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!
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