6/4/02- Broken again | |
I took KC1 to work, to test out whether the relocation of the batteries made any difference to the steering, which has always been "sensitive", and indeed it is much more controllable. The weight is now neatly balanced over the front wheels, and there is now very little pendulum effect. The remaining problems stem from the appallingly slack drive chains, the slow servos, and the cheap pots which they drive. I have been promised an experimental control interface from the Dominator team, but it still hasn't turned up. The second reason for taking to work was to test the flipper. I tested it in the workshops, and knew it wasn't going to be too powerful, as it's only a diddly little 40mm ram. After flipping a dustpan around I tried to get a bit more power out of it by winding up the power from the regulator to 12 bar... Big Mistake, as I blew the ram in 2. Not so much of a problem though now as the new regulations prevent the use of sodastream bottles, so the whole set up is illegal. I am tempted to rip out the insides and fit them into keeler carrot to make a reasonably powerful swimmer for next years Techno Games. Ho hum... |
So, for a bit of light relief I bought a few of Justin's LED Christmas tree kits. I think the original idea was to have a relatively easy kit to put together on Saturday workshops in the run up to Christmas, but they seem to have become quite popular with all manner of folk. Anyway, the kit is based around a couple of well made pcbs, a bag full of components, and the simple instruction that +ve is UP. It took about 10 mins to solder all the bits together, and with a huge amount of satisfaction over the end result. Justin and his Christmas tree kits can be found here: http://cyber-lane.com/ The Build Brighton Christmas workshops will be running each Saturday from 30th November to 21st December from 10am – 2pm. Entrance is completely free. Kits are priced between £2 and £5. #BuildBrighton can be found here: http://www.buildbrighton.com/blog/
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