Fighting Robots

  
Video: Altitude vs. Hurty Gurty

Went over to Kevin's house on Saturday and worked on the robot.  Got to use his tools (Mill) to make some of the parts that we wouldn't be able to make on our own.  We got both of the side-rails 90% done + the front skids.  We still need to drill and tap the side-rails to hold the base, lid, back, skids, speed controller, and bearings on, but that should only take an hour or two.  Hopefully we can get that done this week, then wire it up and test this weekend.  I still need to get the beater-drum waterjet cut.  I haven't heard back from the place I sent our origional bid request.  Looks like I'll need to find a different place.

 

 

I started working on the 3lb drum-bot with Dan on Monday.  We didn't get a ton done but we definately got off to an Ok start.  We created the weapon motor mount out of 1.5" carbon fiber angle.  We were worried that the mount would be too close to the drum-beater and might get hit if things got tweaked.  The origional clearance is .09".  After creating the mount we realized that we can trim back the side face of it a bit and get the clearance closer to .25".

We also soldered on some connectors and wired up the weapon motor for a test spin.  We are using an Axi 2814-10 at 14.4v.  I clamped the motor mount down with some vice grips and hooked it up to our 12v power supply.  After some fiddling with the controls we fired it up.  It's hard to gage speed but it goes really fast!  It is a lot quieter than the brushed motors I've used in the past.

I got out my RC controller manual and managed to figure out how to adjust the 3rd channel so it worked like I wanted.  I also manged to get the fail-safes in place so the weapon would shut off if it loses RC signal.

Next steps is creating the side-rails, but I'll need access to Purdy's mill to do that.