Still feeling slowed and sluggish from this cold, we spent most of the day under the care of our favourite Alka Selzer Cold medicine, but by mid-afternoon felt like going and being quarantined in the Build Space - who knows, maybe we could screw some screws in or something. As it happened we were able to do a little more than that. Hit Back after viewing an image.
After rummaging around we found some more ring terminals, installed them on the drive ESCs for the the hobbyweight drumbot and suddenly we were ready to see if we could get the wiring finished up so the 'bot would be driveable.
After connecting and tidying the drive ESCs, we were able to package them rather neatly into the space between the gearboxes and the middle wall, so that was looking good.
The rest of the wiring, however, was not quite as neat - crammed into the battery compartment in the top-left of the pic. Everything fits, but only just! We have a Whyachi MS-05 power switch, weapon motor ESC, battery, receiver, and common ground all stuffed in there.
But, at least everything's wired correctly! The power lights at the bottom of the picture are on, and nothing exploded, so hurrah! We also did a wheels test, and found one of the ESCs had been connected to the motor wrong - it was going in the wrong direction, so we stopped a moment to fix that.
The top plate was then marked, drilled, and installed - we were ready for a test-drive!
What the short video didn't show is that we were having the same issue as the first version of this 'bot: the drive would keep cutting out, again presumably because we're sending the BaneBots BB-12-45 ESCs into thermal shutdown, with high amp draw due to friction in the drive train. In the last version we got around that by switching to Victor 883s, but this time we can't do that, because there isn't enough room inside the 'bot for them. Instead we've ordered some Turnigy TY-P1 25A Brushless ESCs which we're going to hack into 25A brushed speed controllers. Let's hope they come back in stock soon!
The scale says 13lb 14oz, but of course that's with the huge piece of 6061 aluminium tube on there - we'll only be using about eight ounces of the pipe, so we're expecting to be a bit under the 12lb weight limit.
For fun we pressed the tool steel teeth into the UHMW pipe to verify the fit. We think we've located a local machine shop that can turn the inner diameter to 2" for us, so hopefully we'll get out to see them some point soon.
Just verifying we have all the parts we need - axle, end caps, pulley, washers, tube, teeth, bolts - check!
One more sanity check - the tube and teeth are 4" diameter - there's 2.25" from the shaft to the front wall. We're not making the 3/8" Mistake again with this 'bot!
Having run out of things to do with the drumbot, we turned our attention to the redesigned beetleweight. Here we've laid out some parts, just to remind outselves of what the plan was ...
... and the 'bot ostensibly looks like the previous version, although this time the wheels will be on the outside, rather than inside.
All our 1/4" polycarb and 6061 aluminium have been marked up and punched, so now it's time for our favourite task: drilling and tapping!
So we procrastinated and did some counter-sinking instead :-)
We did actually get off and running with the drillings, and then heard a twang from the drill press: the belt - which is the eleven year-old original - had finally given up the ghost on us. Still ... 11 years is a pretty good run, don't you think?
We had finished drilling all the polycarb pieces, so we tapped them, and did a little assembly.
Coming together nicely. We'll try to locate another belt tomorrow, and in the meanwhile, it's time to head back inside and warm up with some hot chocolate, more Alka Seltzer, and bed!
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