts of cool industrial and machinery stuff for sale.

Back at the Build Space we're drilling the saw blades and hubs. Thankfully these blades didn't put up too much of a fight, unlike the gears the yesterday.

We also had a couple of wheel hubs left to broach, which we just about accomplished, but we broke our 1/8" broach during it, so when we get back from Motorama we'll have to hit eBay for a replacement.

The wheels and hubs have been drilled and tapped for a 1/4"-20 bolt to hook them together, and it's nice to be able to check something else off the To Do list.

We weren't able to line up a welder to stick the gears to some spacers, so we decided to go with a great idea Jason of Team Terror came up with - slot the gear, and put a pin through the shaft to keep it in place. Slotting the gear was easy enough ...

... But drilling the motor shaft was nigh impossible, so we slotted that too! Seemed to work fairly well, with the aluminium spacer in there too.

We've switched the orientation of the shaft on the two motors for the Sportsman, like we did for the Featherweight. We've also pressed on the aluminium spacers for the sprockets, which we'll drill and tap for a small set screw where the Xs are.

Here's the weaponry for the Sportsman - eight saw blades, four for each end of the 'bot, with their hubs installed, and ready to be installed to the shaft.

Now that we have the pinion gears mounted we're able to figure out that the motor mounts need to be one and 1/16" from the center of the transmission shaft, and the bevel gear needs to be 0.3" up from the baseplate, for optimum contact. Once we drill the bushing and mounting holes in the top and bottom plates, we'll be ready to install the transmission, which will just leave wiring on the thirty pounder.

We hit the wall tonight, and decided to go do some laundry and have something to eat, leaving To Do lists with quite a few items on them, but actually a lot of these remaining steps are all dependent on one or two key steps, so if we can get them done tomorrow morning, the rest of the 'bots should fall in place. In reality, we're not 100% sure that both these 'bots will be finished tomorrow ... worst case we'll be doing some wiring in the pits on Friday ...

We only have three days of build time left before hitting the road for Motorama 2012, and we still have two unfinished 'bots. Today we decided to concentrate on the one that has the most work to be done: Palindrome30, our Sportsman-class thirty pounder, and see how far along we could get. Hit Back after viewing an image.

We're starting out today with some disassembly, as we need to be able to get the baseplate drilled for motors, etc. There are a lot of bolts on this 'bot! But thankfully only eight to be able to get at the batteries.

We've ended up using buttonhead bolts for the outer blade brackets, because we couldn't get the countersink into the groove to be able to use flathead ones, so we need to make recesses for clearance. As the side panels are 15" long, we can't do this on Milly, but we can put a half-inch endmill in the drill press and get the job done.

They actually came out quite well, once we got the hang of shimming the wall in the slot on the side of the drill press table. One more thing to cross off the list.

This was a test to make sure the clearance holes were deep enough - it all looks good, so time to move on to mounting things on the baseplate.

But first a weigh-in. Despite the copious number of bolts in this 'bot, we're still way underweight at the moment at 26.0 pounds. Granted we do need to throw in eight hubs for the saw blades, but they're only going to be πr² x l x density, or 3.14 x 0.625 x 0.625 x 0.375 x 0.1 = under an ounce each.

After marking and drilling the baseplate, we have the DeWalt drive motors in place. We also drilled mounting holes for the weapon motor mounts.

It's pretty chilly again today, and we had the heater running, which did a good job of warming things up, but this also warmed us up: forcing an 1/8" broach through a wheel hub - darn, that was hard work! Two down, two to go, and we'll come back to them in a bit.

This shot was taken after carefully tightening the weapon brackets, and getting them all aligned. The shaft actually spins fairly freely, which is great!

On the internals, and here's a test layout. It's fairly cramped in here, but that's a good thing - it'll stop components from bouncing around inside the 'bot. On each end we have a weapon motor and drive speed control, next in are the drive motors, and in the middle we have a 4S weapon battery, two weapon speed controllers, and two 3S drive batteries which will be linked in series for 22.2 volts. There are two separate power switches, one for drive and one for weapons.

