|
Ok, so I'm gonna build this beast. It's not going in RobotWars or into any kind
of arena where it needs Kevlar body armour or flame throwers or other such
weaponry, it's a development platform and that's all.
I made a start aquiring some of the parts I thought I would need months before
actually getting started. If you've been reading my Blog then you'll know
that I changed from the original 24v Motors I found to two High-Torque 12v
motors. I found a nice set of boots on eBay which will get us rolling and
the 12v power source for the drive systems.
At the moment I don't really have much in the way of plans as I started doing
some of this stuff about 6 months ago and haven't really had the time to
progress it as yet. I have the ideas I need to get some plans going, so will
sort those out soon and get the next stage of this project underway.
I know I've got to make some hubs for the wheels so I can connect the
driveshafts to them. I originally salvaged some bearings from the wheels I
bought, but they were pretty naff so bought some high quality ones which will
operate much better.
I built the motor controllers about 6 months ago and produced two PCBs and
tested them using a PIC Microprocessor as the speed controller. You can see
from the following image the test rig and I plan to upload a short video clip
of them working soon.
The controller on the left doesn't have any heatsinks on the Power Transistors
yet as they produced very little in the way of heat when I tested the rig. This
was mainly due to the fact the motors weren't under any sort of stress so
didn't really draw much current.
|