With less than 2 weeks to go it's crunch time. Hopefully it will all get done in time without any major problems.
It's been almost a week since my last update and I've been busy. With the event quickly approaching I had to squeeze in what robot building I could. Being gone this past weekend and next weekend for Ultimate Frisbee tournaments isn't helping either. I finally finished machining the end caps for the weapon shaft after a lot of on and off work on them. The idea for these end caps was shamelessly stolen from another hobbyweight "Ripto Ultimate". The idea is to distribute the force of the impacts so as to not deform the relatively soft UHMW frame. With the end caps done and looking great the next big step was to get the discs ready. Each disc had to be drilled and teamed for the center bushing which took a lot of time and oil. Man is AR steel hard stuff. With the disc complete and mocked up it actually looks like a real robot. The wiring is mostly done. Hopefully I can test the drive train later this week. Besides that the weapon motor still needs to be installed and I need to make some belts and spacers for the pulley system.
With less than 2 weeks to go it's crunch time. Hopefully it will all get done in time without any major problems.
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I've been pretty busy lately but I've had some time to squeeze in work on robotics between massive amounts of school work and real world responsibilities. I wired up Butcher late one night. This connector turns my 2 2s packs into a 4s pack. Well at least it was supposed to. I used the female connectors when they need to be male ones to connect to the batteries. This is probably why you should never solder things after midnight. I got the discs back from the machine shop and they look great. The wiring is mostly done. So as it sits right now it weighs 11lb without the weapon shaft, end caps, and bearings. Hopefully I'll have enough weight left over for some wheel guards. At least that's what the CAD tells me.
Made a lot of progress in the past 24 hours. I'm slowly machining the end caps for Butcher that will hopefully be done in the next couple of days if I get time to work in the shop. The most exciting thing that happened was plasma cutting the discs for the pseudo drum of the new and improved Barrel Roll. They need some post machining to be usable but they look great for now. I also finally have all of the electronic parts for the Butcher in. I'm going to try and wire it all up tonight or tomorrow and hopefully have a functioning drive train by the weekend. Just 3 more weeks until Philly!
I can't believe it's already September. School is starting back up and I still have so much to do. Now that I'm back on campus and have access to all of my resources I can finally start working on the 12lber, The Butcher. I have all of the parts ordered that I'll need, now it's only a matter of putting them all together. If only it were that easy. The body of the butcher was cut from a single sheet of .5" UHMW using a ShopBot CNC Router. It took about two hours to get everything run with multiple tool changes but the G-code ran without issue. It still needs some trimming and sanding to finish the pieces but I couldn't help mocking up what it would look like assembled. As of right now here is how all of my bots stand for Franklin Institute next month: Hercules is complete. I need to get some photos of it uploaded but it will sit as is for the next month until the competition. Barrel Roll needs a new drum. The old one that it has now wobbles too much to be effective at higher rpms. To fix this issue I have redesigned the drum to be a pair of CNC plasma cut AR400 Discs with a UHMW spacer in between. This drum will hopefully be more balanced and be able to deliver the hits that I designed Barrel Roll to do. Butcher still has a lot of work to go. I'm currently machining the end caps for the weapon shaft and sending the steel out for the disc to be waterjet from. I still have to get all of the electronics in order and put the bot through lots of testing before Franklin Institute. Looking at the competition, I have high hopes for my first 12lber at its first event. I need to do everything I can before hand to make sure that I don't end up beating myself in the arena. |
AuthorMy name is Michael Connerton. I'm a mechatronics engineer at a robotic automation startup company. This blog serves as a record of my exploits into the world of engineering, robotics and especially combat robotics. Archives
April 2023
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