Peter Wallers Robot Ramblings

[haz]

Looking very nice, are those flattened/smoothed Lego tracks?

[peterwaller]

Yes I sliced each block off with a scalpel as best I could and then sanded them down but I still have to add the blue sticky rubber.
The problem was that the wheelbase was fixed by the tracks and to get both front and rear scoops that cleared the tracks, within the three cube, I had to reduce their thickness.

[Sportball]

Wow, these look great. Very professional, it's amazing how good they can look with the 3D printed parts. Do you own your own printers or send them away to be done? I've had parts made for work and it's not that cheap.

[peterwaller]

I used to get them made at Shapeways but recently I bought an UP Plus and although not as good as the powder printers they can produce some excellent results.

[Sportball]

Shapeways? What do they charge for an average chassis?

[peterwaller]

The chassis for the older Defiant was 28 Euro's plus p&p which I can't remember.

[Rhys]

P&P from Shapeways is about £8. It's gone up very steeply over the years, but that's still quite good value considering it's 24 hour delivery from Holland.

The chassis cost all depends on how good a design you have. I personally try and limit myself to £30 per robot, and £40 for a clusterbot. It's normally more than enough. And a good design can last for years. Cosmos is my best robot and the chassis cost me under £25 and has been running for a couple of years. I spent an extra £5 on wheels, but it turns out Lego wheels did the job better. And don't forget, the cheaper the design, the lighter it will be, so you have more room for weapons.

But back on topic, great looking robots as aways Pete. Sorry I won't get to have a go against them. Shame about the spinners. Are you running the old ones, or will you have no spinners? It won't be the same if you don't, I think there's only about 3 spinners entered at the moment... unless Will finds time to enter.

[peterwaller]

I will have Variant and Combatant they just need a bit of work.
Variant it turned out had lost its bind so I have rebound it and added a couple of pins I can short to rebind if it happens again.
It also has new motor gearboxes as the output bearing were completly shot and the wheels wobbled badly.
Changing the subject I just received the Lemon_RC receivers that someone posted about and they look good.
I got them without pins because I like to solder them directly to the controller but the price is the same with them.
They are big compared with the DT receivers but considerbly smaller than the Orange ones especially when you take the connector into account and component height.
I ordered 5 which cost £19-31 including P&P so thats just £3-86 each and just three weeks delivery.
I have hooked one up and it all binds OK with my DX6i and all the channels come out sequentially so I can use it with my controllers.
They appear to be dual band in that they have two Ariels but I haven’t seen any thing to confirm this other than they say they are full range receivers.

[BeligerAnt]

The dual antennas are not for dual band - they're the same size so the same band.
I believe these receivers use some kind of diversity reception system to improve reliability (hence the "full range" tag). Some wireless router use the same system.

[peterwaller]

Yes a bad choice of words I should have said dual frequency both in the same band as found on many of the Spektrum receivers.