The
work so far seems to have gone well although the drive turned out
to be more troublesome than we first imagined. We seemed to spend
a lot of time knocking bearings on and off axles. In the end I started
putting the units into my freezer for a couple of hours before working
on them. This was surprisingly effective actually. The contraction
of the metal means that everything moves with much less resistance
and it seems to keep cold long enough to do the work.
We
cut the old side bars off and re-welded these into the centre of
the chassis. These were then drilled and the new drive units were
mounted onto these bars. I found the welding was much easier following
a general buildup of rust over the winter. Seems that the oxidisation
has helped so you don't rely on the CO2 shield quite so much. We
made a few mistakes on some of the holes and had to re-weld them,
but generally pretty good. The picture to the right is Cathy drilling
the chassis - yes, that is the chassis under there somewhere and
yes that is Cathy under there somewhere :-)
This
is a close-up of one side once it was finished. Much more compact
than before and there is room to fit some bits in next to the axe
cylinder. This should mean we can have flat sides at least!! There
should also be less strain on the drive as it is all much closer
together. I'm slightly concerned about the wheels using grub screws
to hold them in place, but we can always cut a biscuit/key if tests
prove its not good enough.
We've started
work on the axe. The new head is mounted on the new arm (which is
made from aluminium scaffold pole) and this in turn is mounted on
the chassis. we need to re-fit the linkage and try it out. We had
a little 'manual' test on Panda Monium's polyprop shell and it went
through with no hassle at all...NICE!!
PANTS FLASH:
Just got our audition date for Robot Mayhem. It will be at London
Arena on 8th August 2001. Still got lots to do between now and then,
but I'm hopeful that we can do well this time....(famous last words...)
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