The two power switches have been mounted to the side wall, to get the hex hole as close to the top panel as possible, and leave room underneath for wires to pass by.

The top plate has been drilled for access holes to the power switches. We're not going to paint the top, so the LEDs on the Victor 883s will serve as our power lights, saving us from having to cram another component in there.

The drive ESCs have been mounted, and we're beginning to wire things up.

We didn't pay attention to the batteries when we selected them, but these packs have 8 gauge wire on them. We don't have any connectors that fit that size of wire well, and after struggling to get Anderson Power Poles on one of the two packs, we finally gave up for the night, intending to mull over what sort of connectors we can use, and come back tomorrow with a solution!

Time's ticking away, and we still have two 'bots under construction. We had some errands to run this morning, but at lunch time we bundled up warm and headed out to the Build Space. There are a number of key things to be done, and with a McMaster delivery last night we ought to be able to make some decent progress. Hit Back after viewing an image.

Speaking of lunch - this is a left-over slice of pizza we made last night - Five cheese and Jalapeno Sausage - very tasty :-)

Some of the parts we received yesterday included some aluminium spacers and a 6mm drill bit, so we drilled out the spacers for the featherweight's weapon motors, to take them up to the 8mm bore of the pinion gears.

Two drill bits and half an hour later and this is as far as we'd gotten drilling holes in the pinion gears. These gears must be hardened, as they're proving to be a bear to work with. We're going to have to think up an alternative method of securing them to the weapon shaft spacers.

Stymied by the featherweight we decided to turn our attention to the other 'bot needng work, our 30lb Sportsman. Here we have the eight saw blades for it. We'd budgeted 4 pounds for them, and they're actually less than one and a quarter pounds, so there's a savings right off the 'bat.

Although we made a good start on the chassis a while back, there's plenty of parts left to be fabricated, and by fabricated we mean drilled and tapped, so it's time to break out the drill bits and take a swing at these weapon shaft mounts.

We were much more accurate in our drilling this time out, and soon it was time to dig out the 1/4"-20 tap and cut some threads.

It took a while, but eventually we had one side done, but as you can see here there's a hair of misalignment in the bushings, so we're going to enlarge the bolt holes a little and see if we can wiggle things into orientation.

We got part-way through the other side, when the cold was a bit much, and it was time to break for dinner. Tomorrow we're going to finish the weapon mounts, and install the drive train. Hopefully on Monday we'll have our weapon motors for the featherweight done, and we can finish installing the internal components.

The last couple of nights we've been dealing with problems at the office, so no build time, but those issues are [hopefully] resolved, and we had time tonight to get a little building done, so it's time to wire up the featherweight. We have quite a few things left to do on the To Do List for for this 'bot still, so we'd better crack on. Hit Back after viewing an image.

We missed some holes in the DXF we sent to Whyachi when the top and bottom plates for Formidable Fustigator 2.0 were waterjetted, so we had to drill a few ourselves, such as the mounting holes for the weapon shaft retainer, but that's now installed.

We're milling down the upper weapon shaft case to be able to keep the timing belt inside the 'bot, which was fairly swift and easy with Milly, but it will turn out later that we really shouldn't have done this ...

Here's a shot of a slight issue - although we're re-using the weapon shaft case parts from Version One the geometry is different, so we need to figure out a way to take up the slack between the top and upper weapon case.

The bearing also needs to be trimmed to fit the new layout, which is easy enough, and we verified afterwards that the bearing is still round and that the weapon blade shaft still fits - hurrah!

Here's the solution to the gap issue problem earlier: rather than cut down another aluminum round and drill it, etc., we just through a few washers in, and we're good to go, but there's an issue: see the slight gap between the blade and the washer? That's causing a problem when the blade spins, because it can move a little, which doesn't bode well for the front wall, and for some reason we can't find a spare washer to replace the one we accidentally milled earlier today.

