Another New Antweight..
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Re: Another New Antweight..
Well, finally getting around to building the 4th member of my ant team. It's my first ant walker, and I'm pretty pleased with how it's going so far.
As with my Nano walker, the walking mechanism's taken soo long to build! Each piece was 'milled' by hand out of polycarb using my dremel and a small drill bit. To make the holes in the cams for the motor D-shaft, I ground down a piece of 3mm silver steel to match, then heated it up with a lighter and used it to melt the right shaped hole.
Below is a picture of all the finished leg pieces:
and here's it all assembled into a leg unit:
It all mounts directly onto the motor shaft, and is a very tight fit so no glue required. It works remarkably well given it's fairly rough construction. Each leg weighs about 10g, so leaves plenty of extra weight to play with. It's currently built into the chassis of the lifter grabber thing; the weapon on that worked well, but nothing else about that robot was good..
Here's a video of it walking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuJaRKL ... e=youtu.be
It's a bit slower than I'd hoped, but it's very smooth and controllable. Still yet to add proper feet so that'll likely change it's performance somewhat.
Not sure what weapon I'm going to put on it... Walking spinners have been done plenty of times before, and I already have two spinners on my team. I was planning on using a beetleweight drive motor as a really powerful flipper, but that requires a load of extra custom electronics to control it which is a bit of a pain to put together in less than a week. The other option is to put the lifter grabber mechanism back on, and use the extra available weight to try and make it less useless, but not sure how well that'll turn out.. I'll think of something :L
As with my Nano walker, the walking mechanism's taken soo long to build! Each piece was 'milled' by hand out of polycarb using my dremel and a small drill bit. To make the holes in the cams for the motor D-shaft, I ground down a piece of 3mm silver steel to match, then heated it up with a lighter and used it to melt the right shaped hole.
Below is a picture of all the finished leg pieces:
and here's it all assembled into a leg unit:
It all mounts directly onto the motor shaft, and is a very tight fit so no glue required. It works remarkably well given it's fairly rough construction. Each leg weighs about 10g, so leaves plenty of extra weight to play with. It's currently built into the chassis of the lifter grabber thing; the weapon on that worked well, but nothing else about that robot was good..
Here's a video of it walking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuJaRKL ... e=youtu.be
It's a bit slower than I'd hoped, but it's very smooth and controllable. Still yet to add proper feet so that'll likely change it's performance somewhat.
Not sure what weapon I'm going to put on it... Walking spinners have been done plenty of times before, and I already have two spinners on my team. I was planning on using a beetleweight drive motor as a really powerful flipper, but that requires a load of extra custom electronics to control it which is a bit of a pain to put together in less than a week. The other option is to put the lifter grabber mechanism back on, and use the extra available weight to try and make it less useless, but not sure how well that'll turn out.. I'll think of something :L
Rory Mangles - Team Nuts
Robots: Nuts 2 and many more...
NanoTwo Motor Controllers: https://nutsandbots.co.uk/product/nanotwodualesc
Robots: Nuts 2 and many more...
NanoTwo Motor Controllers: https://nutsandbots.co.uk/product/nanotwodualesc
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Re: Another New Antweight..
Kewl. How about some kind of...rotating turret?
Die Gracefully Robotics
Winner - AWS 39
Winner - AWS 39
Re: Another New Antweight..
great stuff Rory! think i will use this mechanism for antweight walker when i get round to building it.
Daniel Jackson.
Team Hectic.
Many antweights
Super antweights: territorial.
Fleaweights: fleadom fighter, gaztons.
Featherweights: hectic (under construction)
Team Hectic.
Many antweights
Super antweights: territorial.
Fleaweights: fleadom fighter, gaztons.
Featherweights: hectic (under construction)
Re: Another New Antweight..
Well, it doesn't fit in the cube and it's about 20g overweight, but Skutter is up and running:
Yeah, it is just Lump with a beetle motor and some legs stuck to it, but it does flip pretty well!
