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Getting parts together |
Building the Chassis |
Installing the Drivetrain |
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Electronics |
Armor |
Weapon |
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Well, that's what I'd like to think of it as.
You show it off.
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First you charge up the batteries. Maybe I overdid it with the AstroFlights. I just wanted to be sure that if I did really well, I'd have to ability to recharge in the theoretical minimum 20 minutes. Even the car battery couldn't keep up with the current demands, so a pair of car chargers help to keep pace, although it's not quite enough. |
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The weekend before we left for TI, we had an organizing get together. L-R Nora Judd, Me, Rob Farrow, Pam Farrow-Klein, Steve Judd, Mary and Bill Bottenberg, Some Guy, Joe Ludwig, and Nyssa Madsen. In the front, Strike Terror (SHW) MaddGoth (MW), Dracolich (LW), and Bait (LW). I'm the only person in the area who builds so big. Makes me feel a bit weird. And yes, it's the weekend before we left and I have no weapon. |
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We had a little fun with the bots. There's no shot of it, but at one point, I had Bait scooped up between the wheel pods. I also carried Cara around on ST. But after a while, the left rear EV started to overheat. Signs of things to come. |
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My first dead EV. It ran, but it also had a short to the shaft. I didn't discover that until later. The worst thing is, this is one of the now extinct CCW EV's. I pulled one from the weapon to replace this one, and got another one from Team Radicus at the event. But I get ahead of myself. |
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And we're back to Paper Aided Manufacturing. At first I tried printing out the whole pattern and matching up the lines. Big pain. Instead I printed out the elements of the wheel (The rectangles and the curves) and reconstructed it. The magnets and the Loupe helped me make sure everything lined up perfectly. |
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Two halves, laid out on 1/8" steel. |
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Rather than trying to cut them out completely, I snuck up on it. First I cut out the octagons.... |
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... then I cut out the curves. |
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Next, clamping the two halves together (nearly a prefect match, only required a little grinding for smoothness), I drilled out for the axle. |
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You're looking at a nearly $50 drill bit. 1" diameter. Frankly, it needs to be sharpened. Still, it took the bore on this pulley out to 1" perfectly. |
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Funny story about these guys. I got them really cheap at the local Ace Hardware. I wanted something I could weld on, and the local driveline supply places only had cast materials, for a lot more money. These things had been on the shelf for so long, they had inventory control stamps on them from 1990. But they were just what the doctor ordered. |
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Here I am making all of the teeth exactly the same size. A little grinding, followed by a long session on the belt sander, which made everything perfectly flush. I tilted up the sander for a little gravity feed action. |
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All of the parts roughly clamped together for a weighing. 60 lbs. |
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Collars function to help stabilize the thin sides to the shaft, and provide a spacer from the pulleys. Spatter is a problem. |
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A pulley makes a handy stand |
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The weapon all welded up. |
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Balance testing. I spun it until it stopped, and if it kept stopping with the same point down, I welded a bit of wire on the light side. It came out pretty close. |
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Who needs set screws? I also welded the pulleys to their own collars because I'd weakened them so much. |
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Turning the fork bearing support rings. I don't have a proper boring bar holder, but I was able to fake it. |
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Bearing support ring, race, and above, the trailer brake bearing. Those bearings were the only parts of the trailer brake I bought for Strike Anywhere that actually got used in a robot. |
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Turning down a 1-1/16" shaft, to go with the bearings. I suck at turning shafts. I need a machining coach. |
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The combination stop and spring return. I turned the collar and tacked on the arm. |
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Someone once asked me about Mill Scale and why it's so much work to get rid of. Mill Scale is a special kind of rust that forms when the metal is red hot, coming out of the mill. It's very hard, and you can't weld it. It's hard to clean off, you have to use either a grinder or a wire brush. EVERY piece of plate you see in Strike Terror was completely polished down. It was a lot of work. I later found out I can clean it off with Muriatic acid too. Much less effort that way. This is one of the plates you see sanded below. |
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I completely wore out one knotted wire wheel in the process. |
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Parts for the fork and the column. That sanding wheel provides an interesting pattern if you mess around a little. |
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Holes are cut in the column plates with a hole saw to allow the tips of the bearings to protrude. |
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So much for the pattern. The bearing support rings are welded in place. |
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So here's how the column goes together.The fork shaft carries the retaining ring I made for Strike Anywhere, a bearing, the column plate with the support ring with the race inside it, the arm, the front column plate, and another bearing supported against the part of the shaft I didn't turn down from the 1-1/2" stock. |
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The fork was built in two pieces. The front plate and the shaft, and the rear plate and the arms. |
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Then the shaft went through the hole in the rear plate, and the arms through the notches in the front plate. Additional notches were cut in the front plate for the braces. It was a strong structure, but not strong enough. And it only weighed 12 lbs. |
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This was one of the last bits of wiring to do. I added a Spike Module and one of the first IFI Solid State Relays to be used in a BattleBot to drive the contactor. The Spike takes the Isaac-16 commands and turns on and off a 12 volt relay inside it. That 12 volt current (clear wires) is used to activate the Solid State Relay, which passes the 24 volt main power (The fat red wires) to the coil in the contactor. The two red and black wires running off the bottom of the picture go to the weapon motors. |
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THIS is how I found out there was a short in the burned out EV motor. Since this is one of the battery power leads, it's on the wrong side of the master switch to be turned off. The current from the battery went from the bus bar, through the lead, through the socket driver, through the chassis, through the EV, through the ground circuit, through the ground of the Victors, through the ground bus bar, and back into the battery. I had to replace the connector. |
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Covering everything up, I welded the column plates on. |
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A first test fitting of the weapon. This is the first indication of just what kind of monstrosity I was building. I was giddy as a schoolgirl - at the school for mad scientists. |
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A variation on my standard EV mounts for the weapon motors. |
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Mounting the motors, and running the power to them. Gotta make sure you've got the right rotations. |
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Bolt on the weapon, run a quick test, and it's time to load up the van, because I'm leaving the next day. Unfortunately that test tells me that the ratio of the pulleys is way too low. I rush off to Applied Engineering. They don't have 1.5" pulleys, but they can have them the next morning. I order two, and pick them up on the way to Treasure Island. I install them in the pits. |
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A 300+ pound robot is NOT easy to load into the van. |
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But I got it in. THEN I remembered. I forgot safety restraints. That night I was working out a way to wedge a 2x4 under to fork to immobilize it, and to strap a scrap of square tube between the fork and the wheel to stop it from turning. I must come up with a slicker solution in the future. |
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That night I also whipped up a quick stand for my IFI transmitter. The antenna I bent at the Caravan meeting snapped off completely when I packed it up. Fortunately the IFI guy had a replacement when I came to TI, and I was able to pass safety with a borrowed transmitter until he arrived. |