After checking things out, and milling the front wall, we're actually feeling pretty good about the clearance on the blade, and we can move on. We also milled the front wall to account for the timing belt.

Here's a quick weight check after the milling: we're at 26.0 pounds, so we have loads of weight for wiring and potentially strengthening up the weapon boom.

One other potential cause of the blade wobbling was that we hadn't bolted down the lower bearing, so that's been done, and the blade does actually spin straighter with the bearing mounted.

The final photo for the night, following some Frankensteinian wiring, and figuring out that the OrangeRx receiver does need booster cables for the Victor 883 speed controllers. We've got the motor connections sorted out so the 'bot goes forward/backward/left/right appropriately, and the rear wall runs the right way to enable "crab mode". This weekend we'll finish up the wiring, and Monday we'll install the weapon motors and gearing.

Flush with our recent successes in finishing up 'bots we're left with two big 'uns to wrap up, so we need to get to it! Tonight we're hoping to finish the frame for the featherweight, so we have some drilling and milling to get on with. Hit Back after viewing an image.

It took a bit of sanding to get the first wall to fit - if we meet the person who designed all these anoying angles into the 'bot we'll throttle them! But eventually we were able to install the wall, and moved on to the second.

Ta-daa! Turns out sanding down the wall end goes faster with a fresh belt, but we finally have the frame for the 30lb'er done, except for a few slots in the front wall which we can deal with pretty easily with Milly later. Also, the square nuts are a stupid idea, so we won't be doing that again; we're going to have to hot-glue them into their slots at some point soon.

Now the outside is done, we took a few moments to practice the layout on the inside. There should be plenty of space for wiring etc., so we should be able to whip through that part.

And no time like the present! We've installed the three Victor 883 speed controllers, and we have a test-fit of the large Whyachi power switch done too, so we could - in theory - set about wiring the drive motors.

So let's push the boat out a bit and do some wiring. We've begun hooking the drive motors to the speed controllers. Unfortunately it's a school night, so we need to wrap this up, and pick it up again tomorrow - hopefully with a quick test drive!

With such a small number of things left to do we took some time after dinner tonight to wrap up Malicious Mule and get it ready for competition. We needed to trim some weight and bind the receiver to the radio, then see how it behaved. Hit Back after viewing an image.
SGGS: Houston - we have lift off!

After a quick turn on Milly we put the 'bot back on the scale and the problem quarter of an ounce had disappeared, and we were fighting fit at 15.94 ounces.
SGGS: Although Malicious Mule, like Steel Stiletto lacks a weapon, it makes up for it with Formula One-class driving and indomitable intention to win!

After bolting together the drivetrain it was time to put the newest antweight through it's paces on the test cardboard platform:

SGGS: In it's initial test run I was pleased to see that the Malicious Mule drove more reliably, smoothly, and with a more reliable drive-train than my Jaguar ever did! For the remainder of this week, the Malicious Mule (along with it's sister Steel Stiletto, will go the the paint shop for a Graffiti-fabulous paint job and of course, custom shoe logo. We must look our best, after all, for the competition.

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.

With the beetle finished this morning, our list of things to do is diminishing quite nicely! But by far the longest To Do lists are for the the two biggest 'bots, and as there's only this weekend and next weekend left to go, we need to buckle down and make some progress! Hit Back after viewing an image.

We started out by bolting the drive motors and wheels to the baseplate. Somehow we messed up the CAD and the motors are an eighth of an inch out of place, which would make installing the side walls a bit tricky, but we press on ...

The front wall is UHMW which doesn't hold a thread very well, so we decided to insert square nuts to capture the bolts. After a bit of milling and drilling - note to selves: do that the other way around next time - the front wall is ready for a test fit.

And it fits quite snugly. We've deviated from the design in that we bolted the boom strengthener to the base without milling the base down, to try and maintain as much stiffness as possible.

