More Beetleweight Progress!

 More Progress!


Our next step was to cut the rest of the chassis pieces out of 7mm chopping board. We cut a battery compartment piece and the two weapon supports out of this, then cut a lid and back panel out of 5mm plastic.The next thing we did was mount the wedge pieces and bolt the forks to them. The wedges are the same 7mm plastic as the chassis, and are held on to the side panels and the weapon supports with countersunk screws. The forks are corner braces bought from B&Q and bolted to the wedges so they can be removed if needed. They are also bent out slightly so they can run along the floor.




We turned our robot to four-wheel drive with the help of four plastic pulleys we found and drilled to fit to the motor shafts at the back and the M4 bolts at the front. The transmission was provided by two identical elastic bands. Not perfect, but still an improvement on the previous two-wheel drive!

After this we ordered a large number of things, including our brushless motor and esc, and weapon and drive pulleys from the Technobots website. These purchases also included a length of polyurethane belt for the drive and weapon systems. When our Technobots order arrived, we started to fit the drive pulleys. We ordered 30mm diameter V pulleys, so we needed to drill the centre holes to fit onto the motor shafts and bolts. For the front wheels, our previous technique of gluing the pulley to the wheel hub didn't work with these pulleys, so instead we bolted the wheel and pulley together so it cannot come undone. At the back, the wheel and pulley are unconnected but this might change in the future. As for the drive belt, we cut two equal lengths from it and then held both ends over the hob and stuck it together. The belt fits on nice and tightly, and makes the robot much easier to drive.

This is a lot of progress towards a finished build, and I am very proud of this so far.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Robodojo 06/04/24

Image
We took a trip to York at the weekend to compete in our first official event as a full competitor. Upon arriving at the venue, we realised we would have had no chance of finding it if we didn't have Thomas Yau there to point us into the right building! We were among the first to arrive, so we had time to set up and grab some space before the rest of the competitors, and spectators, arrived. With a total of 31 antweights and 12 beetleweights, there was barely enough space for everyone to work on their robots. The competition format was a sort of group stage format so everyone got 4 guaranteed fights but could have more in the form of playoffs. Fight 1: vs Baby Dead Bod This was an absolutely terrifying first fight to have, Baby Dead Bod is an immensely powerful horizontal spinner so I was not happy to face it this early on. That was quick! A single hit on the weapon was all it took to flex the weapon into the pulley, sending it flying and completely shearing the motor shaft. This wa
Read more

BBB Brawl 2024

Image
More Progress A lot of progress has been made recently, most notably the pieces have been cut from black HDPE and assembled fully. The weapon motor has been mounted, and a mock weapon has been cut from a spare piece of plastic. It was quite easy making the final pieces, as we already knew the exact dimensions and how everything needed to fit together so it was just a matter of carefully cutting all the pieces and then screwing them together. Then we assembled the weapon stack. This consists of a 40mm pulley, with 4 M4 bolts running through it and through the weapon, which has bearings pushed into a 12mm central hole, and then the bolts screw into a plate with M4 nuts pushed into it. Then a 6mm shoulder bolt runs through all of this, plus the weapon bulkheads, and finishes with a nylock nut. BBB Brawl I was lucky enough to take a trip to the recent BBB Brawl event, and was even more fortunate that I could participate in whiteboard fight after the main competition! I was in a fight with
Read more

BBB x LHG Summer Showdown

Image
 Here is the full event video, I will write the timestamps for each fight. BBB x LHG Summer Showdown 2024- All Fights - Bristol Bot Builders Beetleweight Combat Robots The venue for this event was lovely, however the constant rain was a bit annoying, especially when it dripped off the marquees down the back of my neck! We arrived at the venue and went into the tech check with the heaviest setup we could run, and passed safety with no issues.  Fight 1: (06:46) My first fight was against Om Nom and Carbon Copy. I was happy with this match up as I would be the only spinner against a grabber (?) and a cluster bot. The fight began and I quickly engaged with one of the halves of Carbon Copy, using my full weight to push it into the wall and slice some material off the front wedge. I then reversed to give myself a bit of a run up and hit the cluster again, this time ripping the wedge off and slamming it into the ceiling. Whilst this was happening, Om Nom had somehow gotten stuck with mouth op
Read more