It currently has 2 batteries; a 3 cell to run the flipper and a 2 cell for the drive, but I'll switch to an HV controller when I get round to making one so it can all run off one battery which will help with the weight problem. The flipper is controlled with one of the old ESCs from my featherweight; it's all very crude, but it does work.
Apart from having a good flip it is really pretty rubbish, as it can't selfright from it's back, but will happily flip itself into that position. If I can't get it to fit in the cube/ in weight properly then I may just enter MiniTinny cluster again and save this for the potential walker annihilator at the end
Yeah, it is just Lump with a beetle motor and some legs stuck to it, but it does flip pretty well!
It currently has 2 batteries; a 3 cell to run the flipper and a 2 cell for the drive, but I'll switch to an HV controller when I get round to making one so it can all run off one battery which will help with the weight problem. The flipper is controlled with one of the old ESCs from my featherweight; it's all very crude, but it does work.
Apart from having a good flip it is really pretty rubbish, as it can't selfright from it's back, but will happily flip itself into that position. If I can't get it to fit in the cube/ in weight properly then I may just enter MiniTinny cluster again and save this for the potential walker annihilator at the end
Rory Mangles - Team Nuts
Robots: Nuts 2 and many more...
NanoTwo Motor Controllers: https://nutsandbots.co.uk/product/nanotwodualesc
Robots: Nuts 2 and many more...
NanoTwo Motor Controllers: https://nutsandbots.co.uk/product/nanotwodualesc
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Re: Another New Antweight..
All hail Skutterlump!
Is that really 245g
Is that really 245g
Die Gracefully Robotics
Winner - AWS 39
Winner - AWS 39
Re: Another New Antweight..
246g actually :L Yeah, the Beetle motor and flipper together are 100g, the 2 batteries add about 25g and the legs add 20g... add in a large chassis, drive motors and electronics and you've got one overweight walker.
Rory Mangles - Team Nuts
Robots: Nuts 2 and many more...
NanoTwo Motor Controllers: https://nutsandbots.co.uk/product/nanotwodualesc
Robots: Nuts 2 and many more...
NanoTwo Motor Controllers: https://nutsandbots.co.uk/product/nanotwodualesc
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Re: Another New Antweight..
As cool as it is, does it really need the beetleweight motor?
Die Gracefully Robotics
Winner - AWS 39
Winner - AWS 39
Re: Another New Antweight..
Does Bad Idea really need a giant blade? No, of course not.. but sensible weaponry is boring; If I swapped out the Beetle motor for the Park HPX that was in there, it would be boring and crap rather than just crap At least as it is it can get one almost Anticide sized flip before it falls over and gives up on life . I can probably get it in weight ok, but getting it to fit in the 4 inch cube is more of a challenge.
Rory Mangles - Team Nuts
Robots: Nuts 2 and many more...
NanoTwo Motor Controllers: https://nutsandbots.co.uk/product/nanotwodualesc
Robots: Nuts 2 and many more...
NanoTwo Motor Controllers: https://nutsandbots.co.uk/product/nanotwodualesc
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- Posts: 3716
- Joined: Sun Apr 03, 2005 5:30 pm
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Re: Another New Antweight..
Tick tock...everything is better against the clock. Haha.
Die Gracefully Robotics
Winner - AWS 39
Winner - AWS 39
Re: Another New Antweight..
Removed the second battery and redid the linkage in Polycarb, but still need to lose another 10g. In re-doing the linkage it does at least self right now. Hopefully my efforts to fit it in the cube will help lighten it...
As I say, if worst comes to worst I'll just bring MiniTinny cluster out of retirement. It'll likely be destroyed, but that is a more fitting death for a fighting robot than to be demoted to a drive-all-day
As I say, if worst comes to worst I'll just bring MiniTinny cluster out of retirement. It'll likely be destroyed, but that is a more fitting death for a fighting robot than to be demoted to a drive-all-day
Rory Mangles - Team Nuts
Robots: Nuts 2 and many more...
NanoTwo Motor Controllers: https://nutsandbots.co.uk/product/nanotwodualesc
Robots: Nuts 2 and many more...
NanoTwo Motor Controllers: https://nutsandbots.co.uk/product/nanotwodualesc