A test fit of the top plate too - the nuts seem to work well, so we're happy with that.

Here we've installed the rear wall, and had to fight the wheel mount - because the motors are a touch too far forward the wheel is also slightly forward, and so there's interference from the wheel wall that makes spinning the wheel very tough. We're probably going to have to switch the half-inch wheel mounts for some 3/8" polycarb and re-make them.

The final shot of the day is a weigh-in. With all the components on the scale the 'bot is at 26.0 pounds, so we ought to have some weight left over for some additional stiffening of the weapon boom. Tomorrow we'll finish the walls, and get to work on wiring up the drive components. Given the issues we had trying to enlarge the 10mm bore on the bevel gear earlier this week, we're thinking of just ordering some 10mm keyed shaft from McMaster rather than fight with the gear on the lathe, so the weapon on the 'bot won't get finished until next weekend.

Last night we almost had another 'bot finished, but the weapon wouldn't spin up, so the first order of business this morning is figuring out why! We had put a 35A reversible ESC in the 'bot and the weapon motor kept just twitching. We hunted out the manual for the ESC and tried to go through the programming steps to calibrate it, and change some settings for a softer start, etc., but nothing helped, and the battery wound up extremely hot! Hit Back after viewing an image.

So we took the reversible ESC out and swapped back in the original 40A single-direction Plush ESC we used last time, and the weapon motor spun up just fine. The design of Didactic Duelist 1.5 isn't really invertible anyhow, so we decided to re-use this ESC.

The Plush ESC is roughly the same size as the 35A reversible one, so we were able to keep the layout the same inside, and added a power light for good measure. We also added a couple of nuts and bolts under the front of the 'bot to stop it from scraping along on the titanium plow.

And so there we go: 2lb 13.4oz - underweight with a couple of ounces to spare, and it's time for a proper test run. Unforuntately the video isn't great, and the 'bot doesn't drive particularly well on our curving driveway, but the drive works, the weapon works, and the 'bot is ready for Motorama!

A small yet expensive box of parts from SDP/SI showed up this evening, so that meant we had what we needed to finish our second beetleweight. We'd ordered a selection of MXL timing belts for the weapon, as we weren't 100% sure what size we needed, so let's see if we can wrap this 'bot up! After finishing Hit Back after viewing an image.

After some test-fitting, we figured out the right size belt and disassembled the side of the 'bot to take the motor out.

We had lost the original 12-tooth pulley, so had ordered a new one, and it didn't take very long to drill it for a 1/16" roll pin, and attached it to the motor.

With that done, the last thing - as always - is wiring the 'bot up. Fortunately in this 'bot we have plenty of space for wiring, and it's just a matter of hooking everything together.

We know it doesn't look all that neat, but it fits. We also trimmed down some of the bolts, as we'd neglected to order some that were the right length, but the Dremel-ish took care of that in no time.

Grr ... the 'bot drives fine (although it could use a the same tweak we did to the previous version with a couple of nuts under the front of the baseplate) but the weapon won't spin up. We even took the top off to see what was going on, whether it was friction, or something up with the ESC, but we couldn't tell, and it was getting late, so we'll have to do a bit of troubleshooting this weekend.

Having dashed out at lunchtime to Grainger to swipe some #2-56 x 3/8" screws we were hoping to get the smallest 'bot in the fleet for Motorama 2012 finished up tonight. There's not much to do,so we buckled down and set to it. Hit Back after viewing an image.

It didn't take very long to get the new bolts broken out and installed for the weapon motor. Although there are only two screws they seem very secure, so out excessive milling doesn't seem to have caused too many issues.

There's still - unfortunately - a bit of soldering to be done, but it's relatively straight-foward as we're connecting the weapon motor to the weapon ESC.

We left the leads as they were to have plenty of manoueverability taking the 'bot apart, wrapping the soldered connections in electrical tape to insulate them.

Everything looks good, and a test on the scale says 148 grams out of the 150 allowed, so we should be good to go with this 'bot! It's nice to have another one done, and the night is still young, so we can now turn our attention to another member of the fleet ...

