Peter Wallers Robot Ramblings

[UserFriendly]

Ok, I've been printing ABS with a first layer temp of 115C and 110C for the rest of the print...

[peterwaller]

Having my interest in walkers reawakened by team shakey's efforts and a little encouragement from Rory I have started looking at a new spinner.
Here are the 3D CAD drawings of it so far, obviously still needs some support to keep the spinner of the deck but is looking OK so far.


Its a fairly complex chassis but it should be a good test for the spray bed glue I have been trying out, so far it is a great success

[Rapidrory]

Yes Pete! What weight's that blade gonna be?

[Shakey]

Excellent, I'm glad I was able to inspire more craziness. It looks great!

[BeligerAnt]

Something suitably spectacular for AWS50!

Hope you manage to get it off the drawing board (screen) Peter.

[peterwaller]

There is not too much doubt it will get built just if it works or not.
Here is the walking mechanism on a test chassis plus the chassis shown in the drawings above which was still printing when I posted before.

[peterwaller]

A slight change of direction but here is an assessment of how well the various 3D materials worked as armour.
Combatant in standard ABS with Polycarb sheet wrapped around half the body shell came off worst.
The polycarb was partially ripped off and the chassis split along the layers down both sides so both drive motors became detached.

Anticyclone had quite a few chunks taken out of the polypropylene armour surround but it did its job and the High Impact ABS chassis and one wheel took little damage and continued to operate.


Unfortunately I had fitted thinner tyres and these came apart causing problems which I had to bodge on the day with double sided tape.
Dominant with High Impact ABS armour on one end an PLA 3D850 on the other took no chassis or track damage in the Spinner Annihilator all of which was absorbed by the armour although it was a close thing.


All in I am very pleased with the HI ABS which I have found I can make even stronger printed at 250 degrees as it prints really well and when printed using Dimafix adhesive has virtually no distortion.
The polypropylene armour despite being only 2mm thick took a lot of punishment and showed no signs of splitting or delaminating.
Because it wasn't screwed on there was no weakening of the side walls with drilled holes and it would be simple to have spare armour sleeves which you could fit in seconds between rounds.
The PLA 3D850 showed less signs of delaminating than the HI ABS but as already mentioned I have found that can be improved at higher print temperature.

[botomatic1000]

Nice 8) I like it.

[peterwaller]

I have just been trying to improve the strength of the ABS HI by printing at 250 degrees and increasing the flow setting from 75% to 100% but ended up making it worse.
I was attempting to print a chassis for the new walker the geometry of which has been causing me problems with cracking along the layers of the thin but high walls but this made it worse.
I have always preferred ABS to PLA as it was stronger and easier to bond but now I have the PLA 3D850 which is slightly better than the ABS HI I decided maybe it was time to ignore my own preconceived ideas and give the PLA a chance.
After all as can be seen in the Photo above of Dominant it resists spinners better.
Anyway the the new chassis came out so beautifully that a new Anticyclone chassis is also now printing as I write.
This may all be short lived though as Trevor at 3D Print World Aylesbury has found and is getting me a roll of Taulman Alloy 910 Nylon that looks even more promising.
http://taulman3d.com/910-features.html

[trev502000]

Hi Peter your alloy 910 has just been delivered just tried to snip a bit of my 3mm of the reel had to use heavy snips to cut it think this stuff will do the job nicely i think
also brought some fabric dye to colour mine http://richrap.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/3 ... nt-in.html