DisinfectANT - Antweight First Build Log

[EddieJ]

More CAD and starting to put things together. Hopefully one more week and there may be something that resembles a robot on my desk!
Lathe works well for nylon. A little grow at the end of this test piece, i should have locked the part in with both sides of the spindle. Then will be fine.


Before i start making connectors and chopping the wires up - can anyone check my wiring plan - does this look right? Im bad with electronics - trying to learn something here
The batteries will be in series to make a 2S.
Where they join and go off to the two ESCs, i half considered a PDB, top right. But it's big - so may try to make a splitter connector.
That's going to be a 2 motor drive DasMikro ESC also, hasn't arrived yet, i only had this 1S 1 motor one around. (Then will redesign it when i get my hands on a Nano2 dual esc.)

[MarkR]

So you have 2x single cell packs, so put them in series, right?

Your wiring diagram is unclear. It's not clear what that orange thingy is. You only need to break out the parallel power and feed it to the dasmikro and the brushless ESC.

The dasmikro will need to power the rx 5v, and possibly also the other ESC, if that doesn't have a built in regulator/BEC.

Personally I'd take a tiny piece stripboard to parallel the cells and drive power to the two ESC.

[EddieJ]

Hi Mark,

Yea that's it. 2x 1S batteries in series to make a 2S.

Apologies about my scribbles, i dont have photoshop on my home PC, paint is ... less than ideal!
I think from what you are saying I am on the right track. The orange lines are just me showing the point where I'd need to put in a PDB, or stripboard. Which would be lighter for sure, I will try that! Thanks

[EddieJ]

All the new toys are here now nice to be using something which isnt a 3D printer for a change!



I did a load of research on suitable mills for producing small accurate parts in lots of materials - the only sub 5k mills which would cut it (heh pun) were the Sieg K1 or the Sherline / Taig CNC Mill. Decided to save budget and went with the Taig. It's pretty compact but built well enough to mill plastics and aluminium, as well as steel and titanium parts- once i set up the liquid coolant system and tray.

Im going to ignore the confusing electronics for a while and get back into my CAM comfort zone
Hopefully some results pictures over the next week.

Also sticking with ant puns - going to name it Disinfect-ant. (unless that's been taken?)

[DieGracefullyRobotics]

There hasn't been an ant called Disinfect-ant in the many years I've been around, though there was one called deoderAnt, which would've made for an interesting sounding battle...

[Paulmchurd]

Wow I'm loving this go hard or go home approach.

Most people start with a simple box on wheels or bolted together polycarbonate.

The Anticipation of seeing this ant come together... sorry


I am looking forward to seeing this ant being built.

[EddieJ]

There hasn't been an ant called Disinfect-ant in the many years I've been around, though there was one called deoderAnt, which would've made for an interesting sounding battle...

Awesome Thanks for the info on name. Maybe I can keep up a theme of household product ant puns

Wow I'm loving this go hard or go home approach.
Most people start with a simple box on wheels or bolted together polycarbonate.
The Anticipation of seeing this ant come together... sorry
I am looking forward to seeing this ant being built.

Lol, well I have wanted to start working with CNC milling for a few years now. And so I needed a fun excuse to learn. = Build an antweight
Now i am setting the bar here... once i start showing the build, I hope it wont be an .. ANTiclimax

[EddieJ]

At last some free time to start cutting bits.

The table saw is actually much more accurate than i thought for cutting small chunks (considering the size of the blade!) Inside 1mm will be fine as the stock is machined in the mill to be accurate

Sawing MDF test chunks before i let loose on some delrin or polycarb.

Better than expected and i have all my fingers still, after cutting lots of 40mm square test blocks.

Here is what we will have by the end of the day i hope. Nice and simple test part. Will start as soon as i get back from real-work

[EddieJ]

Slow progress! Went on holiday for a few weeks, working like mad on regualr job to catch up.

But managed to start test 3D printing some parts to test the fit. Seems no tolerance is needed to fit the wheels on the motors snugly after all.

[EddieJ]

Silicone wheels. Not bad at 1.1g each.
The hubs are cast in polyurethane, cheap and very light with excellent impact resistance like a thermoplastic.



Silicone went for 25 shore hardness as i wanted it soft and grippy.

Time to build the main chassis later this month.