Bonus! We have a box that fits this 'bot - the box our first featherweight's weapon motor came in, but it houses our smallest 'bot just fine ...

This time in two weeks we'll be on the road to Nashville, on the way to Motorama 2012! Which is exciting, but we still have work to do - the plan is to finish the fairyweight and a beetleweight by the weekend, and then spend the weekend working on the two biggest 'bots. In order to manage that we need to fabricate some parts, and put a call in to Chris over at Speedster Hobbies to see whether we could get some shop time, and Chris graciously agreed. We jumped in the BotMobile with some materials and headed his way. Hit Back after viewing an image.

Chris reminded us of how the bandsaw worked, and we started out by chopping up some aluminium and steel. Boy, we wish we had one of these in the Build Space! Nifty!

Here's what we cut up - DeWalt drive axles, a weapon transmission shaft, two pairs of blade shafts (steel and aluminium), wheel hubs, and trimmed down the blade shaft and retainer for the 30lb'er.

After a spell on the lathe, we had the aluminium round turned down to fit the Colson wheels. Not perfect to the thousandth of an inch, but well within typical Team Radicus tolerances :-)

Chris has a new lathe, and it was working just fine! In fact, he hadn't had time himself to use it yet, so we were the first to fire it up, and it was fun!

After hitting the hubs with a countersink (to start the hole), and a couple of drill bits, we had the hubs ready for the shafts. We hope we have a 1/8" broach back at the Build Space ...

The last lathe operation for the day is to bore the bevel gear for the 30lb'er to half an inch - it's metric, and has a 10mm bore at the moment. We didn't realize this was going to be a tough job, but the presence of a keyway messed things up, and we wound up snapping a bit trying to bore this out. We'll have to do a bit of research into a way to accomplish this ...

With profuse thanks to Chris, we jumped back into the BotMobile and headed back to the Build Space, noting along the way that the temperature was over 80°F - eighty degrees in February?! Crazy.

Turning our attention to the smallest 'bot in the fleet, we milled a hole for the weapon motor wires, and drilled mounting holes for the weapon motor in the front of the chassis.

We've also modded the mounting plate a little, and a couple of #2-56 screws and nuts have started the process of mounting the motor to the plate, but we need 3/8" long ones to mount this to the chassis, and we don't have any. Looks like a trip to Grainger is on the cards tomorrow ...

In this photo the motor is actually slightly lower than it will sit on the chassis, but close enough to see that it clears the ground, which is a plus :-)

There's a lot of wiring to be dealt with, so we decided to mill out a bit more of the top part of the chassis - messes up the CamBam+ finish, but at least it we ought to be able to cram everything in now.

We were originally steeling ourselves to have to cut and solder the receiver wires on the speed controllers, but thankfully Kurtis over at FingerTech uses very flexible wire on his TinyESCs, and we were able to stuff the excess into a couple of crannies in the 'bot, and move on.

Next up is mounting the weapon speed controller. We decided to risk the weight and used a small piece of double-sided foam tape to stick it down to the motors at the back of the 'bot, and again we stuffed the receiver lead into space around the battery.

Which brings us to power cables. Because all the wires are quite fine gauge, we decide to just try and solder them all together, and with some electrical tape a zip tie, got them all close enough to hit with the soldering iron in one go. Not pretty, but seems to hold fine.

So we did the same thing with the positive power leads, and did actually remove the zip tie before putting some heatshrink on the end of the leads.

Time for a sanity check. The chassis, plus it's nuts, and a couple of bolts to approximate the missing motor mount nuts and bolts, and we're at 149 grams - looks good to us, but we need to hope that NERC's official scale is close to our's. There is a difference in latitude between Austin, TX, and Harrisburg, PA, but hopefully not enough to cause a couple of grams difference ...

