Another Day at the Lathe...

More parts done. Nuff said.

Coming Along

Alright guys, today I got my B16 gearmotors (still looking for spares however!). More importantly, I got another "round" at the lathe after the Battlebots meeting tonight. Result:










I got the front set of wheels done! I used the new design over the old one because it actually accommodated for the width of the rubber ring. I would have finished the rear set, but a guy from another organization needed the lathe for legitimate work so I'll probably go back tomorrow.










Meanwhile, I have enough parts to give a general layout. Donald and I had the same expression: That is waaaay small for a beetleweight.

Baker's Mistake

Alright guys, I made my first fail part (a few days ago). This was supposed to be one of the wheels I discussed earlier today, but more of a practice than anything. I'm still pretty noobish on the lathe.










First mistake. I started from the wrong side. I started from the side that didn't need to be bored out. As a result I would have to drill through the entire piece instead of just a little bit on the correct side. No big deal right? Well I came to need to redo the entire thing because...










When I was finishing the part, I accidentally moved the wrong axis handle and ate off my pulley flange. Ugg... Fail.

Well, it still looks nice anyway so I keep it on my desk. It also helped me realize that I need to change a few things in the design anyway. The Oring groove needed to be wider for instance so I suppose this was a good mistake.









However, I did decide to use the pre-existing plastic ring. Buffer it a small bit with anti-static tape, and then fill the rest with glue. Perfect fit after dry.

Baking the Cake

So last night/morning (5am) I started machining stuff for the very first time! I cut the tube, square bar, and shafting into smaller chunks using some massive horizontal bandsaw, and then turned the round parts down to the correct length. I grabbed some plastic round from the scraps bin and turned down the plastic ring that supports the flux ring. The most important operation of the night was the mods to the 2820 motor I am using for the drum. I chucked the can in the lathe and turned the endbell off. Then I had to bore the mount for the stator to 3/8" using the semi-shoddy drill press.














So this is what I ended up with for the night. Enough material for 2 drums. Everything turned out perfect except the bore for the ring was about 1mm too large. I may end up re-doing that part, or buffering it with tape and glue.

Cake - Beetleweight

	First there was Ron, and then there was the semi-par entertaining stand-in named Pacman. Well I let him kick the bucket last competition so it is time to get on with a new beetle and this time I'm serious... well, kinda :P Cake is going to be a refined version of Attrition. When I built Attrition, most of my concerns revolved around cost instead of effectiveness. As a result, the bot has a few but significant flaws that I hope to address in a downscale. Lets see if they work. 1) Integrate tabs into the frame 2) more precise drum parts 3) Reliable drive system 4) ball bearings! With that said, here is cake as it stands. A beautiful pile of parts.