Peter Wallers Fleas

[Remote-Controlled Dave]

I wonder if we can spare 75g to add this to Lemmings? Now that would be fun.

[peterwaller]

This is going to be hard enough with one other robot let alone many.
Because the home made gear boxes vary the drives don't run equally so even as an individual robot without a tether it is difficult to drive straight.
With the drag of the tether it is next to impossible even one at a time.
This is fast turning into one of my more memorable flops.
Also having gone to a chain it could fall foul of the no entanglement weapons although I have always considered that as trying to top spinners.
For what it is worth this is what it looks like at the moment but I can't see it being battle worthy any time soon if ever.

[Remote-Controlled Dave]

Can you not just employ a second driver and treat it like a cluster? Entanglement devices are banned under weaponry. I don't think that tether is an entanglement device or a weapon of any kind.
I do like it Peter, its cool. Reminds me of the German featherweight (I think) Pod Racers.

[peterwaller]

Just in case it does get entered ( shuffleaction is hardly competitive anyway ) I have given it a name.
As it splits in half and the two halves are joined by a lead it is called halflead.

[peterwaller]

Although the robots don't drive very well due to my home made drive units the Rx47 receiver controllers have really impressed me.
One is programmed drive on channels 2/3 (right stick) with mixing 100% drive and 75% steering plus the release on channel 5.
The second is set for drive on channels 1/4 (left stick) with the same mixing and release again on 5.
The ability to program any output to any channel plus mixing and many other function all remotely via the transmitter makes them very versatile.

[Remote-Controlled Dave]

Well done Peter, you've surpassed yourself. That's a worse name than Deflea. I'm very proud.

[peterwaller]

I new you would love it.
Its your reactions that inspire me to even greater depths.

[joey_picus]

It's like a Stinger! (the car-stopping thing, not the robot, although maybe the same level of control...) I love it, it's a genuinely quite original idea and you don't see those much these days

[peterwaller]

I have got some improvement in the driving by a slight mod to the gearboxes.
My idea of using the long motor shaft for one of the secondary and output gears has a flaw.
Normally any friction experienced at these points in particular the output gear with the wheel is at a point in the gear train where the torque is much higher and so has less effect.
But in my design the loading is on the motor output shaft and so has a much greater effect.
By drilling the output gear to 1.2 mm on the 1 mm shaft this has given some improvement but at low speed it is still very difficult to drive straight.

[limpet]

Looks great and very different. Hope you get it all sorted so we can see it in combat.

[peterwaller]

After the damage it took at Basingstoke I decided to rebuild Deflea this time in Alloy 910 Nylon and with better tracks and faster motors.

[peterwaller]

It's been a while since I built a Flea mainly because we don't get time to fight them at AWS events but I have always been disappointed with my Flea spinner Fleabite so I thought I would have a go at improving it. By using one of the little double ended gear motors I was able to save enough weight to use a full size BE1806 brushless weapon motor. So if it does't rip itself apart it should actually do some damage. I might consider building a second Flea and have a proper Antweight cluster.

[AntRoboteer]

That looks great Pete, hopefully there shall be a proper fleaweight competition at some point.

[razerdave]

Double ended motor?

[peterwaller]

There are two separate motor gearboxes in one case I found them on ebay a year or so back but they don't seem to be available anymore.
The are much to fast hence the extra gearing which halves the speed but they are still quite quick.