This was a shot after a quick test drive of the 'bot. It is pretty zippy, but fairly easy to control - without the weapon, of course! We'll see tomorrow how it drives with the weapon spinning on the front.

Last shot of the night, and we've milled a small hole on the top of the 'bot to be able to get to the battery connector, so we can disconnect the battery after a match. As long as we can get those #2-56 x 3/8" screws tomorrow this 'bot will be finished tomorrow night!

We started off today by paying a visit to Custom Sheet Metal and met Ron, who took our DXF and titanium, and led us back to their waterjet machine, and we got to watch the Waterjet in action. It never occurred to us that there would be white sparks as the titanium was being cut, but then we've only seen polycarbonate being cut before. With a pair of fairyweight-sized blades in hand, we headed back to the Build Space to see how much of a 'bot we could put together today. Hit Back after viewing an image.

You can see one of the blades there on the scale, along with all the other parts we anticipate using, and the news is bad currently - 161 grams - time to put the chassis on a diet! We hogged out a bit more material on Milly, and weight started to drop.

After drilling a few more holes in the bottom chassis section, and hunting down some 1.6mm metric screws we were able to install the drive motors to make sure they fit in the holes we cut for them.

Here's a bit more of the internal layout - the TinyESCs have been calibrated, so we snipped the jumper pins down, and tucked them into their slots, happy they fit. Of course, nothing's soldered yet ...

Now it's time to think about attaching the two halves of the chassis together. These are 1" long #0-80 screws, and we're going to have nuts sunk into the bottom of the chassis. We were going to use six bolts, but screwed up one of the bolt holes, so hopefully four will suffice.

Here we've successfully pressed a titanium blade onto the can of one of our favourite 2204-14T outrunner motors - it's a very snug fit, but we got it on without buckling the can, and added a round of Loctite to help keep it in place.

Here's the underside of the chassis with the #0-80 nuts fitted in 3/16" recesses. You can see at the front of the 'bot that we went a little ... overboard ... hogging out material, and this could cause some issues when it comes to mounting the weapon motor. We've also drilled and tapped the wheel hubs for installation.

The weapon ESC is a little bigger than we had originally thought, so we had to mill out a bit more of the top section to be able to fit it in, but it does fit, which is good!

It's about time to break out the soldering iron, so we need to determine at this point which way to plug the drive ESCs in so that forwards will be forwards. After marking the connections, we heat up the soldering iron and stick the leads to the tabs.

This was taken after a short test drive to verify that we have the wheels installed tightly and the motor connections hooked up right.

Our plan to get over the fact we milled a touch too much off the front of the chassis is to mount a polycarbonate plate to the remnant of the front slope, and mount the weapon motor to that. Unfortunately a 1/4"-thick piece is eight grams - which pushes a bit over the limit.

So we made a 1/8"-thick one, and that puts us just under 150 grams. Given that we'll be shortening wires, etc., we'll come out nicely within the weight limit. Tomorrow night we'll finish the wiring, and the 'bot will be done!

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!

We were feeling pretty good this morning - we finished a 'bot yesterday, and will likely finish another today. We have everything we need to wrap up the build of our 12lb drumbot, so it's off to the Build Space and here we go! Hit Back after viewing an image.

Here are the last parts, freshly arrived from Australia: two 25A converted brushless speed controllers from Bot Bitz. We were going to try the hacking ourselves, but Hobby King has been out of the source controllers for quite some time.

Here's the last structural work done - the rear wall has been installed. Frankly it was a hassle - as you might expect working with curved parts might be, but it's done, and no: we're not going to paint it.

The BaneBots ESCs need to come out, so here we're disconnecting them from the motors and power connections. The positive leads were on the Whyachi power switch, and very fiddly to get at.

And likewise installing the new ESCs was also quite fiddly - we had to take the bottom plate off to be able to get at the power connections, but with some perseverance everything was hooked up.

This must be a good sign - we had all the motor connections and receiver connections right on the first try. Hurrah!

