| 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... |
All of the robots I have built have failed in fights, and usually at the axles/wheels, it's like a running joke. So why should it be any different with this featherweight? Meathammer was designed back in 2005/06 when using 4 drill motors was a bit of a novelty... it was made more novel still by mounting the epicyclic gear cages directly to the chassis, which unfortunately sends all the drive shocks back through the gearbox. The original version ran for a number of fights at modelworld 2006? and even won some, especially the sumo, which favoured its very low profile. I've just rebuilt the gearboxes with all metal gears, and tested it, and it seems it should last for at least one fight… but as I put it in the car after testing, I noted one of the wheels had nearly fallen off. Mark that bolt for Lockthreading! All this got me thinking if I could make something less likely to lose a wheel, break a gearbox etc I have a huge pile of bits and bobs that were destined for heavie...
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