Earthwormjim's Stuff

All things antweight

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Occashokka
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Re: Earthwormjim's Stuff

Post by Occashokka »

I have a tiny space marine army , I'd probably adopt tactics of "run away like a mad thing" just like I will if I draw any of your brilliantly crafted machines of death.(if only had some that we could sacrifice to splintering up with blockhead on the slowmo, light plastic vs heavy bar=fun)
Team Badger
Has a 3d printer now yay
-£4.82+VAT (intact)
-cool modulated printed thingy
-not yet built nasty mean spinnt thingy

I'm gonna build something huge and stupid, try and stop me :P
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earthwormjim
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Re: Earthwormjim's Stuff

Post by earthwormjim »

Thanks ! Hopefully it will work on the day and not self destruct and gouge Peters very nice and very shiny new polycarb!!
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mathias
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Re: Earthwormjim's Stuff

Post by mathias »

earthwormjim wrote:Blockhead has a printed stainless steel beater spinny thing on the front, and some Ti panels at the front and rear.
It looks quite controllable so far. The motor is lovely, very smooth. Its an RCX H2206 1950KV. I got it because it has 4 x m3 mounting holes on the back, and 4 x m2 on the front. It will drain the 180mah 2s lipo in around a minute at full tilt, so battles will have to be quick! ( Half throttle seems to be plenty at the mo!)

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Blockhead looks really neat! Can you share some more details about what the chassis is made out of and how you made it? (Looks like 3D printing via the powder printer stuff, but I can't be sure from the photo?)
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earthwormjim
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Re: Earthwormjim's Stuff

Post by earthwormjim »

Thanks mathias.
Blockhead is literally just a 1 piece shell to house the electronics in, and to bolt the armour / weapon / wheels onto. The idea being, the fewer parts there are, the less there is to go wrong? (Well, it works in theory!)
I used Solidworks to design the chassis. Here are a couple of pics. The end phyical result went through a total of 14 redesigns along the way in the software!
The design was then uploaded to Shapeways, and printed in white strong and flexible, I do have a 3d printer at work, but it would require lots of design compromises to enable me to print something like this.
Once I knew everything was going to fit into it,I then painted it using Halfords Ford Electric Orange. ( Great colour, I also used it to paint the dials in my car).
The weapon is again CAD designed, but printed in stainless steel, again from Shapeways.

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The armour is .5mm Ti sheet, cut mainly with a pair of kitchen scissors, and then filed to final shape. It is bolted to the chassis using pre designed mount points.
Hope that helps, mathias. If you want any more specifics, just let me know! :)
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mathias
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Re: Earthwormjim's Stuff

Post by mathias »

Thanks earthwormjim! This is really cool to see!

Do you expect any issues from the weapon being made of stainless steel rather than something like hardox? I suppose the benefit is that you can always get more printed.

White, strong, and flexible on Shapeways is white nylon, I think? How does that hold up? I'm guessing better than Makerbot-style PLA filament (which has issues mostly with each layer bonding well enough to actually stay together in an impact, I've found.)
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Shakey
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Re: Earthwormjim's Stuff

Post by Shakey »

White strong and flexible is indeed nylon, it is much toughter than PLA as PLA has problems with brittleness. ABS is a much better choice for FDM printers (ABS is a much tougher filament to use when printing). Also there are methods (such as acetone vapours) that can greatly increase layer adhesion with ABS
Nuts And Bots - For all your components and ready built antweights!

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AWS 44, 45, 49, 51 & 55 Winner - Far too many robots!
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earthwormjim
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Re: Earthwormjim's Stuff

Post by earthwormjim »

Hi mathias.
I would rather have a machined hardox weapon, for sure, but using a 3D printed weapon makes sense for me. I dont have the machinery to machine anything myself, so printing is comparatively cheap, quick and easy. I enjoy the CAD design side of it too. Only time will tell how well it holds up. If it fails or warps, then I will look at an alternative, or re design it. It is all part of the development of a robot. :) 3D printing gives the advantage of being able to design any shape, and even use hollow sections where appropriate, and it is a fraction of the cost of having a chunk of material machined. 3D printing a weapon on anything bigger than an antweight might be asking for trouble, but hopefully I can get away with it at this scale. The chassis is not meant for a direct hit, hence the armour, my printer at work prints in PLA and ABS. Printed chassis that I have used in the past have held up very well. ABS especially holds up very well. Shapeways WSF is undoubtedly very good, I use it because it because the printing process means that there are none of the design restrictions that there are with non-professional 3D printers, like layer orientation, or support structures, etc.
At the end of the day though, if a good size chunk of sharpened spinning metal comes into contact with any of the 3D printed plastics, the result will be more or less the same. The plan is to keep the soft bits away from the fast spinning hard bits! Sometimes though, that's not very easy to do!!
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earthwormjim
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Post by earthwormjim »

Found a box of bits in the shed while tidying up earlier...

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Robot Graveyard!!
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joey_picus
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Re: Earthwormjim's Stuff

Post by joey_picus »

All of those were wonderful :) I still fondly remember El Chupacabra especially, that design would be brilliant against spinners I'm sure...
Joey McConnell-Farber - Team Picus Telerobotics - http://picus.org.uk/ - @joey_picus
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haz
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Re: Earthwormjim's Stuff

Post by haz »

I wish I found stuff like that in my shed!

Have a nostalgia team next event mate.
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