And with everything installed and bolted down, we weigh in over half a pound under weight - 11lb 7.2oz - so we might want to add more beef to the restraints on the drum teeth, but to all intents and purposes Nihilistic Naysayer 2.0 is done! We haven't taken any video of it running, because quite frankly it's a bit scary contemplating the drum spinning up, but we will take it to our secret testing grounds at some point soon ...

After a very busy work week we were looking forward to making some 'bot progress this weekend, and we have a couple of 'bots very close to being done, so we're going to concentrate on those this weekend. First up, the second version of our antweight spinner: Poor Punctuation 2.0. Hit Back after viewing an image.

Last time out we decided that we needed some idlers for the ring, and found some aluminium spacers, pressed the titanium idlers onto them with extreme predjudice on the arbor press, and installed them in the 'bot.

Which caused an issue - the ring terminals are too bulky with the idlers installed, and we didn't want them getting in the way, so we decided to remove them and look at alternative ways of wiring the 'bot.

With all the ring terminals out of the way, we sat for a while trying to figure out whether we could solder the leads together. They didn't all stretch to a common point though ...

And then we had a brain wave! Inspired by thoughts of old "Vampire Taps" in networking, what if we ran two 'bus' cables for positive and negative, and 'tapped' into them for the components? Sounds like an idea, so here we are soldering a weapon speed controller onto the busses.

And it actually was pretty painless to complete - we're going to have to remember this trick for other small 'bots!

We were almost ready for a first full test drive! We spent a bit of time with the 'bot hooked up to the battery charger in preparation, then ...

We didn't get anything done over the weekend on the 'bots, as we had some pretty big issues to deal with at work, but this evening we decided to see if we could wrap up the antweight Poor Punctuation 2.0. We need to install the weapon speed controllers and finish the wiring - ugh. Hit Back after viewing an image.

Unfortunately the bushings we ordered for the idler gears haven't arrived yet, so we'll approximating with some random bronze bushings and installing the weapon ESCs around them.

The ESC is a 12A HobbyKing cheapie, but light, and does come with a programming card. It can be programmed via the card to run in reverse, so we're going to be soldering the connections to the motor, as we won't need to undo them to switch direction if the leads are hooked up wrong. Here we're testing that the R/C connector we put onto the cut-down Y-cable works - success!

With one side done, we turn the 'bot through 180 degrees and start on the other side. We're trying to make sure that the spacer closest the wheel is keep clear for the idler, as we route wires, etc.

At this point we're verifying that both motors do run in the same direction: the don't. But on the plus side, our Y-cable works, and our soldered connections from ESC to motor are good, so we can move on.

To fix the motor direction we flipped the jumper on the card, applied power to it, and connected the ESC to it - took a couple of tries, but eventually we had it sorted out, and moved on to the rest of the wiring.

Not trusting our soldering skills to hook up five wires for negative in a single connection and the same for positive we decided to break out the ring terminals and go that route. Sure, they add weight, but last time we checked we had about an ounce spare, so no problems. The main issue is that they take up space, and that is a precious commodity inside this 'bot, but we managed to squeeze everything in, and we were ready for a quick weapon test!

After verifying that the ring did actually turn (and yes, we were kneeling behind polycarb while that test was being run - the white sparks at the end were due to the ring coming off the motor gear) we bolted down the lid and tried again, but this time there was too much friction for the ring to spin up. On review the cause of the friction isn't the UHMW buffers, but cabling inside the 'bot catching on the motor gears and not letting them get up to speed. There's also the issue of the ring getting out of alignment because one motor spins a touch faster than the other.

So close! All we need are our idler bushings, and we're going to have to hit YouTube for a crash course in soldering so we can neaten up the wiring and make everything fit inside the 'bot! But this 'bot will be finished by the weekend, and we'll be on to others ...

We received some parts today that mean we can get back to our cutest 'bot: Poor Punctuation 2.0, and see whether we can install the drive ESCs. Unfortunately this was going to mean soldering - never our favourite task - but we steeled ourselves to the task and decided to see where we can get to. Hit Back after viewing an image.

