And So it Begins...

http://www.buildersdb.com/eventdetail.asp?eventid=326

THAT DESERVES ITS OWN POST. TIME TO START BUILDING!!!

The fleet that probably will be going:
- P150 (defending champion 2008), 150g
- DDT (really damn entertaining), 1 lb
- Cake, 3 lbs
- Var Machine (because War Machine is a taken name), 12 lbs

Now there is a bunch of work to be done. For instance, P150 needs to be built, Cake's new drum needs to be hardened and assembled. Var Machine is still a vapor bot :/

Fortunately my good pal Richard over at MLEC might help with some machining if I drive some of his robots. Stay tuned for more!

Hardboard: Death Metal \m/

So it turns out the springs won't cut it. I decided to haul the board with me one rainy day and ride it between classes. Pretty poor idea. First of all, the wide tire surface and the slickness of running water caused the board to hydroplane down some fairly steep slopes. The worst part was knowing it would happen. As I coasted down the hills of Georgia Tech, the board would oscillate violently. Turns out the springs were too soft and too responsive so a small semblance of a turn would soon be amplified to full extensions in a short period of time. I bailed off several times.

I put the board away for a few weeks and tacked other important things in the mean time. The finished Longpack for example.


I am a big fan of the blue shrink wrap. What I thought was really cool was how I could actually use the range on top of my stove to heat an area. It made me feel much safer than running a lithium battery under a flame.



The boards are in! Xo placed the order with Advanced Circuits and we received them as a strip of boards. I took a few of them with me to the Invention Studio one morning and cut them to size with the dremel tool.


The slot was also made through the ground plane to facilitate the edge of the nunchuk.


I also added some hall effect sensors to the hub motors. Three per hub motor, 120 degree spacing, attached to the tooth.



I'm not adventurous enough to try the flipped tooth method that Charles uses, although it would be much more convenient as I found out in the process.

Enough of that. THIS BOARD NEEDS TO HAPPEN NOW! I grabbed the deck and started prototyping resistive methods.

This plastic clip made from UHMW proved to be promising. The issue is that the truck angle is about 45 degrees, which means there is a 1 to 1 ratio between the person's movement and the trucks movement. With a person placing their weight on the edge of the deck, this means the resistive plug needs to exert 200-300 pounds of force without breaking or permanently deforming. Not an easy task.

Fortunately, these little guys did the trick.




These are also made from UHMW, but are taller and have additional bolt holes for more support. The older versions (also in the picture) have only two bolt holes, which twisted and widened after continual use.


What's left? Well next up is to solder the components to the boards. This should happen on Monday. My goal is to have this riding on Tuesday. How sweet would that be if I took the motor board to my meeting with Dr. Forest? =D

Irony Man

Instead of typing up the entire build report, I have this comprehensive Instructable instead. I may edit it or add addtional anecdotes for the technical audience, but at this very moment, I am both tired and hungry and I unfortunately cannot satisfy both at the same time.

Here are some of the Iron Man / Tony Stark costume pictures separated by a link:


http://www.instructables.com/id/You-as-Tony-Stark-as-Iron-Man-A-Costume/



Cheers.