Here are the parts in question: eight TinyESCs, version two, from Kurtis at FingerTech Robotics. These things are awesome for fairies and antweights, and in a pinch can be used in a beetle, depending on the motors. Plus Kurtis gives amazing customer service, so if you're looking for small-bot ESCs, definitely check these out!

Here's our current situation - 13.47 ounces with everything but the weapon ESCs (which should arrive tomorrow) that weigh less than an ounce for the pair of them. We have plenty of weight to work with. We've also thrown in a couple of bronze bushings and two idlers for the weapon ring to help keep it in alignment.

As we're going to be soldering in the drive ESCs we need to make sure we're going to get them hooked up with the right polarity to the motors, so we're running some tests to verify which lead goes where. As you can see we've tied the battery down to prevent it from sliding into the weapon motor gears and getting chewed up.

On to wiring. We've stuck down the receiver with some heavy-duty 3M double-sided tape, and started routing wires. In order to run both weapon ESCs at the same time we need a Y-cable, but for some odd reason the only cable we found was quite literally two feet long! Fortunately we have pins to be able to cut them down and replace the connectors.

At this point the TinyESCs have been stuck down and soldered to the drive motors. We've been careful to leave clearance around two of the stand-offs where the weapon idlers will be located.

Test Drive Time! We didn't take video because it wasn't super-exciting, but it was great to see the 'bot running around under direction. The wiring is going to be super-tight, but we think it's doable.

Now that we have the 'bot running around, you can see from our To Do List there isn't a whole lot left to do on this 'bot - as soon as the weapon ESCs show up we'll wire them in and take the 'bot for a real test drive!

We spent some time sizing up the fairyweight (150g) opponents for Motorama 2012, and decided that a simple lifter wasn't going to cut it, so we needed something more offensive.Hit Back after viewing an image.

We decided to go with a weaponed 'bot, using as many components as we already had available, so drive motors and TinyESCs, a battery, receiver, and 1.5" tires, and we're already at 81 grams out of 150g allowed in this weight class.

One of the nice things about both fairyweights and antweights is that you can usually sketch a design at 1:1 size. Here we're planning a layout for the components.

Plus said components overlaid on the design. It's a bit messy, but you get the general idea. The wires will all need trimming, etc., and we need to hit the CAD program to find out how much a chassis will weigh to accomodate all these parts.

To try and make things both neater and easier, we taped together the 350mAh 2S LiPo battery and the receiver. Together they make a ni 2" by 1.25" block.

This was our first attempt at a chassis design, but unfortunately came out too heavy, even using UHMW rather than polycarbonate, so we had to rething the layout a bit.

Rather than put the motors outside the battery, how about if we put them behind the battery? There's space on top of the motors for the weapon ESC, and space in front of the motors for the drive ESCs.

This is the top half of the chassis, with pockets for the internal components, and a slope on the front where the weapon motor will be mounted.

And here's the bottom half of the chassis - the hole in the front is simply to save weight. The two halves of the chassis will be bolted together with 1"-long #0-80 screws and nuts.

The weapon motor is a 2204-14T brushless outrunner, the same as we're using in Poor Punctuation 2.0, and the 0.071"-thick titanium blade will be super-glued/expoxied to the outside of the can, again just like we've done in the antweight. The red brick is the 10 gram ESC for the motor.

With the 'bot all assembled, it hopefully will be a fairly tough competitor! Although it has a touch of Little Rat about it - we hope the wheels stay on ...

And of course, some team colours. Although we may end up reversing this, as the two chassis pieces will be milled from black UHMW, so we may just paint the blade and be done with it.

According to the Tentacle Torque Calculator it should be a zippy little thing:

Although weight is cutting it a bit close! There aren't many places we're going to be able to shave off weight, but we'll see what we can do ...

Oh - and I guess we need to come up with a name for this thing too ...